Beschreibung:

JACQUES JULIEN HOUTON DE LABILLARDIÈRE (1755-1834) Relation du Voyage a la Recherche de La Pérouse, Fait par Ordre de l'Assemblée Constituante, Pendant les années 1791, 1792, et pendant le 1ère. et la 2de. année de la République Françoise. Paris: H.J. Jansen, Imprimeur-Libraire, An VIII [i.e. 1800]. 2 text volumes, 4° (291 x 226mm) and 2° Atlas (568 x 420mm). Most gatherings printed on light-blue paper, half-titles, vocabularies for Van Diemen's Land, Tonga and New Caledonia, comparative distances, table of atlas plates. (First blank vol. II stained at outer margins.) Atlas with engraved title, double-page route map of the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean by Barbié du Bocage and 43 plates engraved by Copia after drawings by Pirón, the expedition artist, the botanical plates prepared by Redouté. (Title lightly spotted, map creased at inner margin with a short tear, lower margin with a few short tears, small marginal corner torn from 2 plates, 6 with a marginal stain, 5 stained within plate.) Contemporary French mottled calf gilt [by Courteval and uniform with the previous lot but unsigned], boards with borders of rope-and-disc design enclosed between rules, gilt board-edges, turn-ins gilt with greek-key pattern, spines gilt in compartments, gilt morocco lettering-pieces in 2, others decorated with floral tools, silk markers (some light rubbing, atlas skillfully restored at corners and spine ends). A SPLENDID SET OF THE FIRST EDITION IN CONTEMPORARY BINDINGS by one of the greatest binders of his day, uniform with the Voyage of La Pérouse. Two years after the disappearance of La Pérouse on his circumnavigation, the French government mounted a joint expedition to conduct a search and to carry out scientific and commercial investigations into the Pacific. It was commanded by Admiral Bruni d'Entrecasteaux aboard the Recherche , with Labillardière as doctor and naturalist, and Huon de Kermadec commanding the Espérance . The ships searched and surveyed the coasts of Tasmania, New Caledonia, Australia (twice circumnavigating it), and New Guinea, where, off its southwest coast, the d'Entrecasteaux Islands were discovered and named. Between Tonga and New Zealand another island group was discovered and named the Kermadecs. Although they searched through the Santa Cruz Islands southeast of the Solomons, they failed to find any trace of La Pérouse. It was only in 1820 that the remains of the Astrolabe were found on Vanikoro Reef in those same atolls. D'Entrecasteaux's death off New Guinea in 1793 combined with news received of the revolution and the war between France and Holland put an end to the expedition. Officers and crew were imprisoned by the Dutch at Surabaya, later in Batavia and ultimately on the Île de France. Labillardière managed to save his journals but the journals, maps, charts and drawings of d'Entrecasteaux were seized by a British naval ship from the Dutch ship in which they were being carried. Only through the intervention of Sir Joseph Banks did Britain relinquish them to Labillardière after his release from prison in 1796 and d'Entrecasteaux's account was not published for another eight years. Ferguson 307; Hill 954; Sabin 38420. (3)