SEVEN YEARS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Second edition. 2 volumes, 426 + 479 pages, frontispiece in each volumes (volume 1 a portrait of the author), folding colour map provided in facsimile, numerous engraved plates and illustrations in the text, original pictorial brown cloth gilt slightly scuffed and worn around the edges, gilt stamp with the coat of arms of the British South Africa Company on the upper cover of both volumes, new end papers, corners bumped, a good set.

The original map is missing from Volume 1. A facsimile reprint copied from the reprint edition of this work published by the Africana Book Society in 1975 (Volume 4 of the series Africana Reprint Library) is bound in after the List of illustrations in volume 1.

Editor's note to the reprint edition, Johannesburg, 1975. 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.