[Missions]. Edifying and curious LETTERS written from foreig - Lot 130

[Missions]. Edifying and curious LETTERS written from foreign missions. Paris, J.G. Mérigot le jeune, 1780-1783. 26 vol. in-12, contemporary speckled tawny calf, spine ribbed, red and green titles and tomaisons, cold fillet framing the boards, edges mottled (8 cuffs worn). Important collection of letters written by Jesuit missionaries, from their missions abroad, and addressed to the superiors of their order. For the statesmen, princes and diplomats of France and Europe, this important collection was a most valuable, and often the only, source of information on the state of distant lands, particularly those of the Far East and America. The descriptions and testimonies of Jesuit missionaries are first-hand and accessible here for the first time, and despite the suppression of the order in France in 1764, publication was allowed to proceed to completion. Second edition revised, enlarged and corrected by Abbé Yves Mathurin Marie Tréaudet de Querbeuf (1726-1799), who rearranged the parts by geographical subject: Mémoires du Levant (I-V, 1780), Mémoires d'Amérique (VI-IX, 1781), Mémoires des Indes (X-XV, 1781), Mémoires de Chine (XVI-XXIV, 1781), the last two volumes, published in 1783, include unpublished letters, and a Histoire de l'astronomie chinoise, by Father Gaubil, a missionary in Peking. The illustrations consist of 56 plates, plans, maps and engravings, most of them folding: Beheading of four missionaries on a hill in the kingdom of Tong King (Volume XVI); Map of the new sea outlet in the Gulf of Santorini; Map of Syria newly corrected and description of Mount Lebanon and Kesroan; Map of the New Philippines, Nangasaki, Moxes Mission, Course of the Maragnon River, otherwise known as the Amazons, Coasts of Peru, Formosa Island, Carolinas Islands, Paraguay, etc. Les mémoires d'Amérique contains Father François-Marie Picolo's letter (Vol. VIII) with a description of California, and the third French printing of the famous map of the Passage by Land to California discovered by Rev. Pere Eusebe François Kino, engraved by Charles Inselin (Vol. VIII). (Cordier, 930; Howes, L-299; Chadenat, 6686; Sabin, 40698; Sgard, 814)