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Hard cover,12 mo (measuring 5 x 7 1/2 inches), in publisher's original green pebbled cloth, both boards blind stamped with double ruled borders, corner devices and central filigree design with the initials J.M., for James Miller, publisher. The spine features the titles in gilt, with small bands of gilt design at head and foot. Glazed brown endpapers. Frontispiece illustration (2), 218, (2) pp. Four full page, engraved illustrations, including the tissue guarded frontispiece. Inscribed in old ink to front free endpaper: "Major Ben Perley Poore with the compliments of the Author, Washington, Feb. 12, 1872." Condition: Good Plus. Some minor water damage has resulted in some marks and slight bubbling of the cloth of both boards. and along the one interior quire. There was a notable fire at the historic home of the recipient family in the 1950's which is to blame for the damage. (see below) The interior remains mostly clean, with one quire loosened but holding, mildly age-toned, and with very minor foxing to prelims only.***This is a recollection of Newburyport native Captain John Codman's voyage to Brazil in 1867 to deliver the steamer Cotopaxi to the Brazilian government after its decommission from the U.S. Navy. Codman's primary topic here, however, is an economic treatise on the post- Civil War economic changes affecting trade: how the end of slavery in the United States has globalized the cotton trade, specifically to the remaining areas of slave labor in South America; how a rising abolitionist movement in Brazil will thwart that trade; how resettlement of former American slaves from the American South could help offset labor shortages in Brazil caused in part by the conduct of protracted war with Paraguay. *** Author John Codman (1814-1900), of Dorchester Massachusetts was a sea captain-turned-writer/journalist whose career bridged the age of sail and steam. He wrote one early novel, under the pseudonym "Captain Ringbolt," called Sailors' Life and Sailors' Yarns (1847), which received grudging praise in review by a young Herman Melville. This current volume was the first of three nautical travelogues. He was the well-educated, (Phillips Andover and two years of Amherst College) son of a notable clergyman, but chose to leave school for a career at sea, making captain at the age of twenty two, and establishing his own shipping business by thirty three years of age. His commercial travels took him to South America, India and China. His reputation among the merchant marine was well established: he held a record for making a remarkable profit of $100,000 on a single cargo of China tea. His maternal grandfather, Captain Ebenezer Wheelwright, as well as his maternal uncle, Captain William Wheelwright, both once resided within stone's-throw of this bookseller. ***Benjamin Perley Poore (1820-1887), the books' recipient, would have been known to John Codman as a fellow journalist. Both developed national reputations as foreign correspondents. Both had begun their journalistic careers with Boston newspapers, and they both had family connections to the Newburyport, Massachusetts area. Major Ben: Perley Poore's family house in West Newbury Massachusetts remains a landmark, now somewhat reduced in size by the fire mentioned above. But it began as a a 60-room architectural curiosity constructed of architectural salvage from area Early American buildings. Provenance: purchased from the direct descendants of Maj. Ben Perley Poore. Rare. OCLC 557954233, [Sabin lists the first edition of this title, 1867, no. 14141; the second edition has been amended and updated with new materials, according to the Introduction.] Presentation Copy inscribed by the Author to Major Ben: Perley Poore, 1872.
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