JAMES, Thomas Horton

Six Months in South Australia; with Some Account of Port Philip [sic] and Portland Bay, in Australia Felix; with Advice to Emigrants; to which is added a Monthly Calendar of Gardening and Agriculture. Adapted to the Climate and Seasons

London, J. Cross, 1838.

Octavo, vi, [ii] (errata, verso blank), 208, [4] (Postscript), 209-296 (last page blank), [4] (publisher's advertisements) pages plus a small (one page) plan of Victor Harbor and a folding frontispiece map of the Port Lincoln district (201 × 243 mm); both maps are dated January 1839.

Later green morocco (by Sangorski & Sutcliffe); spine gilt in compartments; sides bordered in gilt; top edge gilt; paper a little tanned; scattered foxing (generally faint) and a few small marks; small chips or tears to the blank margins of a handful of leaves; two tiny tears to the map; occasional light pencil emphases and annotations; a very good copy.

The early pencilled annotations shed light on the bitter divisions in public opinion during the turbulent early years of British settlement in South Australia. One of them, initialled R.B., mentions the possibility of abolishing the system of Colonization Commissioners, suggesting that the annotator was an early settler writing prior to the South Australia Act of 1842, which established the province as a Crown colony. In the early chapters James takes the side of Governor Hindmarsh, and criticises the site chosen for the city of Adelaide and other decisions relating to land and planning taken by the Colonization Commissioners. The annotator is firmly in the other camp. Many of his notes are interjections of disagreement ('bah!' and 'psha!' are favourites); several are more substantial.

The unnumbered four-page postscript after page 208 provides a summary of Adelaide newspapers 'received up to the 14th July'; in it, mention is made of Eyre's overlanding expedition from Port Phillip to Adelaide in 1838, during which he discovered and named Lake Hindmarsh. In the lengthy appendix, James 'prints the journals of several private expeditions undertaken in the early years of settlement, including an account of Hawdon's famous overlanding expedition as well as other expeditions to Encounter Bay, Lake Alexandrina and to the River Murray' (Wantrup). The 30-page 'Manual of Gardening', almost certainly compiled by the author, is engagingly specific: 'those lofty whirlwinds, so peculiar to the Plains of Cowandilla'; 'this province must become, some day or other, a wine country', and then refers the reader to Busby; 'January is very hot, need to water night and morning'. Crittenden speaks very highly of this work: 'Part of this book contains a monthly gardening calendar. This can probably be regarded as the first gardening guide for South Australia ... [published] only three years after Shepherd's "Horticulture of New South Wales"', the first separate gardening book published in Australia.

Ferguson 2525 (not the small map or the four-page 'Postscript'); McLaren 10400 (basically copying Ferguson); Crittenden 10; Wantrup 153 (noting the 'Postscript' may not be present in every copy).

Item #139234

Price (AUD): $1,500.00
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