[Volume 14] A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World

A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World is a 17-volume compilation of travel narratives assembled by the Scottish historian and poet John Pinkerton (1758-1826), first published in Great Britain in 1808-14. A contemporary and acquaintance of the historian Edward Gibbon and the novelist Sir Walter Scott, Pinkerton wrote books on Scottish history and poetry, numismatics, and other topics, as well as his own plays and poems.

Many of the narratives were newly translated into English from French, German, Dutch, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and other European languages. Each volume is illustrated with plates. A six-volume American edition of Pinkerton's collection of voyages was published in Philadelphia in 1810-12.

Shown here is the 14th volume of the original London edition, which includes narratives of travel by Europeans to South America that first appeared between 1649 and 1748. The earliest is the "Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Chile," by Alonso de Ovalle, a Chilean Jesuit. Other works in the volume include accounts by Charles-Marie de la Condamine of the first scientific exploration of the Amazon; by Don Antonio de Ulloa of his travels in 1735-46 in the lands of present-day Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile; and by the Dutch explorer Johannes Nieuhof of the nine years he spent in Brazil between 1640 and 1649.