A voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antarctic polar circle, and round the world, but chiefly into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres from the year 1772, to 1776. Translated from the Swedish original. 2nd edition corrected.

London, G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1786.2 volumes. 4to. Contemporary diced russia, gilt, rebacked. With engraved frontispiece depicting the Cape of Good Hope, large folding engraved map of the Cape of Good Hope (marginal tears repaired) and 9 engraved plates (4 folding). XXVIII,368; VIII,356,(1) pp.First English edition: London 1785; first Swedish edition was published in Stockholm in 1783: Resa till Goda Hopps-Udden; first edition in English was published in London in 1785. - Sparrman (1748-1820), a Swedish naturalist, went to South Africa with the Swedish East India Company. He made several excursions into the country in search of natural history specimens. It is described by Mr. Theal as the 'most trustworthy account of the Cape Colony and the various races of people then residing in it' that had been published in the eightheenth century. In 1772, J.R. Forster, engaged him to accompany Captain Cook on his second voyage as assistant naturalist. His account includes mention of a hairbreath escape from collision of Cook's two ships, the Adventure and the Resolution, not recorded elsewhere. Sparrman left the Resolution when it returned to Cape Town in March 1775. He resumed his naturalist studies in South Africa and also undertook ethnological research among the region's native Hottentot people. In 1778, Sparrman was back in Sweden, where he had been appointed president of the natural history collection of Stockholm's Academy of Sciences. Sparrman's account of Cook's voyage of 1772-75 helped popularize the newly devised Linnaen system of classification and nomenclature by applying it to the new varieties of plants and animals he had collected. It also includes some of the earliest ethnological studies of the native peoples of South Africa. - (Some light foxing). Mendelssohn II p.414-15; SAB IV, p.362; Beddie 1277; Scheybeler, Paolo Bianchi Collection, 339; Du Rietz, Kroepelien, 1222: apparently the best of the editions of the English version.