Hyacinthe de Bougainville : autograph letter, signed, written from the harbour of Macao in 1825 during his circumnavigation in the “Thétis”.

A$3,750 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Signed

Manuscript in brown ink, folio, 1 page; headed Rade de Macao, ce 1er Janvier 1825 , the letter is to an unnamed recipient and concerns the Lazarist missionary, Lamiot; old vertical and horizontal folds (minor tears at the ends), roughened at top and bottom edges, else clean and complete, with red wax seals preserved. Rare, unpublished letter of Baron Hyacinthe de Bougainville (1781-1846) written at Macao aboard the corvette Thétis during its circumnavigation of 1824-26. Baron de Bougainville was the son of the navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811). Earlier on in his naval career he had taken part in the Baudin expedition to New Holland of 1800-1803. In the years 1824-26 he led a diplomatic mission to East Asia on a round the world expedition with the warships Thétis and Espérance . His ships set sail from France in March 1824 and visited Réunion, Pondicherry, Manila, Macao, Cochin-China and Soerabaia. On his return voyage across the Pacific retracing in part his father s famous circumnavigation of 1766-1769 he called in at Port Jackson for three months during 1825. Whilst in Sydney he erected monuments to La Pérouse and Receveur at Botany Bay. Bougainville s letter written at anchor off Macao concerns the Lazarist missionary Louis-François Lamiot (1767-1831), superior of the Vincentians in China. Having first arrived in Peking in 1794, for many years Lamiot had acted as court interpreter until, in 1820, he was banished from the empire owing to his association wi

• Binding: Hardcover

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