Lot 82: HUNTER, John (1737-1821). An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, with the discoveries which have been made in New South Wales and in the Southern Ocean since the publication of Phillip's Voyage, compiled

HUNTER, John (1737-1821). An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, with the discoveries which have been made in New South Wales and in the Southern Ocean since the publication of Phillip's Voyage, compiled from the official papers. London: John Stockdale, January 1 1793.

4° (292 x 224mm). Engraved frontispiece portrait after R. Dighton, engraved title with vignette, 5 maps, 2 folding, and 10 plates, most after the author. (Map of NSW torn along fold, some browning to maps and plates, upper text margins a little browned.) Contemporary mottled calf, marbled endpapers (rebacked, old spine relaid).

FIRST QUARTO EDITION OF HUNTER'S FIRST FLEET JOURNAL, with folding maps of New South Wales and Botany Bay after William Dawes and Hunter respectively, plates which include the earliest published view of Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, a view of Rose Hill, and 'A Family of New South Wales' engraved by William Blake after Governor King. The three plates of shells from New South Wales, appearing at the end, are by and after P. Mazell. Hunter sailed to Port Jackson with Arthur Phillip in 1788, receiving command of the Sirius in mid voyage. As food was running low, he sailed from Port Jackson to Cape Town in October, resupplying and making a record six-month circumnavigation eastward which brought him back to Australia by May 1789. He returned to England in 1792 and published his journal. In 1795 he succeeded Phillip as Governor of New South Wales. His descriptions of Norfolk and Tench Islands, the Isle of Pines and other small islands off Australia are of particular value. Norfolk Island is covered in detail as Hunter and his crew were marooned there for eleven months after the wreck of the Sirius in March 1790. Ferguson 152; Hill 857: 'a very valuable work on the early history of the English settlements in Australia'; Howgego H-124.

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