THE KAFIR WARS AND THE BRITISH SETTLERS IN SOUTH AFRICA (With hand coloured plates on India paper)

First edition: Unpaginated, triple tinted lithographic frontispiece (Cape Point - H.M.S. Birkenhead), 19 fine hand coloured double tinted lithographic plates heightened with gum arabic on blued India paper, each plate with accompanying text, original blind stamped green pebble-grained cloth, titled gilt on upper cover, all edges gilt, all the India paper proof images are in bright condition, a very good copy.

Neatly recased, all the plates with the original tissue guards, the margin of plate III. Market Square, Port Elizabeth has been repaired.

In his preface Thomson writes, 'The artist visited and sketched every one of the localities in this series with no other object than faithfully to portray scenes, not only in themselves beautiful and picturesque, but of personal and historic interest to many families in and beyond the colony. The title of the work was a sufficient guide to the choice of subjects. With the exception of the frontispiece, they are all confined to the Eastern Province of the colony and the British Kaffraria, and are illustrative of the country occupied by the British settlers of 1820, and especially of such scenes as have become famous in colonial history during the successive wars which have been waged against the original possessors of the soil, the indomitable Caffres.'

The subjects of the plates are: Main Street, Port Elizabeth; Market Square, Port Elizabeth; Graham's Town from the Bay Road; Kowie, Looking Seaward; Fort Beaufort; Fuller's Hoek, Waterkloof in the Distance; Blinkwater Hill; Mount Misery, Waterkloof; Macomo's Den, Waterkloof; Blinkwater Drift; Fort Armstrong, Kat River; Peffer's Kop; Chumie; Kieskamma, Near Fort Cox, Amatola in the Distance; Burns' Hill Missionary Station; Yellowwood Drift, Lenye Valley; Wolf River; Boma Pass and King William's Town.

Gordon-Brown (Alfred) Pictorial Africana, Cape Town 1975, page 128, gives the original price of £3. 3. 0 for proof copies on blued India paper and £2. 2. 0 for ordinary copies. Also mentions that it is sometimes found hand coloured which presumably would have been at a higher price.

London: Day and Son, Limited. Capetown and Port Elizabeth: J.C. Juta, Graham’s Town: C. Nixdorff. Edinburgh: Hill, Princes Street. 1865