New Zealand 1826-1827 from the French of Dumont D’Urville

1950

Brasch DU419 DW27

[Wellington]: Printed by the Wingfield Press for Olive Wright

Jules Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842) was educated at home by his uncle and was a prodigious scholar with a phenomenal memory – Plutarch, Virgil, and Racine counted amongst his favourite authors. In a time of ‘long distance voyages of discovery’, d’Urville joined the Navy in 1807, and set off aboard Coquille on his first circumnavigation of the globe in 1822. Apart from his cartographic skills, he was a knowledgeable naturalist and gifted linguist, which stood him in good stead to lead his own global expedition aboard Astrolabe from 1826 to 1829. He and his crew spent a great deal of time in the South Pacific, especially New Zealand. Some of the specimens collected on this voyage are still in the Natural History Museum in Paris.