Description
First Dutch translation of Marquette’s Découverte de quelques pays et nations de l’Amerique septentrionale in Thevenot’s Recueil de voyages, first published 1681 in Paris.
Octavo, [title page], [blank], 33pp, [4pp register index]. Measures 18 x 11 cm. Bound in 19th-century waste wrappers, yellow paper, bound at spine. Includes fold-out map of the Mississippi River and two fold-out engraved plates. Perforated stamp on title page from the Chicago Historical Society, occasional pencil notes. Housed in custom gray board folder, with pocket for this work. Includes a note from Wright Howes about this work, on his personal stationery. (Sabin 44666n) (Streit III, 1330) Provenance: Chicago Historical Society, withdrawn September 1948; Wright Howes (bibliographer and bookseller).
From the co-discoverers of the Upper Mississippi, Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, this work includes a very early map of the full Mississippi River. This map is believed to be based on the one Joliet drew from memory in 1674. Born in France, Jacques Marquette arrived in Quebec as a Jesuit missionary in 1666. In 1668, he traveled west and went as far as the south shore of Lake Superior. Due to the Indian Wars of 1671, he was forced to retreat to the Mackinac Straits, where he founded the mission of St. Ignace. In 1672, Marquette was ordered to accompany Louis Joliet in search of an overland route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Leaving in 1673, the two men mapped the course of the Mississippi River from Wisconsin to within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico. They returned through a site near present-day Chicago. After the expedition, Marquette stopped in Wisconsin, while Joliet returned to Quebec to report on their discoveries.
