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Delegorgue, Adulphe : Adulphe Delegorgue's Travels in Southern Africa

(Durban: Killie Campbell Africana Library / Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1990 and 1997) 0869805290

ISBN 0869805290

Two volumes, each 232 x 150 mm; laminated pictorial wrappers. Volume One: Translated by Fleur Webb, introduced and indexed by Stephanie J. Alexander and Colin De B. Webb; pp. xxxii + (xii) + 359, incl. index; facsimile frontis., title page, and some preliminaries from the original French edition; map; illustrations after those in the original edition. Volume Two: Translated by Fleur Webb, introduced and annotated by Stephanie J. Alexander and Bill Guest; pp. xxxii + (ii) + 401, incl. index; facsimile frontis. from the first edition; maps; illustrations reproduced from original edition. Wrappers very slightly rubbed in first volume, with trace of spotting to edges. Very good condition. "To South Africa in 1838 came Adulphe Delegorgue, a young French naturalist with a passion for information, a keen eye and a ready wit ... and a mighty elephant gun. The first volume of his famous Travels describes his brief journeyings in the Cape Colony and the early part of his several years of hunting and specimen-collecting in Natal and Zululand. (Volume 2 ... includes travels across the Limpopo River.) Fleur Webb's lively translation allows English readers, for the first time, to enjoy Delegorgue's ebullience, and to see through his eyes the Port Natal settlement, Trekker life, and the pomp and pageantry of Mpande's court. An especial pleasure is his account of the plants and animals of Natal and Zululand, still fresh and unspoiled by pollution and destructive exploitation. ... No other tale of hunting and adventure, no other account of Boers and Zulus, no other chronicle of travels in nineteenth century southern Africa offers the reader such a rich blend of history, biology, Gallic charm - and vigorous entertainment."

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