Item #106145 Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, undertaken by Order of the British Government in the Years 1817-18. John OXLEY.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, undertaken by Order of the British Government in the Years 1817-18
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, undertaken by Order of the British Government in the Years 1817-18
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, undertaken by Order of the British Government in the Years 1817-18

Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, undertaken by Order of the British Government in the Years 1817-18

London, John Murray, 1820.

Quarto, xvi, 408 pages plus a folding engraved plate, 5 aquatints (2 hand-coloured), 3 folding charts and 2 folding tables.

Early half polished calf and marbled papered boards (with the stamp of 'Cross, Binders to the King'); spine gilt in compartments, with matching morocco title-label; marbled edges; slight wear to the extremities and marbled sides; light scattered foxing (as usual), a little heavier on the folding maps, plates and adjacent leaves; trifling signs of handling; a very good copy.

A lavish and important record of Oxley's expeditions to chart the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, considered to be 'the foundation work in the field of Australian inland exploration and the first detailed description of the interior of New South Wales' (Wantrup: 'Australian Rare Books'). The aquatint plates comprise views after drawings by Oxley's second-in-command, explorer and surveyor George Evans, and a striking portrait of 'A Native Chief of Bathurst' from a drawing by John William Lewin, the fledgling colony's first professional artist. Ferguson 796; Wantrup 107.

Item #106145

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