Beschreibung:

Title: Nouveaux voyages aux Indes Occidentales; contenant une Relation de differens peuples qui habitent les environs du grand Fleuve Saint-Louis, appelle vulgairement le Mississipi; leur religion; leur gouvernement; leurs moeurs; leurs guerres & leur commerce. Author: Bossu, [Jean Bernard] Place: Paris Publisher: Le Jay Date: 1768 Description: 2 volumes in 1. xx, 244; 264 pp. Illustrated with 4 copper-engraved plates, including 2 frontispieces. (12mo) 17x10 cm (6¾x3¾, period calf, spine tooled, raised bands, marbled endpapers. First Edition. With the book plate of A.J. Tullock. "[A] collection of twenty-one letters written by Bossu, a French army officer, telling of his life and travels from 1751 to 1762 in the vast Louisiana country to as far north as Fort Chartres in what is now Illinois, and as far east as the French post at Mobile. Bossu wrote well and his letters not only give an interesting picture of life and travels in the Mississippi Valley and the Mobile country to the east at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century, but incorporated also are many sketches of events of the preceding years" (Streeter). "For comments, too critical of the ministry, Bossu was imprisoned and his book banned for awhile in France; this probably accounts for the scarcity of the first edition [Paris 1768], of which Sabin found no record" (Howes). Cox p. 142-143. Howes B-626. Sabin 6465. Streeter 1518 (describing first edition). Lot Amendments Condition: Boards detached, spine split down middle and lacking label, wear and soiling to boards, rubbing to extremities; browning to endpaper edges; insides in good condition with toning to margins and light foxing, all plates intact, worthy of restoration. Item number: 274148