PBA Galleries

xii, 384, xl pp. With 20 plates including portrait frontispiece, 6 folding copper-engraved charts, and 13 copper-engraved plates. (4to) 32x25 cm (12¾x10"), original paper-backed boards, spine lettered by hand, custom morocco-backed box. First Edition.

Beautiful copy, uncut in the original boards. Following reports of the lucrative fur trade on the northwest coast of America, the King George's Sound Company was formed in London in May, 1785, purchasing two ships, renamed the King George and Queen Charlotte. Portlock commanded the former and was in overall command of the expedition, and George Dixon commanded the latter. After visiting the Falkland Islands and making a long stay at Hawaii, the ships proceeded to America and surveyed the coast, noted by Hill as "the most important result of the voyage... Portlock was a veteran of Captain Cook's third voyage to the Pacific. His vivid descriptions of encounters with the American Indians and the Russians serve to broaden the perspective provided by William Beresford's and Dixon's narrative...." Lada-Mocarski calls the work "an early and important original source material, with many illustrations which enhance its value." Forbes 177; Hill, Pacific Voyages, p.239; New Hill 1376; Howes P497; Lada-Mocarski 42; Sabin 64389; Wagner Northwest Coast 738-43.  Provenance: Hector Macdonald Buchanan of Ross Priory, Scotland, manuscript ex libris, signed and dated 1817 on preliminary blank. Sir Walter Scott was a close friend of Buchanan and a frequent visitor to Ross Priory.