[ROCHEFORT (Charles de)].
Histoire Naturelle et Morale des Iles Antilles de l'Amerique. Enrichie d'un grand nombre de belles Figures en taille douce, des Places & des Raretez le plus considerables, qui y font décrites. Avec un Vocabulaire Caribe. [With the supplement:] Recit de l'
Rochefort, pastor of the French Protestant Church at Rotterdam, had spent several years in the West Indies before returning to Europe and compiling his Histoire… His name appears in this edition, unlike the first (at the end of the dedication), whilst there is much additional material, not found in the 1658 first printing, including an expanded account of the island of Tobago. The illustrations in this edition are finer and more numerous than in the 1666 first English, where they have been arranged into composite sheets of plates rather than interspersed within the text as here. The engraved pictorial title and folding plates are not replicated at all in the English edition, nor are many of the charming botanical illustrations. There is a dictionary of the Carib language, and a digressionary account of a Dutch voyage to Greenland, complete with depictions of Inuit.
Here with the rare supplement of 43pp on Virginia and New England. This contains one of the earliest printed descriptions of Pennsylvania. There is also a description of Harvard College, including details about the translation of the bible into the language of the Indians - presumably John Eliot’s Massachusett bible of 1663. There is much else of interest regarding Native Americans of the east coast. Though this supplement was issued with this new edition of the book, it has it’s own title-page and pagination. It is not always present, and sometimes appears as a separately bound work.
Sabin, 72318; Pilling, 3349.
