An Account of the Cape of Good Hope

Full bound in tree-calf with gilt decoration to the spine and gilt lettering on a black spine label. Plain endpapers. xii + 339 pp. Top edge gilt, other edges marbled.

The author is described as "Of His Majesty's Eighteenth or Royal Irish Regiment; and Author of an Account of the Island of Ceylon". In a flattering dedication to the Duke of York, who was a field-marshal, Percival asks that as his "Account of Ceylon" had received the approbation of a generous public, any "inexperience in composition [in this new work] will in a great measure be excused in him who appears to have the interests of his country in view". 

In an early chapter Percival describes his first visit to the Cape in 1796. Then a member of the Nineteenth Regiment, he witnessed the defeat of the Dutch fleet at Saldanha Bay. 

The present book, which is neither illustrated nor indexed, was based on the various expeditions and observations he made on his return visit to the Cape from 1801, when he landed again after service in India. 

CONDITION NOTES. The edges and corners of the boards are rubbed and bumped. The spine has been consolidated and the endpapers have been strengthened with narrow binding tape. The gilt and marbled page edges are dulled. There is a heraldic bookplate of William Sparling on the front paste-down as well as another ownership signature on the front free endpaper. The copy has been well preserved, with the contents unmarked and unfoxed. The copy can be identified as a first impression by the uncorrected spacing of the running head on p 247 - "CAPE OF GO ODHOPE".