[Rarebooks] fa: EXPLORATION OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZON - Herndon & Gibbon - 3 vols./Plates & Maps 1854

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 14. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y5h3jodx

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Lewis Herndon and Lardner Gibbon: Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, made under direction of the Navy Department. Washington: Robert Armstrong, Public Printer, 1854. First edition, House of Representatives issue. Three volumes, including the maps volume, 8vo (23 cm) in original plum-colored cloth blind-stamped on the front covers: 'House Document.' With 5 folding maps and charts, 52 lithograph plates (some tinted), and numerous in-text woodcuts (complete). Sabin 31524.

Spines sunned with wear to the crowns; leaves with scattered spotting and occasional browning; corner of one leaf in vol. I torn away affecting a few letters of the text; gutter of vol. II cracked at the midpoint but secure; ownership stamps of Herbert R. Harvey; else clean and sound. The maps in very good condition: a few short closed tears and unobtrusive repairs to the versos, some mild toning at the folds, but generally quite clean and fresh. (The maps volume contains the three folding maps associated with Herndon's expedition, described in vol. I; the maps associated with Gibbon's expedition are bound into vol. II.) With the bookplates of the Steve Fossett Collection of Adventure & Exploration. Fossett (1944-2007), avid bibliophile, adventurer, record-holding sailor, aviator and aeronaut, was the first person to complete a solo nonstop circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon.

A very good example of this narrative of a transcontinental journey of exploration from Lima, Peru, to Pará, Brazil. Both explorers setting off from Lima, Herndon crossed Peru and the Andes and descended the upper Amazon, while Gibbon approached the Amazon through its tributaries in Bolivia. The two reunited in Serpa, Brazil, and continued down the Amazon to the Atlantic. The two accounts contain 'minute, accurate, and very interesting accounts of the aborigines of the Andes, and the Amazon and its tributaries' (Sabin).