Captain James Cook, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean: undertaken, by the command of His Majesty, for making discoveries in the northern hemisphere, to determine the position and extent of the west side of North America, its distance from Asia, and the practicability of a northern passage to Europe. 3 vols. and atlas. London: Printed by W. and A. Strahan, for G. Nicol, & T. Cadell, 1784.
Captain Cook's 'Third Voyage' [1st ed.].
Preceded by earlier accounts of the voyage (Rickman, 1781; Ledyard, 1783), this work draws fully from Cook's own journal for his third and final Pacific expedition (1776-1779), which intended to search for a northwest or northeast passage from the North Pacific. Ice repeatedly blocked Cook's attempts to press north of the Bering Strait, but the expedition gathered important cartographic, ethnographic and biological data about the northwest coast of North America (especially Alaska), Siberia, and the Hawaiian Islands, where Cook met his death. The book is especially important for its illustrations, based on original drawings made by expedition artists John Webber and William Ellis.
Gift: Donald Baxter MacMillan.