Twelve views in the interior of Guiana: from drawings executed by Mr. Charles Bentley, after sketches during the expedition carried on in the years 1835 to 1839

Schomburgk, Robert H., Esq.; Bentley, Charles

1841. London. Ackermann and co. In folio (518 x 355 mm). 5 ff. [including frontispiece], 38, map, 12 plates. Near contemporary olive morocco gilt, boards with pebbled cloth sides, gilt fillets in neo-classical style, spine lettered and tooled in gilt, a little rubbed, restored. A very clean and bright copy, with scattered foxing spots, generally excellent.

First edition. A monumental work on Guiana and the North of Brazil, illustrated with 12 large coloured lithographed plates by George Barnard, Coke Smith and P. Gauci after Bentley and a lithographed title by M. Gauci after Bentley –who took them from James Morrison, the expedition draughtsman. “This album is quite rare” (Borba de Moraes). Shomburgk (1804 – 1865), British explorer and protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, on his return, was awarded the RGS Gold Medal for his scientific work, mainly the sending of the Victoria Regia waterlily –today known as Victoria Amazonica- to England. He also suggested a border between Venezuela and Guiana and laid down a division, later named after him “Schomburgk line”; eventually the British government used his explorations “as arguments in the boundary dispute with Brazil”, which he recommended by his encounters with Brazilian enslavement of local Indian tribes.

 

The plates are, amongst others: a map Guyana, additional title featuring the giant Victoria Regia waterlily, the Comuti or Taquiare Rock, River Essequibo, Ataraipu or the Devils Rock, Pirara and Lake Amucu, Roraima, Esmeralda on the Orinoco, Brazilian Fort of St Gabriel, Christmas Cataract, Watu Ticaba, Junction of the Kundanama with the Paramu, and Caribi Village. The Esmeralda and Ataraipu plates are arguably some of the most beautiful iconographic renderings of the region.

 

Provenance: Bruce Marshall Rare Books, UK.

 

Abbey, Travel, 720. Borba de Moraes, 782. Sabin, 77796.

1841

$8,500.00