Encounters with Maqoma and Livingstone
METHUEN, Henry Hoare.
Life in the wilderness; or wanderings in South Africa ... London, Richard Bentley, 1846.
8vo, pp. xii, [2], 318; with tinted lithograph frontispiece, 2 plates, and 14 woodcuts in text; light foxing to frontispiece and title, some foxing and browning to plates; overall very good in contemporary half green calf over marbled boards, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco lettering-piece; spine slightly sunned, a little rubbing to extremities; ink inscription of ‘Agnes M. Wetenhall’ at head of title with small inked crest.
First edition. ‘A journal of an eight months’ sporting expedition through the Eastern Province to the Orange and Vaal Rivers, Waterboer’s country (Griqualand West), and thence in a north-easterly direction to the junction of the Mariqua and Limpopo Rivers as far as Moselekatse’s old capital, in what was afterwards known as the Transvaal ... The travellers obtained much information from the missionaries respecting the country and the natives, and many valuable botanical and geological notes will be found in the work ... and there are a number of well-drawn illustrations of the heads and horns of various species of antelopes’ (Mendelssohn). Along the way Metheun met an intoxicated Maqoma (the renowned Xhosa warrior) as well as David Livingstone, who was suffering from an encounter with a lion.
Abbey, Travel 338; Czech p. 114; Mendelssohn II p. 6