A handsome copy of Sir Herbert Thomas's travels, a significant early account of the Middle East and Asia. An historian and courtier to King Charles I, Herbert accompanied Sir Dodmore Cotton on a diplomatic mission to Persia in 1726. Following the latter's death, Herbert and others traveled extensively throughout the region, where he made observations on the people, their customs, as well as the region's animal life and flora and fauna. Upon his return to England in 1630, he compiled his account and published the above first edition. Of note are the engravings of the flying fish and the extinct dodo, as well as the section at the end recounting Welsh King Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd's mythic discovery of America.