Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope,

Cape Town: A. S. Robertson, Heerengracht, Saul Solomon & Co. St. George’s-street, 1846.

Late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century green ribbed cloth, gilt-lettered at head of spine, pp. xii + 313 [actually 321] + [1].Very good condition with very slight marginal foxing, fingering, and staining. The front free endpaper and the lower endpapers and lower wrap are preserved in the binding. Signature of A. Faure on the original front free endpaper and title-page. These ownership signatures are evidently those of Abraham Faure (1795–1875), minister of the N.G. Kerk, who trained in England and at the University of Utrecht and became a leading figure in Cape Town.

Mendelssohn, i. pp. 46–47: ‘An account of a tour taken by two French Protestant missionaries who were settled in Basutoland, to that part of South Africa between the Orange and the Vaal Rivers, which was mainly inhabited by the Bechuanas. The tour lasted about three months, and much of the information published was related for the first time, including notes on the Bushmen, Corannas, Basutos, Bechuanas, Griquas, Zulus, and other nations, with chapters on botanical and geological matters, hunting, and even literature. There is a full account of the Zulu army, including the names of regiments, together with those of the Commanders, Lieutenants, and sub-Lieutenants, and there are interesting accounts of Chaka and Dingan, with a description of the death of the former, and an ode to the latter. There is a short history of the Bechuana tribes, …. The Boers are severely condemned for their immoral and cruel habits, which, it is stated, “excited a very strong feeling against us among the natives.” They are charged with stealing the children of the Bushmen, who were forced to live in bushes and caverns to escape their rapacity, ‘but even here the Dutch Boers discover them, … fire on the kraals, kidnap the children, and when they can, carry off even adults.”’ South African Bibliography … to 1925, i, p. 80.

This is the rare Cape Town edition, published six years before the more common London edition of 1852. The 1852 London edition states of this earlier edition: ‘A small impression was thrown off at the Cape for circulation amongst the friends of the mission’.