antiquarian rare books: travel & exploration, atlases, maps and miscellaneous
(internet) antiquarian bookshop
Bronckhorst, Netherlands
mail to Rob van der Graaf
for orders, condition reports etc
worldwide shipping!
visits by appointment only
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Hundreds of adventurous travel stories outside Europe,
by land and sea, ego documents,
most in first published edition
and in original or contemporary binding.
recent additions:
In category travel & exploration
Ellis, Ref. William
Three Visits to Madagascar During the Years 1853-1854-1856 Including a Journey to the Capital with Notices of the Natural History of the Country and of the Present Civilisation of the People
London, John Murray 1858, first edition
8vo, publisher’s cloth. xvii, (2), 470, 2 (ads) pages with folding frontispiece, map and many (in text) illustrations. Very good with some traces of use. Ex libris Edward Brown Lees of Thurland Castle.
Arriving in 1853, to investigate whether Christians were being maltreated, he was rebuffed by officials in attempting to establish a mission and refused permission to go to the capital. Establishing a temporary base in Mauritius, he again sought entry to Madagascar, but was refused. He made a third visit in 1856, but Queen Ranavalona I permitted him only a one-month stay.
€ 240
In category travel & exploration
Smith, A. Donaldson
Through unknown African countries. The first expedition from Somaliland to Lake Lamu
London and New York, Arnold 1897 first edition
8vo, publisher’s cloth. xvi, 471 pages. Photogravure portrait frontispiece, illustrations from photos and drawings; 6 maps including 5 folding. Nice copy with minor wear.
Arthur Donaldson Smith was an American physician, hunter and explorer of Africa. In the 1890s he made a geological expedition to Lake Rudolph (now Lake Turkana), passing through what was then Somaliland, southern Ethiopia and Kenya. In order to visit Ethiopia, he had to get permission from Menelik II. The trip lasted 18 months and traversed unknown territory, and Smith hunted big game, and made important natural history collections, discovering new bird, reptile and plant species.
€ 380
In category travel & exploration
Forbes, Henry O.
A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago : A Narrative of Travel and Exploration From 1878 to 1883
New York, Harper & Brothers 1885 first US edition
8vo, original gilt-pictorial cloth. xix, (1), 536, 4 ad pages, complete with a chromolithographed frontispiece, 6 (3 folding) maps and more than 70 (in text) illustrations. Some shelf wear, else very good. Scarce.
Forbes, Scottish explorer, ornithologist and botanist, travelled from Keeling Islands through Indonesia to Java, Sumatra, the Moluccas, Timor, Tanimbar Islands and New Guinea. Forbes was active primarily in the Moluccas, Sumatra and New Guinea. His unusual tasks there also included tracking down the murderers of Captain J. C. Craig on Joannet Island in his temporary capacity as a government agent.
€ 340
