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Author: Sparrman, Anders
Title: A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope towards the Antarctic Polar Circle Round the World and to the Country of the Hottentots and the Caffres from the Year 1772- 1776
Place Published: Dublin
Publisher:Printed for Messrs. White, Cash, and Byrne
Date Published: 1785
Description:

2 vol. xxxvi, 395 pp.; xi, 382 pp., plates. Illustrated with 2 frontispieces, 1 folding map, 7 plates, 2 of which are folding. (8vo) 21.3x13.1 cm (8½x5¼"), original calf, rebacked with remnants of gilt titles and decorations to spine.

Includes accounts of Sparrman's travels inland from the settlement at the Cape of Good Hope and as assistant naturalist to Johann Forster aboard Captain James Cook's Resolution from September 1772 to March 1775. Sparmann's account includes a number of details of Cook's second voyage which are not mentioned elsewhere, and the majority of the narrative concerns South Africa: "The author relates many incidents illustrating the hospitality of the Dutch farmers and their dense ignorance of matters outside their own country, and he makes allusions to the cruelty of the treatment of the slaves by the lower classes of the colonists. He frequently draws attention to the inaccuracies to be met with in [Peter] Kolbe[n]'s account of the Cape, [first published in 1719,] and throws considerable doubt on the veracity of many of his statements" (Mendelssohn). Beddie 1276; Conrad p. 14; Mendelssohn II: 414; Rosove 316.A1 ("Scarce").

Both volumes rebacked, wear and rubbing to covers; back hinge of vol. 2 started; repair to vol. 1 title page, folding map reinforced, internal toning and foxing; overall very good.