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Two volumes. Frontispiece portrait, lxxvi,246pp. plus two plates, folding table, and folding map; [4], 256 pp. plus five plates. (8vo) 23.5x14.4 cm (9¼x5¾"), original boards with printed paper spine label. Second Edition.

This is the second edition, "the best edition and only complete edition" according to Hill.  Its new, lengthy introduction adds much material of interest, and the second half of the second volume recounts for the first time in print the details of the loss to the British and events at Valparaiso in 1814.  A very important American Pacific voyage, a source for Melville's Typee, and a rare book.  For some reason copies of this book almost invariably lack some of the plates.

Porter left the U.S. aboard a frigate, The Essex, at the beginning of the War of 1812 with orders to cruise against British shipping in the Atlantic.  He exceeded his instructions by rounding Cape Horn and attacking British whalers operating off South America and in the Galapagos, then landing in the Marquesas and conducting a war against the natives and annexing the islands to the United States (the U.S. government never supported these claims).  His expedition ended off Chile in 1814 when his boat was captured by British warships.  Paroled, he returned to a hero's welcome in the U.S. and wrote this account, first published in 1815 and quickly suppressed.