An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and Successively Performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: Drawn Up from the Journals which Were Kept by the Several Commanders, and from the Papers of Joseph Banks, Esq, Band 1

First edition of the narrative of Cook's first voyage. Volume I contains accounts of the voyages of Byron, Carteret and Wallis, including the discovery of Tahiti; volumes II and III contain Hawkesworth's edited account of Captain [then Lieutenant] Cook's voyage. Cook had been commissioned to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti and to carry on John Byron's survey and exploration of the seas between Cape Horn and New Holland, and he added more than 5000 miles of coastline to Admiralty charts for Tahiti, Australia and the Great Barrier Reff and New Zealand which he circumnavigated.