Rare Burchell under hammer
11 July 2016This article is taken from The Times on the 6th of July 2016.
A rare first edition of “perhaps the best and most famous of the South African travel books” is expected to fetch at least R90 000 at an auction.
When William Burchell’s two volume Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa was published in 1822, only 500 copies were printed, and few have survived in pristine condition.
Other copies have sold for R100 000 and the book is sought after for its hand-drawn maps and hand-coloured illustrations depicting a South Africa long before the age of Instagram.
Burchell was the first European to describe many local species of wildlife, including the Burchell’s zebra and the Burchell’s coucal (vleiloerie).
His book has been acclaimed by historians for its “sympathetic” description of the people of South Africa, said Paul Mills, owner of AntiquarianAuctions.com in Cape Town.
“If you’re collecting travel books from around the world, Burchell is one that you absolutely have to have if you want one or two of Africa,” he said. Burchell departed from Cape Town on June 19, 1811, and by the time he returned four years later he had completed a 7 000km round trip as far north as Kuruman and through much of the Eastern Cape.
The book also boasts a detailed, meticulously drawn loose map of 1m by 1m.
Cartographer Roger Stewart said the explorer could easily have written two more volumes.
“He was hugely impressed and deeply in love with South Africa. He was enthralled with the natural history and with the people. He got on extraordinarily well with the indigenous and the colonials here as well,” said Stewart.
Burchell’s books accompanied Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage, during which the father of evolution developed his theory.
Stewart said that after his South African trip, Burchell was brought before a select committee of the British House of Commons in 1819 to determine whether South Africa was suitable for emigration. British settlers arrived in the Eastern Cape in 1820.
Burchell – in his words
- We were visited in a very friendly manner by half a dozen Bushmen, one of whom was well known to the missionaries and Hottentots, by the name of Goedhart (Good-heart). His brother, some years ago, going into the colony to beg tobacco, was wantonly shot; in consequence of which this man, naturally enough, conceived a deadly hatred for his brother’s murderers; but unfortunately, classed with them, the whole race of boors, and vowed perpetual vengeance and warfare against them.
- The Malays consider themselves superior to all other slaves; and look down on the Hottentots as a very inferior race, who, they say, are descended from the orang-outangs.
- But in respect to the cultivation of mental capacity, and an extensive variety of ideas, it is unreasonable to expect more in a Dutch peasant of this colony than we can meet with in the peasantry of Europe. To cast this reproach on the boors of the Cape, as a national character, is an act of injustice, which, if not to be excused by ignorance, must be attributed to some worse motive.
- The word Caffre, or Kaffir, is generally, at the Cape, applied exclusively to the tribes inhabitation the country beyond the eastern boundary of the colony.
- …for judging of the character of these inhabitants, it is not enough to have mingled with the better part of society; the Boors must be heard, the Hottentots must be heard, and the slaves must be heard.
