Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia. Performed between the Years 1818 and 1822. With an Appendix, containing Various Subjects Relating to Hydrography and Natural History.

King’s important two volume account of his coastal explorations and surveys, undertaken 1818-1822 in the ships Mermaid and Bathurst.

The account was published after King’s eight charts of the north and north-west coasts, which completed the surveys previously undertaken by Flinders.

John Murray, London, 1827, two volumes, octavo, hard cover, 9 aquatint plates, 2 folding maps, nineteenth-century half calf. Lacking the half-titles. Spine and corners with minor bumping, internally minor spotting, otherwise in good condition.

The views were engraved from King’s own sketches. The British increasingly feared the motives of the ongoing French presence in the coastal waters of the “unclaimed” western half of the Australian continent, especially so after the Baudin expedition of 1800-1803. As a consequence King’s instructions were to complete the charting of the north-west which soon led to the British claiming Western Australia, on 2 May 1829.