ROBERT JACOB GORDON (De luxe edition)

De Luxe edition: 2 volumes: 465 pages (continuous pagination) colour frontispieces in both volumes, profusely illustrated with colour plates, half maroon leather with matching marbled paper boards, top edges gilt, black title labels gilt on the spine, silk place markers, housed in green cloth slip cases with marbled paper edges and leather lips, a very good set.

Brenthurst Press, Second Series, Number 4 and 5

Number 5 of 125 copies bound in half leather.

Editor’s note: "Robert Jacob Gordon, a Dutchman of Scottish descent, can probably be considered the most important of the eighteenth century travellers in Southern Africa. He was endowed with an enquiring mind and a keenly scientific disposition and during his five journeys into the Cape interior, he penetrated the subcontinent further than any known [European] predecessor or contemporary.... Gordon was one of the first of Europe's explorers to reach the Orange River, naming it as such in 1777; he was the first European to reach the river's mouth and was the first to record a discovery of fossils in southern Africa. He initiated wool farming at the Cape and, indirectly, in Australia too. While on his journeys into the interior Gordon kept detailed records of the geology, geomorphology, flora and fauna of the Cape. Four of these journals have survived and they are richly filled with these observations as well as many others concerning the indigenous peoples that he encountered namely the Khoikhoi, San, Tswana, and Xhosa. As captain and later commander-in-chief of the Cape garrison he investigated strategic aspects of the Cape's coastline and major rivers. Drawings made by him and by the artists who accompanied him on his travels, provide colourful data on the topography of the subcontinent and on the people, animals, reptiles, birds, fishes and plants of the region.... Most of his manuscripts including the journals published here as translations of the Dutch text, are now part of the Brenthurst Collection."

There is a detailed sketch of his life and work as follows: https://www.robertjacobgordon.nl/about