The Wild Sports of Southern Africa (Third and Complete Edition)

A$3,400 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books · No longer available

HARRIS, Captain William Cornwallis. The Wild Sports of Southern Africa; Being the Narrative of an Expedition from the Cape of Good Hope through the Territories of the Chief Moselekatse, to the Tropic of Capricorn. London: William Pickering, 1841. Large Octavo. xvi, 359pp. 26 coloured lithographic plates. Folding map and appendix section at rear. Full brown calf, decorated in gilt and blind to covers. Spine profusely gilt-decorated with four raised bands, titling in gilt. Upper edge gilt. Marbled endpapers. Coloured plates throughout. Folding map and appendix to rear. Third edition. William Cornwallis Harris was a military engineer in the service of the East India Company when, in 1836, his health compelled him to take leave and seek the restorative air of the Cape Colony. What followed was one of the great sporting and natural history expeditions of the nineteenth century. Harris and a small party pushed north from the Cape into territories then entirely unknown to European science; through the lands of the Matabele chief Moselekatse, across the Limpopo, to the Tropic of Capricorn. What Harris encountered during this expedition transformed his understanding of what Africa was. He encountered wildlife of a scale and variety that defied all prior European conception: vast herds of elephant, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, and sable antelope moving across plains of extraordinary beauty. He was among the first Europeans to observe and describe the sable antelope, which was subsequent

• Binding: Hardcover

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