Voyage en Abyssinie, entrepris par ordre du gouvenerment britannique, exécuté dans les années 1809 et 1810, et dédié à Son Altesse Royale le Prince Régent d'Angleterre[A Voyage to Abyssinia, and Travels into the Interior of that Country, Executed under the Orders of the British Government, in the Years 1809 and 1810]
Rare first edition of the French translation established by P.-F. Henry. (Gay 2683.)
Some occasional light foxing.
The work also includes an oblong quarto atlas, in which map no. 6 has been bound upside down, containing 33 engraved plates and maps (1 to 32 plus 1bis) based on the author's original drawings.
The illustrations comprise 8 maps or plans and 25 plates depicting a variety of subjects: views, portraits, inscriptions, buildings, hunting scenes, animals, etc.
As is frequently the case, our copy lacks the out-of-text plate in volume 2 showing ancient inscriptions.
In 1809, Henry Salt was sent on a diplomatic mission to Abyssinia to establish trade relations with England. During this, his second journey to the region, he traveled along the eastern coast of Africa, visited Portuguese colonies, and collected extensive data on the hydrography of the coastal areas. In addition to the travel narrative, the work includes several vocabularies of African tribes ranging from Mozambique to Egypt: Makua, Monjour, Somali, Hurrur, Galla, Darfur, Amharic, Tigrinya, etc.; it also contains notes on Abyssinian birdlife and rare plants.
A handsome copy preserved in its original publisher’s wrappers, with plain covers and title labels pasted at the heads of the spines (minor marginal flaws to the plain covers, without significance).