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Description

The Earliest Obtainable Map of Honolulu

Exceedingly rare plan of Honolulu Bay, the earliest obtainable map of Honolulu based upon actual surveys.

This finely executed map is based upon the surveys taken by Louis-Isidore Duperrey, who participated in the Louis de Freycinet's second circumnavigation. In 1817, Freycinet set sail on his second major voyage on the Uranie, in which Louis Isidore Duperrey, Jacques Arago, Adrien Taunay the Younger, and others, went to Rio de Janeiro to take a series of pendulum measurements. As well, was a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. The voyage lasted for 3 years, visiting Australia, the Mariana Islands, Hawaiian and other Pacific islands, South America and other places, and notwithstanding, the loss of the Uranie on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage. They returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings of the countries visited.

The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet's supervision in monumental work of 17 volumes, with the title of Voyage autour du monde fait par ordre du Roi sur les corvettes de S. M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, consisting of 13 quarto volumes and 4 folio volumes of plates and maps.

Prior to the Duperrey chart, the Russian explorers Otto Van Kotezebue (1816), and Vasili Golovnin (1818), had created charts of the harbor, which are essentially unobtainable to collectors.

Rarity

The map is rare on the market.