GILES, Ernest (1835-1897) - JESSOP, William Rowlestone Henry (died 1862). Flindersland and Sturtland; or, the Inside and Outside of Australia. London: Richard Bentley, 1862.

GILES, Ernest (1835-1897) - JESSOP, William Rowlestone Henry (died 1862). Flindersland and Sturtland; or, the Inside and Outside of Australia. London: Richard Bentley, 1862.

2 volumes. 8vo., (8 x 4 7/8 inches). Half-titles. Original purple cloth, each front cover decorated with a fine and large gilt stamp of a Quokka, by Edmonds & Remnants, with their ticket on the rear paste-down of the first volume (spine a little dulled, corners bumped). 

Provenance: with the 19th-century library label of J. Pythian on the front free endpaper of each volume; with the small ink library stamp of Hugh Selbourne, his sale, Bonhams, 8th March 2016, lot 261

First edition and a bright and attractive copy, principally because "In the twenty-fourth chapter of the second volume Jessop records in interesting and accurate detail an early expedition of one Ernest Giles whom the author met at Wilpena where Giles had stopped on his homeward trip from the north. This expedition, in the company of a Mr Mole, was from Adelaide to the northward in search of new pastoral land. It does not appear to be elsewhere recorded..." (Wantrup). Although Giles made no major discoveries, "he is among the more interesting Australian explorers by virtue of his journals which, although overwritten, display a fine descriptive ability and constitute a record of inner experience as well as outward observation..." (Louis Green, 'Giles, Ernest (1835–1897)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University). 

Jessop's style may also be described as 'overwritten'..."I have a mortal hatred of any old place being called new. I do not like to see a greybearded old fellow using hair-dye; hence I have a great objection to these islands being christened New. It is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant, at least a very slender one, of antiquity, and is rather repugnant to science. Consequently, I hold the Dutch in abhorrence for having nicknamed the principal part of Australasia, the largest of all islands, New Holland. A noble comparison, forsooth!—a brave christening this! A land, as dry as a bone, sandy, stony, burning hot; a wilderness, an earthly furnace; cloudless, windless, fruitless. This, according to the wise men of Dutchland, bears a strong resemblance to their own muddy, marshy, flat, damp, squashy, slushy Holland! What perversity of bodily sense could have operated in them to make so huge a blunder? They are ever slow-goes, they are more than a century behind other people, obstinate, strange, and covetous; without natural attachment for their country, which they once thought of quitting; with an inordinate hankering for what does not belong to them. Could they have been so foolish, coidd they have been so vain-glorious, so mighty fine, so perking, so blind to their own littleness, so contemptuous of others' greatness, as to suppose, to take for granted, that calling this country New Holland would make it theirs? Had they no knowledge of other people? Did they not feel that they were living of sufferance, and not of their own vigour? They should have been more respectful; a little modesty would have become them; it would have saved them from being treated with indifference" (page 20). Ferguson, 10940; Wantrup, pp. 265-7.