PBA Galleries

2 volumes. xii, 443; viii, 478 pp. Wood-engraved frontispieces; added engraved title-pages; folding map with some hand-coloring. (8vo) bound in later polished calf with gilt borders, spines with raised bands, gilt-tooled compartments, gilt-lettered spine labels. First Edition.

An attractively bound set. Vivid descriptions of Burton's travels and observations throughout Brazil in diary form, with much on the gold mines worked by English companies.  Penzer pp. 78-80.

Posted as Consul at Santos, Sao Paulo's port, in 1865, Burton sailed to Rio de Janeiro before traveling into the interior and down the Sao Francisco by raft. Lady Burton herself saw the work through publication, writing a revealing preface in which she gives vent to her personal feelings regarding her husband's views on religion and polygamy, begging the "fair or gentle reader" to bear in mind that her husband is writing ''from a high moral pedestal."