Lot 26. DELANO, Amasa.

Important for the information contained on the Bligh mutineers. Covering the period 1790 to 1810, Delano’s voyages took him to the islands of Galapagos, Hawaii and Pitcairn, also to Manila, Canton, Macao, the East Indies, Australia and South America. His experience with a slave ship off the coast of Chile in 1799 (chapter 18), is the main source for Herman Melville’s novella, Benito Cereno. The most celebrated section of the book is that cocerning Bligh, the Bounty, and the Pitcairn Islands. Whilst in Timor, Delano transcribed a manuscript account by Captain Edwards on the cruise of the Pandora, and he gives Bligh’s account with observations based on his own experiences. He also reprints material from the Quarterly Review announcing the discovery of the mutineers, and reproduces Carteret’s map with an account of that voyage.

8vo (208 x 120mm.), 598pp., 2 engraved plates, folding chart of Pitcairn, plate list/errata leaf at end, rather spotted and browned throughout, lacks front free endpaper, contemporary tree calf gilt.

[Ferguson 673; Forbes, I, 463; Hill (2004) 463; Sabin 19349.]