DUMONT D'URVILLE, Jules Sébastien César, le Comte. Voyage au pole sud et dans l'océnie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée. Paris: Gide, 1841-46.
DUMONT D'URVILLE, Jules Sébastien César, le Comte. Voyage au pole sud et dans l'océnie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée. Paris: Gide, 1841-46.

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DUMONT D'URVILLE, Jules Sébastien César, le Comte. Voyage au pole sud et dans l'océnie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée. Paris: Gide, 1841-46.

10 text volumes in five, 8o (212 x 132 mm). Half-titles. 9 engraved folding maps. (Without the posthumously published text and atlas volumes, some pale dampstaining in third and fourth volumes.) Contemporary calf-backed boards (some light wear at extremities, pale dampstain at ends of spines on third and fourth volumes).

FIRST EDITION of the first 10 volumes of this important exploratory expedition to the Pacific and southern Polar region. The work was issued over thirteen years, from 1841[2]-1855 and is seldom found complete. These first 10 volumes comprise the official textual record of the voyage and were those published during Dumont D'Urville's lifetime. After his accidental death in 1842, the work was continued and supplemented under the supervision of M. Dumoulin, who added sections on anthropology, botany, geology, hydrography, zoology and physics.

The expedition reached the ice pack in January 1838 but failed to penetrate it. Returning eastward, the ships visited South Orkney and South Shetland Islands, discovered Joinville Island and Louis Philippe Land and proceeded to Valparaiso and Juan Fernández Island. They then sailed to Mangareva, the Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Guam, Palau and they circumnavigated Borneo. In 1840, from Tasmania, they returned to the Antarctic region where Adelie Land was discovered and an extensive visit to New Zealand was made. Ferguson 3184; Hill 508 (treating these first ten volumes as a distinct work). (5)

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