Borta är bra, men hemma är bast. Berättelse om en färd till Ostindien, Nord-Amerika, Kalifornien, Sandwichs-Öarna och Australien ären 1852–1857. Af C. Ax. Egerström. I sammandrag efter under resan förda anteckningar; jemte Förf. autobiographi.
Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1859. First edition. In contemporary half leather, spine gilt. Publisher’s, green, illustrated wrappers bound into. With three illustrations (one text illustration and two on the wrappers). VI, 326 p. ges rubbed. Contemporary ownership inscription on inner pastedown. Foxing throughout. Otherwise in fine condition.
Rare Swedish travelogue about the East Indies, North America, Hawaii and Australia.
This scarce travelogue and autobiography, rich in descriptions of political, cultural and natural aspects of the visited places, was written by Carl Axel Egerström (1829–1900) the Swedish soldier, adventurer and traveller. The wood-engraved illustration on page 312 shows the bay of Sydney.
Egerström, after a failed military career in Europe arrived to Calcutta in 1852 to get enrolled to the British forces in the Burmese War. He was rejected, thus decided to travel to North America to seek his fortune in the goldfields. He arrived to Boston in early 1853, from there he sailed to San Francisco via Cape Horn. Due to his ill-luck on the fields he proceeded to Hawaii in 1855, where he made acquaintance with Abraham Fornander, the Swedish-born Hawaiian journalist, judge, and ethnologist. Egerström soon returned to California, where the rumors about the gold fields in Australia were already wide-spread. He traveled to Ballarat through Melbourne, but the luck with the gold avoided him there too. Eventually he became a part owner of a local business in the city of Dubbo, from where he returned to Sweden in 1858.
Ref.: Not in Sabin; not in Ferguson; Howes US IANA E77; Howgego, 1850–1940 (The Oceans), E3; Judd 58a
.
Price on Request