Reizen en ontmoetingen in het zuiden van Afrika, behelzende een overzigt over den tegenwoordigen toestand dier kolonie; benevens eenige aanmerkingen over den aanwas en de vooruitzigten der Britsche landverhuizingen derwaarts. Uit het Engelsch veraald.

Groningen, W. van Boekeren, 1828.2 volumes. Original half cloth, with red morocco title-labels on spines. With 2 aquatint frontispieces, folding map of South Africa and folding plan of Cape Town and 7 aquatint plates. XX,(2),439; X,457 pp. First Dutch edition, first published in English in London in 1827 Travels and adventures in Southern Africa. - George Thompson (1796-1889), who arrived in the Cape about 1818, was a successful merchant in Cape Town. He married a Dutch woman and travelled widely in southern Africa in the early years of the 19th century. 'In 1821, Mr. Thompson made a six weeks 'excursion to Albany 'to examine into the prospects of the British emigrants' .. he visited Port Elizabeth ('then a hamlet of only three or four houses'), Uitenhage, Graham's Town, Bathurst, George, and many other districts and settlements .. In 1823 and 1824 he proceeded to the Orange River and Bechuanaland, and his account of these regions is recognised as the most important description of this part of the continent published in the early part of the nineteenth century. The third division of the work comprises a review of the condition 'of the Dutch and British inhabitants, of the agricultural, commercial, and financial circumstances of the country and of its adaption of further colonisation. .. This valuable work contains a number of excellent engravings, some of which were contributed by the naturalist Wehdemann, and others by Mr. De Meillon and Dr. Heurtley' (Mendelssohn II, p.494). ' His Travels provides valuable descriptions of the geography, history and natural history' (Howgego II, p.586). 'Both Thompson's 'Travels' and his illustrations stand high in the field of Africana' (Gordon-Brown, Pictorial Africana, p.230). The historian Theal asserted that, 'This book is one of the best that has ever been written upon South Africa' and that the author’s 'powers of observation were keen, his mind free from prejudice, and his style of writing was clear'.- Some waterstaining otherwise a fine copy.Cat. NHSM I, p.209; SAB IV, p.490; not in Tiele and Mendelssohn.