15 pp. xv Plates, each with a blank and tissue guard. This is the original 1841 edition, hand coloured at the time. In 1962, W.H. Dawson of Cape Town published 150 copies from original sheets with modern colouring. (Africana Notes and News, March 1963, pg. 205 and June 1963, pg. 264). Bound in the original green moire with blocked panel design. Re-cased with marbled endpapers. Bookplates of Viscount Massereene and one other. “A rather scarce volume of hunting scenes in the Cape. The work is devoted to an illustrated description of sporting adventures on the ” Bontebok Flats” in Kaffraria, near the Kat River Settlement, ” at the extreme verge of the Cape Colony, and beneath the mountain ranges amongst whose fertile valley the Kat, a tributary of the Great Fish River, has its origin.” The sketches were made ” to relieve the dreariness of two years’ residence upon a barbarian frontier,” and they serve as an excellent record of the appearance of this part of South Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of them are described from extracts “from a journal written on the spot,” which affords a capital account of the sport enjoyed in these districts, with some interesting notes on the political and military position of the country. The writer evidently did not hold with the views of the party who were in the habit of making excuses for the ravages of the K***irs, and of attacking the Boers for their brutality towards them, and he remarks, ” The Dutch inhabitants of the colony, impoverished by laws, which, while they loosened the bonds of their slaves, substantiated no sufficient system of control for their servants… seeing nothing but the consummation of their ruin in the new frontier policy, commenced an emigration upon a scale of startling magnitude.” There are 15 plates, most of which have two or more engravings, many of them being coloured.” (Mendelssohn, South African Bibliography, 1957, volumes I, pg. 235.) First edition Very good. Binding re-cased with a new spine and marbled endpapers. Hardcover. Royal quarto, 37.5 x 27.5cm
Publisher: Ackerman and Co.
Date Published: 1841
Publication Place: London
First Edition: Yes
Condition: Very good. Binding re-cased with a new spine and marbled endpapers
Binding: Hardcover
