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575, [1] pp. With 8 steel-engraved double-page maps hand-colored in outline; and 11 steel-engraved plates (8 are portraits including frontispiece and 3 are views), with paper-guards. 10¾x7¼, period half brown calf and green cloth, decorative gilt stamping, gilt-lettered morocco spine label, marbled endpapers and page edges. First Edition.

Scarce early history of the land down under. During the time of publication, a major gold rush was beginning and just after this book’s release, there was the Eureka Stockade rebellion, which was an early expression of nationalist sentiment. The first Australian settlements of Britain were penal colonies. New South Wales, discovered in 1770, was established as a penal colony in 1788, eighteen years after Captain Cook's arrival. Victoria (Port Philip) was colonized in 1835, and made an independent colony under its present name in 1851; South Australia was settled in 1836. By settling at Sydney the English obtained possession of the continent but for a time it was only used for convicts who were sent to Botany Bay. Ferguson 12306.

Maps include: The World on Mercator’s Projection; Eastern Hemisphere; Australia; New South Wales; Van Diemen’s Island (or Tasmania); Victoria (or Port Phillip); Part of South Australia; and Western Australia, Swan River.