La pérouse

1801 · 84360 — 1801. LA PEROUSE Jean Francois. A Voyage Round the World. Performed in the Years 1785 1786 1787 1788.TO which are added A Voyage from Manilla to California by Don Antonio Maurelle: and an Abstract of the Voyage and Discoveries of the Late Capt. G. Vancouver. Boston: Joseph Bumstead 1801 333pp. Contemporary full leather morocco spine label skillfully rebacked. Some toning throughout else very good. Hill 976. Sabin 38966. Howes L-93. Forbes 331. Shaw & Shoemaker 789. Ferguson 333. Reese Best of the West 20. Kroepelien 1331.The rare first American edition of one of the most important Pacific voyages. The La Perouse account was first published in Paris in French in 1797 and in English in 1798. This is one of the earliest Pacific voyages to appear in an American edition and published much less modestly than the French and British editions would have been the way the average American would have learned about La Perouse's important surveys of the Pacific coast and his descriptions of native Americans there. This is also the first American version although only a precis of Vancouver's voyage first published in London in 1798. The 1781 voyage of Spanish naval officer Francisco Antonio Mourelle incorrectly spelled in this edition's title went from the Philippines to the South Pacific where he explored in the vicinity of New Guinea and the Tonga Islands before sailing to Mexico. Howes is inaccurate in his pagination of this edition and the Hill copy contains a map that was added later. unknown