Beschreibung:

BOUGAINVILLE, Louis Antoine de, comte. A Voyage round the World... In the Years 1766, 1767, 1768, and 1769. Translated from the French by John Reinhold Forster. London: Printed for J. Nourse and T. Davies, 1771. 4° (275 x 230mm). Folding engraved frontispiece chart and 4 further folding maps and charts, one folding plate. Contemporary straight-grained green morocco, covers and spines gilt-ruled, inner gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, (spine restored and laid down retaining original endpapers, a few leaves lightly spotted). Provenance : Lord Derby (armorial bookplate, inscribed, with shelf mark, on endpaper verso.) A FINE COPY OF THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of France's First Official Circumnavigation. Although the voyage made only a few important discoveries in the Pacific, it stirred French commercial interest in the region, resulting in the voyages of du Fresne and La Perouse. It also confirmed Jacques Rousseau's concept of the 'noble savage' and inspired Diderot to denounce European contact with indigenous peoples. En route to Cape Horn and the Pacific, Bougainville called at the Falkland Islands to hand them over formally to Spain in 1767. His passage through the Straits of Magellan is especially detailed with new charts, and the appended Tahitian vocabulary is the first European printing of a Polynesian language. The translation was, in fact, made by Georg Forster, son of Johann Reinhold, both naturalists on Cook's second voyage. Hill, p. 32.