- 124
Parkinson, Sydney.
Description
- A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship The Endeavour... to which is now added, remarks on the preface by the late John Fothergill... and an appendix containing an account of the voyages of Commodore Byron, Monsieur Bougainville, Captain Wallis, Captain Cook [&c.]. London: Charles Dilly and James Phillips, 1784
- paper
Catalogue Note
A rare hand-coloured copy with wide margins of the second, enlarged, edition, with the plates printed on thick, light blue, paper. The work contains an account of Cook's first expedition and in the appendix an abridgment of Cook's narratives of his second and third voyages. There are also vocabularies of the languages of Otaheite, New Zealand, New Holland, and others.
"Parkinson was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks to accompany him and Captain Cook in the Endeavour to the South Seas, as natural history draughtsman. He made numerous drawings of botanical and other subjects, including landscapes and portraits of native chiefs. After exploring Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and the Great Barrier Reef, the expedition reached Batavia. On leaving for the Cape of Good Hope, Parkinson succumbed to fever and dysentery and was buried at sea.
This is a reissue of the 1773 edition. Dr. Fothergill, a friend of the Parkinsons, bought the remainder of that edition and enlarged it with his remarks and a four-page supplement which sought to justify in some way Stanfield Parkinson' dispute with Joseph Banks over the return of various shells and drawings... The appendix, containing other voyages, almost doubled the size of this edition, which is considered the best edition" (Hill, Pacific Voyages).