POULAIN, J. - Lot 133

POULAIN, J. The Rock of Port-Breton. Diary of a trip to Oceania, followed by a reply to the newspaper La Nouvelle France and to Mr. V..., from Carcassonne. Nantes, Paul Plédran, 1883. In-8 (223 x 137 mm) with a title leaf, III, 229 pp. Marbled basane, original illustrated cover preserved (modern binding). Missing Ferguson. Rare first edition of this account of a voyage to Port-Breton, begun on February 22, 1882, with some notes on Australia. It is one of the many works written about the famous French colony, created in New Ireland, by the Marquis de Rays, and whose end was terrible. The Marquis was later condemned after having ruined and caused the death of almost all the settlers who invested in this adventure. "Far from being the unbalanced or enlightened person that some people liked to see in him, de Rays appears to us as a cold calculator who knew how to exploit to the maximum all the conditions of the time to arrive at the various ends that he had chosen... He opened agencies successively in Paris, Marseille, Le Havre, and Antwerp, at the head of which he placed men whom he had taken in as associates and to whom he offered a commission in proportion to the subscriptions obtained" (Anne-Gabrielle Thompson, Une escroquerie à la colonisation : entreprise du marquis de Rays à Port-Breton, in : Outre-Mer, revue d'histoire, 1978, pp. 21-32). Fragile paper, a few reinforced endpapers, title with restorations in white margin.