Beschreibung:

ALEJANDRO MALASPINA (1754-1809) AND PEDRO DE NOVO Y COLSON (1846-1931) Viaje Político-Científico Alrededor del Mundo por las corbetas Descubierta y Atrevida al mando de los captianes de navio D. Alejandro Malaspina y Don José de Bustamente y Guerra desde 1789 á 1794. Publicado con una Introducción por Don Pedro de Novo y Colson. Madrid: Imprenta de la viuda é hijos de Abienzo, 1885. 2° (320 x 220mm). Frontispiece portrait, 6 engraved plates, folding map. (Generally browned, title and dedication leaf partly detached, some leaves fragile or brittle.) Contemporary red morocco-backed boards by Bonaventura Lech, spine titled in gilt (lightly rubbed, spine darkened). RARE ACCOUNT OF SPAIN'S GREATEST SCIENTIFIC VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH SEAS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, in the first edition, second issue, compiled from the unedited papers of Malaspina, its commander, suppressed and undisturbed in the Hydrographic Office, Madrid for nearly a hundred years. In 1789 he and Bustamente drew up plans for this scientific circumnavigation which was to rival Cook's, the purposes being to chart 'the most remote regions of America and to observe the political state of America relative to Spain'. Alexander Dalrymple assisted them with scientific instruments, a brilliant team of scientists was assembled and ships specially constructed. No detail was ignored. Surveys were made of the east and west coasts of South America, they fixed the exact position of Cape Horn, correcting Cook's reading, and mapped Staten Island, with Malaspina sailing in the Descubierta and Bustamente in the Atrevida . On receipt of orders to investigate the apocryphal Strait of Anian they sailed for Alaska and entered Yakutat Bay at the supposed latitude of the strait, where the Malaspina Glacier flows into the sea, and followed the coast to Prince William Sound and Nootka. Malaspina found no trace of it, surveyed the coast south to California at Monterey Bay and crossed the Pacific in 1791. Two of his officers and José de Espinosa y Tello returned north in search of a North-West Passage and published the charts and account of this secondary voyage in 1802 (see the following lot). In the Philippines, New Zealand and New South Wales, Malaspina continued charting before making an easterly passage around the Horn for Spain. As an anti-royalist and anti-imperialist, he was arrested and imprisoned in 1795, and the full expedition report and crates of specimens were lost in the Spanish archives until found by Novo y Colson. Malaspina had proposed that instead of plundering the nations she conquered, Spain should develop a confederation of states to establish a Pacific Rim trading bloc based in Acapulco. Stated on the title-page to be a second edition, this is, in fact, the same printing as the first edition of the same date; and it is the first complete and authoritative account of the voyage in Spanish. It may be that the first issue, printed on thick paper, was a limited edition and only for presentation. Hill 1068; Palau 195860; Hocken p. 362; Ferguson 12207.