First Dutch edition of Herrera's Description of the West Indies, with fine maps of Central and South America, together with a description of the West Indies by Pedro Ordoñez de Ceballos (1556-1636), and the journal of Jacob Le Maire (1585-1616) on his voyage in search of Terra Australis. This Dutch translation contains the same plates as the Latin translation, published in the same year, which significantly expanded the first edition from 1601.
The present copy contains the first Dutch edition of Herrera's Descripcion de las Indias occidentales; the first Dutch edition of Cevallos's Eyghentlijcke Beschryvinghe van West-Indien, and the first edition of Le Maire's Spieghel der Australische Navigatie. Together they form a collection of the then available accounts of the New World. The Latin title page to Herrera's work is decorated with the first map to show California as an island. This work focuses on discoveries in the New World and is illustrated by famous maps of regions in North and South America. It also contains the first official description of the voyage of the great Dutch navigator Jacob Le Maire in 1615-17. His account was not published earlier because the Dutch East India Company (VOC) initially refused to release his journals.
Michiel Colijn simultaneously issued collected editions in Latin, French and Dutch, all in 1622. The heirs of Theodore de Bry reprinted Herrera's work in Frankfurt in 1623 as the twelfth part of their "Great Voyages," with reduced versions of the plates. Herrera (1549-1625) was official historian to Kings Philip II, III, and IV, and his Nieuwe Werelt is essentially an introductory work to his magnum opus Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas Terra Firme del mar oceano, which eventually covered eight decades of voyages and travels, published in 1601-1615. Le Maire's discovery of and voyage around Cape Horn relieved the trading monopoly of the East India Company by finding an alternative route to the East Indies that did not violate the Company Charter, which prevented other Dutch trading companies from using the existing routes of the Straits of Magellan and Cape of Good Hope.
With a contemporary ownership annotation on the back pastedown. A few wormholes on the back board. The book block is partly detached from the binding, the pastedowns are detached, but still present, some of the maps are slightly browned. Otherwise in very good condition. Borba de Moraes I, 400; JCB II, 166; Kroepelien, 561; Medina, Hispanic America, 455; Palau 114296; Sabin 14348, 31542, 14352 and 14353; Schilder, Australia unveiled, pp. 32-36 and passim; Tiele 479; Tiele, Mém., pp. 314-316 and 56-7.