Cape Good Hope.

This book of transcriptions and translations of texts by early callers to the Cape of Good Hope is invaluable to anyone its early history of European visitors.

From the dust cover:

"Major Raven-Hart has selected, transcribed and meticulously translated a total of 104 accounts by visitors to the Cape between 1652 and 1702. They are taken from the original Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, Danish and German; with one exception, the list is exhaustive for this period.The language styles are varied; quaint and vivid, penetrating, and sometimes quite coarse.

To accompany the transcribed texts, and to help the reader enjoy and understand, Major Raven-Hart has provided background and context notes to describe contemporary happenings in Europe, official records by the Cape commanders and governors and biographical notes on the writers.

There is also a unique index with over 2,200 entries: in this the reader will find references to animals, plants, persons, names, etc; a glossary of foreign words, definitions of various sea-faring and navigational terms and expressions; identifications of flora and fauna, bibliographies; and explanatory notes. This index is not just a valuable and practical working tool-it is virtually a concentrated companion-book or vade mecum for late 17th C history of the Cape.

A feature of this book are the illustrations: the author has been able to find 65 engravings, maps, title pages, portraits-most of which have been reproduced as full-or double-pages."

Both volumes Hardcovers with Dust covers.Volume I-Colour Tipped Frontispiece, xv + 222 pages detailed text with illustrations. Volume II-Frontispiece-Colour Tipped xi + pages 223 to 527 with maps, illustrations and supporting text and data.

Very clean set in near fine overall condition.