Narrative of Four Journeys into the Country of the Hottentots, and Caffraria: In the Years One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Seven, Eight, and Nine

Later known as an administrator in Australia and founder of one of Tasmania's earliest settlements, William Paterson (1755–1810) was an army officer, naturalist and friend of Joseph Banks. Keenly interested in botany from childhood, in 1777 he was dispatched to Cape Colony on an expedition to collect plant specimens, many of which remain in the Natural History Museum. His accounts, published in 1789, are the observations and impressions of one of the first Europeans to venture into the sout...