MATABELE LAND AND THE VICTORIA FALLS.

First edition: xliii + 383 +  32 pages of publisher’s catalogue, frontispiece portrait, 4 folding maps (the  large folding map at the end is repaired with tape at the folds), 10 hand  coloured lithographs of natural history subjects including 2 of birds by  Keulemans, 6 chromolithographic plates, woodcut vignette on title page, 38  woodcuts in the text, original olive green pictorial cloth over bevelled boards  (the front board is cracked at the upper corner), titled gilt on the back, original  black endpapers with the binder’s ticket of Burn & Co. on the rear paste-down  endpaper, the hinges are slightly weak, the contents and plates are crisp, a good  copy.

Mendelssohn  (Sydney) South  African Bibliography, volume 2, page 112, '...accompanied by his brother,  Mr. W.W. Oates, (he) sailed for South Africa in March 1873. The brothers fitted  out their expedition at Maritzburg, and travelled through the Transvaal and  Bechuanaland, visiting the Tati district, soon after which Mr W.E. Oates  returned to England. Frank Oates proceeded to Bulawayo, and he gives an  interesting account of Matabeleland at this period. He was well received by  Lobengula, who gave him considerable assistance, but owing to many delays he  made several unsuccessful attempts to reach the falls and did not arrive there  till the last day of the year 1874; soon after which he was attacked by fever  and died on the return journey to Tati early in February 1875. His account of  Matabeleland is one of the best of the earlier modern works on the country, and  the volume possesses a number of coloured and chromo plates. The appendices  contain an article on South African Ethnology by Dr. George Rolleston, and  catalogues and descriptions of the ornithological, botanical, and entomological  collections formed by Mr. Oates.' One of the chromolithographic plates is a  particularly fine view of the Victoria Falls (Western extremity), page 258