Travels Round the World, in the Years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771

xvi+437 pages. Octavo 8" x 5 1/4") bound in original full leather with black and red labels to spine, lettered in gilt housed in a custom enclosure. (Howes P13) First Dublin edition. A British edition of the same year was published in two volumes with a third added later.

Pierre Marie François de Pagès, French naval officer, world traveler, and writer, was born of a noble family in Toulouse in 1748. Following the settlement of the Seven Years' War and the relaxed French-Spanish rivalry in North America, Pagès crossed Texas on the first lap of a journey around the world. Leaving his naval vessel at Santo Domingo on June 30, 1767, he sailed to New Orleans, traveled by the Mississippi and Red rivers to Natchitoches, then across Texas and into Mexico by way of the Old San Antonio Road. He returned to France by way of the Far East and then wrote an account of his adventure.

The English translation of his book, Travels Round the World, in the Years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771 (1791), is perhaps the oldest description of Texas in an English-language book. Pagès later became a captain in the French navy, received the Croix de St. Louis, and became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences. He accompanied an expedition toward the South Pole in 1773–74 and one toward the North Pole in 1776. After fighting with the French navy in the American Revolution, he retired to a plantation in what is now Haiti, where he was killed in a slave uprising in 1793.

Condition:

Corners bumped and rubbed, exterior head hinges cracked, two old book labels to front paste down, staining to front end papers, first signature loose, some scuffing to leather else a good copy.