Description

This four-volume collection was issued by the Paris publisher Furne in the mid-nineteenth century to showcase the work of recent French explorers for a readership avid for accounts of exotic foreign lands. Volume 3 is an updated version of an 1841 publication by the influential French palaeontologist Alcide d'Orbigny (1802-57), who between 1826 and 1833 travelled around South America collecting natural history specimens for the Paris Museum. The scientific publications resulting from this fieldwork were greatly admired by Charles Darwin. This lightly fictionalised account of d'Orbigny's travels, illustrated with engravings, was supplemented by information on North America derived from other sources. It went through several editions; this posthumous 1859 printing was further expanded by Alfred Jacobs (1827-62). It begins by describing the Caribbean, focuses in detail on South America, and continues with accounts of the history, landscapes and peoples of Mexico, the United States, Canada, Greenland and Iceland.