Travels in Various Parts of Peru, Temple, 1830 Signed. This two-volume set is titled “Travels in Various Parts of Peru, Including A Year’s Residence In Potosi”, written and signed by the author, Edmond Temple, published in London by Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley in 1830, printed by Samuel Bentley, Richard’s brother, and it’s a first edition set, according to WorldCat. The first volume is also a presentation copy signed by “Edmond Temple to his friend Howard Fitzgerald” and the second volume is just signed “Edmond Temple”; both copies are signed on the title pages. Edmond Temple was a knight of the Spanish Order of Charles III and traveled to South America in 1825 as part of a mining venture which ultimately failed. He was Secretary of the Potosi, La Paz, and Peruvian Mining Association and was looking for riches in his time in Peru, but that didn’t happen. Potosí is a city in the southern highlands of Bolivia - the Bolivian Andes - and one of the highest cities in the world; it’s over 13,000 feet high, with a long mining history. It used to belong to upper Peru, but later on became part of modern Bolivia, and when you hear the name Potosi, think riches. Maybe it didn’t happen for the author, but it did for others. The city came into existence after silver was discovered there in 1545, and it’s located on a plateau in the shadow of Potosí Mountain, which is honeycombed with thousands of silver mines. The production of silver in the city exploded in the early 1570’s after a process was discovered to extract silver from the mined ore, and with the imposition of a forced labour system known as the mita, the Spanish grew rich. Mita was a system where indigenous laborers - native Indians - were required to work in Potosi’s silver mines, and Potosi - called Cerro Rico, the “Rich Mountain” - was of huge economic importance to the Spanish Empire. For centuries, Potosi was the location of the Spanish colonial silver mint, and its silver mine became the source of 60% of the world’s silver and was at the core of the Spanish Empire’s great wealth, and Potosi itself became one of the richest cities in the world. The books are 3/4 bound, with five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with red and maroon labels, gilt lettering, and gilt tooling on the spines, marbled boards and marbled endpapers, an illustrated frontispiece in each volume, then the title pages and a printer’s page. Volume I has a four-page Preface (v - viii), five pages of Contents (ix - xiii), with Errata listed at the bottom of the last page of Contents, then a two-page list of Illustrations, a map of South America from 1830, three engravings, including the frontispiece and the map, thirteen vignettes, and 431 pages of text. The second volume has four pages of Contents (v - viii), with Errata at the bottom of the last page of Contents, six engravings, including the frontispiece, four vignettes, and 504 pages of text, and the two books between them have a total of one map, eight other engravings, and seventeen wood engraved vignettes as called for. See Sabin 94660. The books are 8vo. and measure 9 x 6 in. wide, with tight bindings and clean pages and text, for the most part, with occasional brown spots in some of the margins and on some of the plates, light rubbing in the leather and at some of the tips, a couple of scrapes in the leather, and overall, a very good first edition set with another interesting history of how the Spanish conquered the Americas through slave labor, and the books are rare - we haven’t found any other copies that are signed by the author, both volumes here are signed by the author, and one volume is a presentation copy signed by the author as well. #206 Location Box 26