A very good copy of a work that seldom appears on the market.
Charles Pigeard (1818-1885), received orders in October 1843 to drop off missionary priests on various islands in Polynesia. In command of the Bucéphale, based in the Marquesas, he sailed to Tonga-Tabou Islands, Onou-Afou, Wallis, Futuna, New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, and after about five months, reached Valparaiso on 31 March, 1844.
This was at a time when Anglo-French tensions were particularly high with the ongoing contest for control over Tahiti. While Pigeard says that the information in here is a precis of knowledge of these islands histories and of the progress of catholic missions, it's only natural that we'd find a gossipy aside such as "every English vessel he saw in New Caledonian waters had Loyalty Islands crew members, and that the masters habitually put into Mare's reef-strewn leeward coastline to take on a 'great number' of men as sailors, as well as women for 'wives'" (Pigeard quoted in Howe).
Pigeard later became naval attaché at the French Embassy in London during the Second Empire.
Rare: OCLC locates 6 copies, and just a single copy at auction.
Howe, K.R., "Tourists, Sailors and Labourers: A Survery of Early Labour Recruiting in Southern Melanesia" in The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1978), p.23.
