Voyage au Cap de Bonne-Espérance, et autour du monde avec le capitaine Cook. et principalement dans les pays des Hottentots et des Caffres. 3 vols. - [FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION]

Paris, Buisson, 1787. 8vo. Uniformly bound in three nice full mottled calf bindings with five raised bands and richly gilt. Boards with triple gilt ruled fillets and edges of boards with single line ruled fillets. All edges coloured in red. Ex-libris (Fortis ut Samson) pasted on to verso of front boards. Spines and edges of boards with light wear, otherwise a very nice and clean set. XXXII, 389 pp. + 1 double-page frontispiece, 1 folded map and 2 folded plates (4), 366, (1) pp. + 7 folded plates. (4), 366, (6) pp. + 6 folded plates.

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First French translation (published simultaneously a two-volume 4to-edition with identical plates) of Sparrman’s celebrated travel account, described as the “most trustworthy account of the Cape Colony and the various races of people then residing in it” (Mendelssohn II, 414-15) published in the eighteenth century. The work ranks among the most important investigations of South African fauna in the latter half of the 1700s and is a cornerstone of Enlightenment travel and natural history literature. Sparrman (1748–1820), a Swedish naturalist and pupil of Linnaeus, sailed for the Cape of Good Hope in January 1772 to take up a position as tutor. When James Cook arrived later that year at the outset of his second voyage, Sparrman joined the expedition as assistant naturalist to Johann Reinhold and Georg Forster. Following the circumnavigation, he returned to Cape Town in July 1775, where he practised medicine to finance further travels into the South African interior. His narrative combines first-hand ethnographic observations - particularly of the Khoikhoi and Xhosa peoples - with detailed zoological and botanical descriptions, substantially advancing European knowledge of the region’s natural history. A fundamental source for Cook’s second voyage and for eighteenth-century South African studies. Brunet V, 474. Graesse VI, 459. Bibliotheca Polynesiana 1224.