Coomassie and Magdala

Includes more than 20 illustrations and 2 maps.


The account of two British military campaigns in East and West Africa in 1868 and 1873-74, led by Sir Robert Napier and Sir Garnet Wolseley respectively, both of which Stanley accompanied as a war correspondent for the New York Herald. Napier's campaign in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was conducted against Emperor Theodore, who was holding foreign hostages in his mountain fortress, Magdala. The fortress was stormed, his hostages were freed, and Theodore himself committed suicide. Wolseley's successful Kumassi campaign was carried out against King Koffee and the Ashanti in the jungles of what is now Ghana and Sierra Leone. His reports on the Abyssianian campaign, the earliest received even in London, established Stanley's reputation as one of the leading journalists of the time while his bravery in the march to Kumassi won him the highest respect of Wolseley and other English officers. Cf. Hosken p. 189. Cf. Gay 2874bis.