First edition of this great book. Admiral Phillip Parker King, Australian-born son of the third governor Philip Gidley King, became the British navy's leading hydrographer. His arduous Australian coastal voyages, made over the course of several years on the Mermaid and Bathurst, made an enormous contribution to the mapping of Australia, most importantly in the Great Barrier Reef and right across the north coast to the west. His detailed hydrographical work is still the basis of many of the modern charts for the areas he surveyed.

First edition of this great book. Admiral Phillip Parker King, Australian-born son of the third governor Philip Gidley King, became the British navy's leading hydrographer. His arduous Australian coastal voyages, made over the course of several years on the Mermaid and Bathurst, made an enormous contribution to the mapping of Australia, most importantly in the Great Barrier Reef and right across the north coast to the west. His detailed hydrographical work is still the basis of many of the modern charts for the areas he surveyed.

In the years after Waterloo, British interest in the largely uncharted northern and north-western coast of Australia had increased, partly out of concern at the territorial ambitions of other nations, most conspicuously the French expedition commanded by Freycinet. King therefore sailed from England in 1817, most unusually as the passenger on a transport ship, accompanied only by his wife and two junior officers. Without doubt the most remarkable part of King's achievement was to complete a series of such remarkable and successful voyages with crews he fitted out from sailors living and working in Sydney.

The naturalist Allan Cunningham sailed with King, and the narrative includes comments on botanical and geological phenomena with nautical and hydrographic observations. The engraved views were taken from King's own sketches.

This excellent uncut copy is an example of the regular issue (a few copies survive with an 1826 date on the title-pages, without any other points of difference: they may represent survivors of a presentation issue of some kind).