Paterson's Cape Travels 1777 to 1779

Brenthurst Series 6. General Editor- Eric Axelson.

William Paterson, the twenty-one-year-old son of a Scottish village gardener, set out for the Cape in 1777: as the protege of the young bluestocking, the Countess of Strathmore, he was commissioned by her to add to her collection of plants. A variety of new plant species was discovered on his four journeys whci embraced a grand sweep of 1500 kilometres from the mouth of the Orange River in the west to the banks of the Keiskamma River in the east.

Although a version which differs from this text was published in Paterson's lifetime, this original record of the Cape travels is here published for the first time--a triumph of understatement, a laconic tour de force, and a marked contrast to the flamboyant verbosity of his immediate successor, Francois de Vaillant. It is the first full-length account in English of extensive travel in the interior of southern Africa--9000 kilometres were covered in little over two years--and it records the ceremony of naming the Orange River, the first finding of fossils in southern Africa, and the first journey along the diamond-coast.

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Hardcover with dustcover-illustrated endpapers. Coloured Frontispiece-With sixty two coloured plates and eight maps. 202 pages text supported by plates and maps. Fine.