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Wallis, J. P. R. (editor) : The Northern Goldfields Diaries of Thomas Baines

(London: Chatto & Windus, 1946)

The Government Archives of Southern Rhodesia Oppenheimer Series, Number Three, consisting of three volumes: Volume One (First Journey 1869-1870), Volume Two (First Journey 1870-1871), Volume Three (Second Journey 1871-1872). Three royal 8vo volumes; original red buckram, lettered in gilt on spine and with gilt Rhodesia crest to upper cover, the second and third volumes with original dustwrappers; top edges gilt; pp. xxxviii + 278, viii + [279-598], viii + [599-855, incl. index]; several monochrome and colour plates; some illustrations in text; two folding maps in the first volume, one folding map in the second, and a further two maps in the third, one of which is folding. Dustwrappers a little sunned and somewhat edgeworn, with tape repairs to reverse; scuff to lower panel of one dustwrapper; fore-corners slightly bumped in first and second volumes; occasional fox spot. Very good condition. "The best of him is in his voluminous diaries, of which the section relating to his journeyings in Lobengula's dominions is here for the first time printed. It shows him one of those sober Englishmen that East Anglia breeds, quiet, competent, self-reliant and friendly, who enjoy doing things for the doing's sake and are content to let the rest go by. ... It is well to remember what this meant in physical effort, when after toilsome days and seeing everything in his camp securely ordered, he would withdraw within himself and by candle or fire light, take his private pleasure in recounting the day's doings, uninterrupted by the callow quizzings of his young subordinates or the crude puzzlement of his hunter-friends. Often he wrote till past midnight, though aware that before sunrise he must be up and about, seeing to an early start in the morning coolness. Through the day he carried with him a cheap little pocket-book, with a hard pencil, to enter brief memoranda for later expansion, or, on occasion, when the native boy who carried his sketch-book lagged too far behind, to make a thumb-nail drawing of some beast killed, or record the markings or gait of zebra or elephant: anything in short that appealed to his indefatigably curious mind. And always he shows his competence, in a prose style easy and attractive to read and amplified by swift but always illuminating and often engaging insets, which have been here reproduced as typically Bainesian in their ready promptness and illustrative point."

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