VOYAGE DE DÉCOUVERTES, A L'OCEAN PACIFIQUE DU NORD, ET AUTOUR DU MONDE, DANS LEQUEL LA CÔTE NORD-OUEST DE L'AMÉRIQUE...

Paris: De l'Imprimerie de la Republique, [ 1800].. Three text volumes plus atlas. Text volumes: [2],xi,[1],491pp. plus seven plates; [6],516pp. plus five plates (including one map); [6],562pp. plus six plates. Atlas: [4]pp. plus sixteen charts (many double-sheet). Folio text volumes: Handsome contemporary half speckled calf and boards, raised bands, leather label. Small old private library stamps on titlepages and bottom edges, else beautiful and crisp. Very good. Folio atlas: Bound to style in matching speckled calf and boards. Neat marginal tissue repairs to a few maps, small old private library stamp on titlepage and following leaf of contents. A very nice set. Vancouver, who served as a midshipman on the voyages of Cook, was placed in command of an expedition to the Northwest Coast to determine England's rights under the Nootka Sound convention of 1790. The ships of the expedition reached the Northwest Coast in 1792 and spent two years surveying the coastline, resulting in the most precise maps of the Northwest made up to that time or for many years thereafter. Vancouver remained on the coast until 1794 and returned to England in 1795. He spent the rest of his life preparing his material for publication, although he did not live to see it, dying in 1798 at the age of forty.

This French edition followed hard on the heels of the English, and as an example of book production it is vastly superior in every way, printed on much better paper and with the maps better executed. This is best represented in the atlas, whose sixteen huge charts supplied the world with most of what it knew about the Northwest Coast. A beautiful and very important work. HILL 1753 (ref). LADA-MOCARSKI 55. SABIN 98441. TWENEY 89, 78 (ref). COWAN, p.655. WAGNER NORTHWEST COAST I, pp.239-50. HOWES V23, "b." FORBES 324.