[1853] The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa

Description

Colour Plates, First Edition, Illustrated, Leather Binding

Bound without the title page. Publishing information and date taken from the plates.

The first edition.

Illustrated with four chromolithographs, one monochrome plate, and four in-text engravings. Folding map is torn with only one panel remaining. 

Francis Galton's brilliant travel account of this time spent exploring the Tropics of South Africa. 

At the time of this expedition South West Africa was still little explored, with his vivid account filling in the gaps of knowledge relating to the areas between the Cape Colony and the western Portuguese settlements, and towards Lake Ngami. Galton travelled in a party of nearly forty men.

Galton was a noted polymath, a proponent on social Darwinism, of whom he was a half-cousin, and a supporter of eugenics.