Adventure & Exploration Library of Steve Fossett

4to (250 x 194 mm). 3 engraved plates, 20 engraved folding maps (16 folding); half-title. Mottled calf antique preserving original marbled endpapers.FIRST EDITION of the account of the "first official French circumnavigation" (Hill). Bougainville, a highly regarded officer, served as aide to the Marquis de Montcalm in Canada and was a combatant at the fall of Quebec and later Montreal. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris "ceding most of France's North American colonies to the British" then attempted unsuccessfully to establish a French colony in the Falkland Islands. At the request of the King, he undertook the first French circumnavigation of the globe, departing Nantes in November 1766 and returning to St. Malo in March 1769 (a voyage also notable for carrying the first woman on a circumnavigation: the mistress of the ship's botanist, disguised as his valet). The important engraved maps depict the route of the circumnavigation by the two vessels, the Straits of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, the Solomon Islands, the Celebes, Java, and other Pacific regions. See also lot 462. Hill 163; Sabin 6864.