SEVEN YEARS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Travels, Researches and Hunting Adventures between the Diamond Fields and the Zambesi (1872-79), translated by Ellen E. Frewer.

2 volumes, 426 + 479 pages, 8vo (228 x 152 mm), frontispiece in each volumes (volume 1 a portrait of the author), large folding map, numerous engraved plates and illustrations in the text, original pictorial brown cloth gilt – volume 2 has been recased with new endpapers added and the corners repaired, a library label has been removed from the front cover of each volume leaving slight residue, contents good.

Holub describes his first three expeditions to the remoter regions of southern Africa in the 1870's.
Emil Holub's compelling ambition was to follow in the footsteps of Dr Livingstone and, specifically, to reach Luanda by way of the Zambesi valley and across Angola. That he failed in his principle objective does not diminish his stature as a traveller-explorer nor, indeed, the fascination which modern readers will derive from his meticulous accounts of the journeys, the third of which took him to the upper reaches of the Zambesi River.
Holub was eminently qualified to undertake travel in the Africa of his day. He was a doctor of medicine, a zoologist, a botanist, a hunter and taxidermist, an artist and cartographer, an avid collector of specimens and, above all, a keen observer. Where Livingstone broke new ground Holub followed to consolidate, to record, to add detail to the broad canvas painted by his eminent predecessor.' Editor's note to the reprint edition, Johannesburg, 1975.