Correspondence from South Africa to Cambridge, 1907-1910 Digital

This series contains a disbound volume of mostly numbered letters from Solon Irving Bailey to Harvard College Observatory director Edward Charles Pickering. The correspondence, which Bailey describes in his first letter as “my official correspondence to you on this South African trip,” is mostly written from Hanover, Cape Colony, South Africa, and describes his trip to and around South Africa, his general observations of the area, as well as meteorological conditions.

It also includes incoming correspondence to Bailey and Pickering from a variety of correspondents, including climatologist Robert DeCourcy Ward, Scottish astronomer Robert T.A. Innes, and French-South African astronomer Reverend Father Edmund Goetz. These letters mostly relate to Harvard's efforts to establish the observatory in South Africa, such as customs and immigration issues, government permissions, and other bureaucratic considerations. Also contains the volume's original binding.