SYBERIA - BENIOWSKI Maurycy - Memoirs. Des Grafen Moritz August von Benjowsky Begebenheiten und Reisen, von ihm selbst beschrieben. Aus dem Englischen uebersetzt von L. D. Ebeling, Professor am Gymnasium zu Hamburg und Dr. J. P. Ebeling Stadt- u. Land-physikus in Parchim. Hamburg 1791, published by Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann. Two co-bound volumes. [2] p., XIV, [3] p., 415 p., 1 folio; [3] p., 292 p., 1 figure, [1] f.; 8°. Quarter leather binding, period.
Estr. XV-XVIII, 12, 475; missing from BN catalog. Memoirs of Maurycy Beniowski (1746-1786), one of the most interesting figures of the era, a Polish-Hungarian nobleman, adventurer, participant in the Bar Confederation, Siberian exile, and eventually "the great king of Madagascar" (ampansakebe) and later hero of a Słowacki poem. They depict his extraordinary adventures, starting with his involvement in the Polish confederation, his exile to Kamchatka, his daring escape on the ship "St. Peter and St. Paul" through the Bering Strait and Japan all the way to Macau, where he got on a French ship and then amazed the court of King Louis XV with his story. There was also the episode most familiar to the Polish reader - the action of colonization of Madagascar, of which he was the originator. European fame was given to Beniowski by William Nicholson, publishing his memoirs in English for the first time in 1790 (they were not originally published in Polish at all). The present edition is a 1791 German translation by Prof. L. D. Ebeling of Hamburg - it was published a year after the original as one of the first in Europe. The edition was supplemented with excerpts from the diary of Russian traveler Hippolyt Stefanov.
On the frontispiece , aportrait of Beniowski; inside, a fold-out panel, 50x27 cm, showing Fort Louis (in honor of King Louis XV of France, today the city of Maroantsetra) and Fort Augustus, founded by Beniowski in Madagascar, as well as the course of the Tingballe River (today Antainambalana); in the second volume ,an engraving showing the clothing of Madagascar slaves for sale. -Back rubbed, worn and with losses, otherwise a very nice and clean piece.
