Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth

Second American Edition. Three Englishman, three Russians and their guide-a bushman named Mokoum-set out to measure the arc of a meridian in the Kalahari Desert and encounter the wild beasts of South Africa and a war between England & Russia. 

First published in London under the title Meridiana: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (Sampson Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1873). An edition for distribution in America consisting of Sampson Low sheets, with a Scribner title page inserted (with mention of Sampson Low) appeared in 1873 as well. The first proper American edition was published by Scribner, Welford and Armstrong, New York in 1874. This second American edition, published by Henry Shepard of Boston, appeared in the same year as the first, but under an entirely different title, which Shepard perhaps considered both more exotic and more resonant with an American public familiar with the Behemoth of the Bible. 

In a handsome publisher's binding, with vivid illustrations by Jules Descartes Ferat.

REFERENCES: Taves and Michaluk, The Jules Verne Encyclopedia, V009; Kytasaari, Dennis. Jules Verne Collecting at http://epguides.com/djk/JulesVerne/works.shtml. 

CONDITION: Good, small losses at head and foot of spine, lights stains to lower cover, occasional minor brown stains in margins; nice tight bright copy