[Rarebooks] fa: PATERSON - QUATRE VOYAGES CHEZ LES HOTTENTOTS ET CHEZ LES CAFRES - 1790

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, January 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/hso8ycb

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

William Paterson [Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, trans.]: Quatre Voyages chez les Hottentots et chez les Cafres, par le Lieutenant Williams Paterson, depuis mai 1777 jusqu'en decembre 1779. Traduit de l'Anglais. Paris: chez Didot l'Aine, 1790. First edition thus; 8vo (22.5 cm), bound in period russia, gilt-tooled borders and spine decorations, marbled endpapers; [4], 329, [1] pp.; tables. Gay, Bibliographie de l'Afrique 3122.

First edition of La Borde's translation of Paterson's Narrative of Four Journeys Into the Country of the Hottentots, and Caffraria, published in London the year before. Sponsored by Lady Strathmore in the hope he would acquire new botanical specimens for her estate, Paterson, the future governor of New South Wales, traveled as far as Namaqualand on the west and the Great Fish River on the south-east, and provided one of the earliest descriptions by an Englishman of the interior of South Africa. Includes numerous tables ("Observations sur le thermometre, les vents et le temps…") as well as an account of a shipwreck: "Relation du naufrage d'un vaisseau portugais sur le banc des Aiguilles, le 27 avril 1686." Binding with bumps to the corners, wear to the edges, loss to the leather at the spine foot; front joint cracked  but the board is secure; title-page with an ink stamp in cyrillic characters (no other library marks); a few scattered small spots to the leaves, otherwise very clean and fresh.