Pacific Voyages.- La Perouse (Jean Francois Galaup de) Voyage de La Perouse autour du Monde, 5 vol. (including Atlas), mixed set, 4 text vol. first edition with engraved portrait frontispiece to vol.1, half-titles, final blank leaf present at end of vol.4, occasional foxing, a lovely set in contemporary mottled calf, gilt, spines gilt with double red morocco labels, some spine ends repaired, Atlas from the 1798 English edition but complete with engraved portrait, title and 68 plates and maps, some double-page, first few plates stained to inner margin, just affecting images, most plates foxed, some heavily, modern sheep-backed marbled boards, 4to and folio, Paris, 1797 and London, 1798.
⁂ One of the most important of the 18th century Pacific voyages of exploration. La Perouse was charged by the French government with completing the work of Cook and Clarke in finding a north-west passage as well as further exploration of the north-west coast of America, the northeast coast of Asia, the China and Japan seas and Australia. He twice sent back home all the journals, notes, maps and records of the expedition - in September 1787 from Petropavlovsk and again when he arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788. He wrote his final letter to the French Ministry in February 1788 but then nothing more was heard from either his ship La Boussole or the accompanying L'Astrolabe. Wreckage from the ships was only found in 1826 by Capt. Peter Dillon on the Vanikoro reefs, north of the New Hebrides.