TRAVELS AND ADVENTURE IN EASTERN AFRICA (ZULULAND & NATAL) - Limited Edition Of 100 Copies In Full-Leather Binding

"Travels and Adventure in Eastern Africa, descriptive of the Zoolus, their Manners, Customs, with a Sketch of Natal by Nathaniel Isaacs. Newly revised and edited, in one volume, with a biography of the Author, Notes and Appendices. By Louis Herman and Percival R. Kirby."

Publisher's de luxe edition in a full-leather pigskin binding (similar to the de luxe edition binding of James Ewart's Journal by the same publisher). Gilt borders on the front and back panels with publisher's emblem in gilt on the bottom of the front panel. Gilt titles on spine. Contents clean. Pictorial jacket is whole and in good condition with minimal age-associated edge wear.

This de luxe edition was limited to 100 numbered copies. This is number 48.

'Nathaniel Isaac's account of Natal and Zululand is unique and, as the historian Theal remarks, "a very interesting book, indispensable to a student of early events in Natal". For it is to Isaacs that we owe not only an observant eye-witness's accurate description of the Zulu people before they came under European influence, but the only comprehensive account written in first hand, from day to day, of the history of the savage king, Chaka. "It is a vivid, detailed and accurate record of the birth of a great settlement, and he (Isaacs) deserves the acclamation of every interested historian," says Graham Mackeurtan in his Cradle Days of Natal, and, according to A. T. Bryant in his Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, "to Isaacs's foresight and diligence in having kept a diary throughout his sojourn in Natal, we are indebted for the only consecutive narrative ever penned by an actual eye-witness - apart from some odd papers left us by Fynn - describing Shaka and his people."

But apart from its merits as an invaluable historical source Isaacs's book is a record of exciting adventures among a people to the greater number of whom the sight of a white man was a source of wonder. So that it is not surprising that Ian Colvin in his Preface to Mendelssohn finds it "as fascinating as Robison Crusoe".