Details

[WILSON, William Et Al.].. A Missionary Voyage To The Southern Pacific Ocean, Performed In The Years 1796, 1797, 1798, In The Ship Duff, Commanded By Captain James Wilson, Compiled From Journals Of The Officers And The Missionaries.With A Preliminary Discourse On The Geography An

4to. pp. 6 p.l., c, 420, [12]list of subscribers. 7 engraved maps (5 folding) & 6 engraved plates. modern quarter sheep (spine rubbed, 44 mm. strip from lower blank margin of title replaced, foxing to plates & adjacent leaves, repairs to a few maps- no loss). First Edition of the first missionary voyage to the South Pacific. Most of the missionaries were settled on Tahiti, with several others landed at Tonga and the Marquesas. Troubles with the natives arose, and most of the missionaries were forced to seek refuge in Sydney, Australia, while three on Tonga were killed. The mission on Tahiti was re-established in 1815. In addition to Tahiti, Tonga, and the Marquesas, the work contains valuable accounts of the Fiji Islands, Tongatapu, the Gambier Islands, and the discovery of a new group of islands, named the 'Duff Group', among the Santa Cruz Islands. On the outward voyage, the expedition visited Rio de Janeiro, an engraved view of which is included among the plates. The work is also of Australian interest because of a passage mentioning escaped Botany Bay convicts, and the fact that some of the missionaries who fled to Australia eventually settled there and founded families important in Australian history. Another later edition with different pagination (4 p.l., c, 395, [1]blank, [12]). was published the same year. Cox II p. 307. Ferguson 301. Hill p. 184. JCB II 4063 (incomplete pagination. Kroepelien 528. O'Reilly 97 (incorrect pag.). cfSabin 49480 (different pag.).

$2000 USD