le Maire, Jacob, Herrera, Antonio de Ordoñez, Pedro de

Amsterdam, Michiel Colijn, 1622 and 1621 (Ordoñez)

Tiele pp 54; pp 312 -316, nr 297;

Small folio, leaves 275x185 mm

Rebound in 1862 in vellum "spitsel" binding

Clean copy with strong imprint on sturdy paper and detailed provenance.

Bookplate of Johannes Meulman, well known Dutch book collector

(2) (8) 86 pp (= le Maire) : Printed worldmap on the title page ; full page portrait of le Maire in verso of t.p.; 5 plates and 3 maps (one folding)

(4) 112 pp plus 14 double page maps (= Herrera)

30 pp, last blank (= Ordonez)

Sammelband on the Discovery of Strait le Maire; Herreras Atlas of the Americas and Ordoñez description of the Americas.

The Spiegel der Australische navigatie, 1622, is the first printing of le Maires own telling of the voyage he could not finish. The last 13 pages are filled with summaries of previous voyages form Europe to the West and into the Pacific, including Magellan; Drake; Sarmiento (from Lima) and van Noort plus two leaves of short "dictionaries of Pacific islanders languages. The worldmap on the title page shares the honour of being the first map to show California as an island (Leighly, 1972 and Mc Laughlin 1995) with the next book in this Sammelband.

The Nieuwe Werelt anders genaempt West-Indien, 1622, is the translation into Dutch of the small atlas dated 1601 that Antonio de Herrera added to his monumental Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos ....en el Mar Oceano, Madrid 1601-1615, 8 books in 4 Volumes. The atlas has 14 double page maps, including the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The title page carries a map of the Americas that shows California as an island for the first time (Leighly, 1972 and Mc Laughlin 1995)

The Eyghentlijcke beschrijvinghe van.....West-Indien,1621, by Pedro de Ordonez are based on his own travels and observations. Ordoñez divides the population of South America in two "republics": the Spanish and the Indian republic (p. 20 etc)

Our copy of the book is preceded by one leaf and two smaller leaflets with manuscript notes of previous owners, added upon the rebinding.

The oldest known owner is Abdias Velingius (1721-1803), Biblioteca Velingiana. Bought at auction in 1804 by Willem Cornelis Ackersdijk the book was rebound in a different order, giving preference to le Maire as the first of the three books in this small Sammelband.

The notes on the rarity and importance of the text in manuscript are pasted in the front of the book, which are by the man who had the book rebound and had de Spiegel bound in first, thus giving le Maires story prevalence over the others. The commentator stresses the extreme rarity of the Spiegel text as it cannot even be found in the list of books sold upon the death of Johannes de Laet, well known author on the West Indies, sold in Leyden in 1650. The Latin translation by Barlaeus was found in a Paris catalogue in 1819, but than without de le Maire text.

The book came up in auction in the Frederik Muller sale in 1862 (??), bought by Johannes Meulman (1751-1815 his bookplate) and after Meulmans death was bought by Quaritch and finally in the library of sir Roger Leicester Hamsworth (1870-1937) and sold thereafter by Sothebys in 1950.