Publisher's beige cloth binding with titles on spine. Illustrated dust jacket by Barnett Freedman.
293pp. Frontispiece portrait, one text illustration, fifteen illustrated plates, and fold-out map at rear (all present).
Binding sound. Contents clean. Scarce original dust jacket with some age-associated wear and a stain on the inside.
'South Africa produces remarkable books as well as remarkable men; and this book is one of the most remarkable.
'Matabili' Thompson was born in 1857, the son of a Yorkshire younger son who had emigrated to South Africa. As a boy of thirteen he was trying his luck alone as a 'digger', and he was still only seventeen when the Imperial authorities gave him the first pioneer farm in Griqualand West. At twenty-one his farm was destroyed, and his father killed before his eyes, in a native rising. The story of this attack, and of his escape, desperately wounded, is breathless reading.
For the next eight years he was a Chief Inspector of Native Reserves, except for an exciting interlude when he acted as secretary to Rhodes, as Imperial Commissioner in Stellaland. In 1886 Rhodes asked him to reorganize the native compounds in Kimberley. This was at the height of the I.D.B. (illicit diamond buying) traffic. The reorganization put the De Beers Company on its feet, and Thompson 'took a rest and devoted himself to study'.
All this was the prelude to the great adventure of his life. He joined Rhodes and Rudd in a syndicate, with the object of obtaining a mining concession from Lobengula, the formidable King of the Matabele. Rudd, Maguire and Thompson formed the expedition to Bulawayo, where Thompson spent fifteen difficult and dangerous months. The main part of the book is a detailed narrative of these months; and no boys' adventure story could beat it. Thompson's account throws entirely new light upon this extraordinary passage in colonial history.
Having got the concession, made his fortune, and acquired his nickname, Thompson went with his wife to England and became an undergraduate at Oxford. Subsequently he returned to South Africa, and entered politics. He died in 1927, with his autobiography partly finished, and partly roughed out; it has been edited for the press by his daughter, Mrs. Rouillard. Besides the narrative, outlined above, it contains much fresh and intimate information about Rhodes, and it gives a vivid account of Rhodes' anger over the Jameson Raid.'
- Jacket Condition: Good
- Binding Condition: Very Good
- Size: 8vo
