Antiquarian Auctions

Auction #114 begins on 11 Apr 2024

Joseph Dalton Hooker and John Ball

Journal of a Tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas.

Published: MacMillan, London, 1878

Edition: First edition

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xvi, 489 pp., appendices, index. Folding Panorama of the Great Atlas (frontispiece), seven full-page b&w illustrations (e.g., Great Atlas from Lower Valley of Ait Mesan), folding Geological Section of the Plain of Marocco and the Great Atlas, twelve woodcuts in text, and folding New Map of South Marocco. In brown cloth with gilt and black decoration (a finely rendered minaret or tower) and gilt lettering to spine.

In 1871, Joseph Dalton Hooker (Director at Kew), George Maw (as geologist), and John Ball (a botanist and mountaineer) set out on what was to be Hooker’s last expedition - this time to the region of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Hooker’s earlier expeditions having been to the Antarctic and to India. The Journal is an account based on expedition notes of  their search in the spring of the year for new plants in the region of the Great Atlas. But ‘Hooker never really attained the heights’ and the expedition did not succeed in penetrating the mountain passes - indeed, there are comic elements to the enterprise. According to Coats, ‘...they reluctantly assumed Arab dress, and endeavoured to turn their solar topees into turbans by swathing them with muslin; but...refused to abandon their practical European boots,’ and ‘...the local Sheik objected to the green-painted tin cases intended for the transport of plants; he said the villagers would think they contained treasure, and kill the foreigners and himself in order to possess them.’  In the event, the book did not appear until 1878 ‘compiled by Ball from the journals of all three... [but] by this time interest had lapsed and it was published at a loss’ (Plant Hunters, 33-36). Re-inforced hinges and map folds, blind  library stamp, remnants of pockets on endpapers, etc., top and bottom of spine lightly chipped with small loss (2 cm.) at top. Nevertheless, quite a satisfactory copy.



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