The first edition in English of this informal narrative of the Uranie voyage, the great French expedition to Australia and the Pacific commanded by Louis de Freycinet; it is also the first appearance in English of any account of the expedition. Arago was the official artist on the voyage, and the lithograph plates here are all after his own drawings. His narrative is highly readable, not least because he entirely avoids the conventional forms of the voyage narrative, ignoring the 'eternal repetition of winds, currents, longitude and lattitude'. There is a long account (almost 100 pages) of their stay in Hawaii at a crucial period in the history of the islands.

The first edition in English of this informal narrative of the Uranie voyage, the great French expedition to Australia and the Pacific commanded by Louis de Freycinet; it is also the first appearance in English of any account of the expedition. Arago was the official artist on the voyage, and the lithograph plates here are all after his own drawings. His narrative is highly readable, not least because he entirely avoids the conventional forms of the voyage narrative, ignoring the 'eternal repetition of winds, currents, longitude and lattitude'. There is a long account (almost 100 pages) of their stay in Hawaii at a crucial period in the history of the islands.

Long portions relate to Australia, with descriptions of Sydney, the Blue Mountains, and of meetings with Governor Macquarie and John Oxley. Full of wry humour, the book takes the form of a series of letters to a friend, and it has been suggested that the letters may originally have been written to Arago's brother François, the famous scientist. Certainly it is the intimacy of their personal and anecdotal tone that makes them not only so enjoyable to read today but such a fascinating source of the more minute details of life, especially in New South Wales and Hawaii. The illustrations match the text in tone: these are not the formal depictions that characterise the beautiful atlases of the full official account of the voyage, but much more informal, always charming and in some cases quite eccentric.

Despite the clear evidence of the 'Directions for placing the Plates' present here, there has been some unnecessary confusion about the collation of this book. Ferguson omitted the map from his plate count, while Hill erroneously called for a map and 26 plates. This copy, with the map and 25 plates is complete.