Voyage in Search of La Pérouse [with] Atlas Pour Servir à la Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse

Author: Jacques-Julien Houtou de La Billardière (1755-1834)

Year: 1800

Publisher: Printed for John Stockdale and Chez H.J. Jansen

Place: London and Paris

Description:

3 volumes. Comprises: Voyage in Search of La Pérouse. 2 volumes. xxxii+33-487 pages with ; [3]-344+105+[6 ad] pages with 45 engraved plates, folding map. Octavio (8¼ x 5¼"), rebound in modern gilt-ruled full calf, spine tooled in gilt, morocco lettering pieces, marbled endpapers in non-pareil pattern. First English Octavo Edition. With Atlas Pour Servir à la Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse, Fait par Ordre de l'Assemblée Constituante, Pendant les années 1791, 1792, et pendant la 1ere et 2eme annee de la République Française. 43 engraved maps and plates, including the large folding chart. Folio (22¼ x 15¾"), bound in quarter pebble cloth over marbled boards.

After a good education at the college in his hometown, La Billardière studied medicine in Montpellier, where he attended botany courses at Goüan and Reims and obtained his doctorate in medicine in Paris in 1780. He turned to natural history and, "From this time on, his life was nothing more than an almost uninterrupted series of travels or research into botany. In 1791, the Constituent Assembly decreed that an expedition would be made to search for La Pérouse's expedition to Oceania .

Placed under the orders of Bruny d'Entrecasteaux and Huon de Kermadec , this mission, charged with attempting to find the ships La Boussole and L'Astrolabe , was composed of the flutes La Recherche and L'Espérance , manned by two hundred and nineteen people: La Billardière obtained permission to be part of it.

Labillardière's 'Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de La Pérouse' [1800] is a personal account of an attempt to solve a mystery which began in March 1788. After a five week sojournfollowing up on James Cook's discoveries, investigating reports of a new British colony and undertaking scientific work the French explorer Jean-François Galaup de La Pérouse sailed out of Botany Bay, New South Wales, and was never seen again by Europeans.

His disappearance was a matter of great national concern in France. Just before mounting the scaffold of the guillotine, Louis XVI is said to have asked 'Is there any news of M. de La Pérouse?' In 1791, when the French National Assembly decided to send a rescue expedition, probably the first humanitarian mission on a global scale in world history, Admiral Antoine Raymond Joseph Bruny d'Entrecasteaux was chosen as the commander of its two ships: Recherche and Ésperance. We know that La Pérouse's expedition was wrecked off Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. Although d'Entrecasteaux sailed very close to Vanikoro, he failed to discover the fate of La Pérouse and ultimately perished during the voyage.

Nevertheless, his expedition made a number of significant geographical discoveries. In Tasmania these discoveries included Recherche Bay, the D'Entrecasteaux Channel and the estuaries of the Huon and Derwent Rivers. In Western Australia, d'Entrecasteaux discovered Esperance Bay and surveyed the Archipelago of the Recherche. He also discovered islands in the d'Entrecasteaux group off New Guinea and named and surveyed the Huon Peninsula. His expedition was of considerable significance in the history of geophysics, for it returned with the first survey of global magnetic intensity, proving that it strengthens away from the equator to both north and south.

Condition: Atlas volume with some wear and tears, with chips to spine. Some staining to pictures. Octavo volumes rebound in modern leather with gilt edges to covers and red and black label to spine in gilt lettering. with decorative lacing to spine. Some occasional staining and toning to text and plates else a good to very good set.