SEVEN YEARS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Second edition: 2 volumes, 426 + 479 pages, frontispiece in each volumes (volume 1 a portrait of the author), large folding map - repaired with tape at folds, numerous engraved plates and illustrations in the text, old half leather, marbled boards, foxing on preliminary pages in both volumes, spines and corners worn and hinges weak, a fair copy. 

'Holub describes his first three expeditions to the remoter regions of southern Africa in the 1870's.Emil Holub's compelling ambition was to follow in the footsteps of Dr Livingstone and, specifically, to reach Luanda by way of the Zambesi valley and across Angola. That he failed in his principle objective does not diminish his stature as a traveller-explorer nor, indeed, the fascination which modern readers will derive from his meticulous accounts of the journeys, the third of which took him to the upper reaches of the Zambesi River. Holub was eminently qualified to undertake travel in the Africa of his day. He was a doctor of medicine, a zoologist, a botanist, a hunter and taxidermist, an artist and cartographer, an avid collector of specimens and, above all, a keen observer. Where Livingstone broke new ground Holub followed to consolidate, to record, to add detail to the broad canvas painted by his eminent predecessor.' Editor's note to the reprint edition, Johannesburg, 1975.