The White Chief of the Caffres

315pp + 6pp. Original green illustrated binding with bevelled edges shows a boy in a canoe warding off three ‘caffres’, another ‘caffre’ on the spine, bright gilt titling on top board and spine, numerous woodcuts.Occasional foxing, slight lean, the cloth binding is flecked, endpapers have separated along the gutters. A good copy of this scarce title (only 13 OCLC listings mostly US and UK with only one South African listing and none in Australia).

“A story of the Umzimvubu Kaffirs, and the adventures of a boy wrecked on the Natal coast” (Mendelssohn, Vol 1, p.487). A fictional story recounting how a young boy, Julius Peterson, was shipwrecked on the south-east coast of Africa near the Umzimvubu river south of Natal which flows through the region later occupied by the Griquas.

Although a story, Drayson's book parallels what actually did happen in that region in the 1700s - with whites shipwrecked on the coast at Umzimvubu being taken into the local Amapondo tribe and coloured children resulting from the union of white women and their native captors. The book gives an excellent account of the region and how the harbour at Durban looked before being settled by the white man.