THE NORTH PACIFIC SURVEYING AND EXPLORING EXPEDITION; OR, MY LAST CRUISE. WHERE WE WENT AND WHAT WE SAY: BEING AN ACCOUNT OF VISITS TO THE MALAY AND LOO-CHOO ISLANDS, THE COASTS OF CHINA, FORMOSA, JAPAN, KAMTSCHATKA, SIBERIA, AND MOUTH OF AMOOR RIVER.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1858.
Half Leather. First published in 1857, quite a good travel chronicle by Alexander Habersham detailing his observations while on duty as a lietenant with a US surveying and exploring expedition to the North Pacific and China Seas. With 30 plates including the frontispiece and engraved half-title with vignettes. Of note is the salacious Bathing Scene plate -- showing nude men and women with fully clothed Americans attending -- rather more suggestive than the similar plate in Perry’s Expedition. There is also a striking plate of the Execution Yard in Canton. Not a beautiful copy, in half-leather over cloth, with the leather cracking and the original spine mostly but not entirely present laid down. The text block has some rippling, but is not stained. The plates are actually quite clear and sharp.
Good binding.
Item #284354
Price: $175.00