1 page Autograph Letter, signed, in French. Approx. 10¼x8". Lithograph portrait from a 19th century publication included.

To an official of the French Asiatic society, presenting one advance volume of what was to be a five-volume narrative of his three-year voyage of exploration to the South Pacific. Ten years before French Naval officer Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) led an historic expedition to Antarctica, he had already twice circumnavigated the world on long voyages of exploration to the South Seas, taking his vessel to Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, New Guinea, the Solomons and the Moluccas. In 1829, he returned from the second trip with a collection of 3,000 species of plants, 1200 species of insects, and ground-breaking scientific reports on the Pacific island groups which he named Malaysia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Dumont's narrative of that trip, published between 1832 and 1834, was a set of five separately issued volumes which included reports by Botanists and Zoologists who had accompanied the expedition - and even, as Dumont notes in this letter, the first vocabulary ("incomplete", but "correct enough") of the Polynesian language "Madekass" (Malagasy), spoken on the African island of Madagascar. Despite his published criticism of French Government officials and scientists, and even of the King, Dumont was again commissioned, in 1837, to lead an expedition to the Pacific and beyond, in hopes of competing with the British and Americans to reach the South Pole. After successfully sailing to Antarctica, Dumont returned home in 1840 and again recorded his travels, this time in a set of 31 volumes, comprising a rare travel classic, Voyage to the South Pole..., with hundreds of plates and maps, that took 13 years to produce - most of them appearing posthumously.