Untrimmed large-paper copy of the first and only edition of the classic work on "Guiana", the North coast of South America, covering primarily modern Guyana, Surinam, parts of French Guyana and northern Brazil. The book contains very interesting and thoroughly accounts of the geography and history of the regions, customs and habits of the natives, flora and fauna; discoveries of the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch voyagers and their settlements and colonization, the commerce of the Dutch West India Company, and the Company of Berbice, the Surinam Society and the slave trade. Warden (Bibliotheca Americana) calls it "by far the best work ever published on the countries described". Several hundred pages provide transcriptions of numerous original documents of the 17th and 18th centuries, including a 1662 land grant proclaimed by Charles II on behalf of English settlers establishing there in 1650, with parallel English and Dutch texts. There are five maps, four plans of forts and towns, three views, and two representations of native men. All are finely engraved by Jacob van der Schley. The engraving in the text shows one coin and two blank circles.
J.J. Hartsinck (1716-1779) was an official of the admiralty in Amsterdam and a member of the Zeeland Academy of sciences; later he became a director of the Dutch West India Company. He had ready access to many documents which are now lost, and he also made extensive use of the papers of his father, who had been director of the Surinam Society for 25 years, and of oral and manuscript accounts by several local officials. For these reasons, his book will always remain an essential primary source for the history of the regions.
This copy has always been in the same family, never removed from the library and is untouched by the trade. Fine and clean copy as it was in 1770, only slightly browned in the first half of the first volume. An uncut large paper copy in very good condition. JCB (1700-1800) 1742; JFB H-41; Sabin 30712; STCN 204348471 (13 copies, incl. 5 incomplete); Suriname-catalogus 2560; Tiele 457; not in Borba de Moraes; Church; Eberstadt; Streeter.