Voyage au Cap de Bonne-Esperance, et autour du Monde avec le Capitaine Cook, et principalement dans les pays des Hottentots et des Caffres. Traduit par M. Le Tourneur.?

First French edition published simultaneously with the octavo edition (more common), by the same publisher. Illustrated with a folding frontispiece, a large folding map of the Cape and 15 plates, some folding. All plates have been bound at the end of volumes I and II.

Contemporary full speckled brown sheep binding. Decorated spine with raised bands. Red morocco title label, black morocco volume labels. Double blind fillet to boards. Lacks to joints at head of volume I. Upper joint narrowly split at head and tail of tome I. In tome II upper joint rubbed. Corners restored with leather strips. At the end of the second volume, some leaves browned, otherwise scattered light foxing. Plate 2 of tome 2 poorly folded. Some plates are erroneously captioned tome 3, which would suggest that the octavo edition preceded the quarto edition, the latter being longer to produce.

Swedish naturalist, Sparrman was appointed as scientist for a voyage to the Cape and received the support of Linnaeus. He went there in 1772. Captain Cook, who was stopping at the Cape, proposed that he join him for his voyage around the world, which he undertook by the east. He did not return to the Cape until three years later, in 1775. There, while practicing medicine and surgery, he studied the fauna and flora, made several expeditions into the interior of Africa, while amassing a formidable naturalist collection which he brought back to his country at the end of 1776. The whole work is very rich in description and Sparrman's prose is simple and clear, without affectation. The circumnavigation occupies 2/3 of volume 1. The remainder being devoted to Africa and the Cape, to numerous naturalist observations, to the populations and their customs, but also to the way Europeans live in these regions (Dutch, Germans...).