HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF DISCOVERIES AND TRAVELS IN AFRICA, by the Late John Leyden, M.D.

First Edition: 2 volumes, I. xx + 512 pages. II. viii + 536 pages, folding maps as frontispiece in each volume, 4 maps 1 folding, bound in half brown calf with marbled paper sides which are worn along all the edges and at the corners, marbled endpapers and edges (faded), light foxing throughout, a very good copy.

Mendelssohn (Sydney) South African Bibliography, volume 2, page 69, 'Only a short space is devoted to South Africa, compiled from the works of Kolben, Sparrman, Le Vaillant, Barrow, Burchell, Lichtenstein, Campbell, and others ; there are some notes on Namaqualand and Manicaland and the Portuguese territories on the East Coast of Africa.'

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, G. Le G. Norgate, revised by Elizabeth Baigent (https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19613) Murray, Hugh (1779–1846), geographer, born at North Berwick, Haddingtonshire, Scotland, was the younger son of Matthew Murray (1735–1791), and grandson of George Murray (d. 1757). These two and Hugh's elder brother, George (1772–1822), were ministers of North Berwick. His mother was daughter of John Hill, minister of St Andrews, and sister of Henry David Hill, professor at St Andrews. At an early age Hugh entered the Edinburgh excise office as a clerk, but finding the work gave him ample leisure, he turned to writing. After trying his hand at fiction and philosophy he began to concentrate on geography. His first geographical work was an enlargement and completion of J. Leyden's Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Africa (1817). Similar works by him on Asia (3 vols., 1820) and North America (1829) followed.

Murray's magnum opus was the Encyclopaedia of Geography (1834), of which the geographical part was written by himself, while W. J. Hooker, R. Jameson, W. Wallace, and W. Swainson contributed other sections. A supplement was published in 1843. The work contained eighty-two maps and over a thousand woodcuts. It was well received, and an American edition (1843) in three volumes, edited by Thos. G. Bradford, had a large sale. Murray also wrote prolifically for the press, and produced, wholly or in part, fifteen volumes for the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, including the Southern Seas (1826), the Polar Seas (1830), British India (1832), China (1836), British America (1839), Africa (1830), and The United States (1844). His co-authors were often respected natural historians.