Tombs of Baie de Castries an engraving from La Perouse's Voyage 1798

[LA PAROUSE, John Francis Galaup]; DUCHÉ DE VANCY, Jean Baptiste; HEATH, James: Tombs of Baie de Castries.
 
An engraving from Charts and Plates to La Pérouse’s Voyage (London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1798).
 
Copper engraving, 310 × 230 mm (plate), on laid paper with good margins; plate mark visible; light overall toning and a few faint spots, with a shallow horizontal fold as issued, otherwise in very good condition.
 
A view of the tombs at Baie de Castries, showing a small settlement, with two figures in the foreground and the distinctive raised wooden burial structures. Bais de Castries, described in contemporary sources as lying on the eastern coast of Tartary, corresponds to the North Pacific explored by La Perouse in 1787, in the region now identified with the northwest coast of America (southeast Alaska). 
 
The drawing was made by Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore, duc de Vancy, one of the official artists attached to the expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, whose role was to record landscapes, sites, and customs encountered during the voyage. La Perouse and his crew wouldn't make it back to Paris, with it latterly being discovered that his ship was wrecked at Vanikoro, now the Solomon Islands.
 
The plate was engraved in London by James Heath, among the leading line engravers of the late eighteenth century, and published by G. G. & J. Robinson for the atlas volume Charts and Plates to La Pérouse’s Voyage Round the World, issued in 1798 as part of the English edition of the expedition’s results.