Joutel, Henri

A Journal of the Last Voyage Perform'd by Monsr. de la Sale, to the Gulph of Mexico, To find Out the Mouth of the Missisipi [sic] River…

London: Printed for A. Bell & B. Lintott, 1714. First English-language edition.

Octavo (7 9/16” x 4 ½”, 192mm x 115mm). With a folding engraved map of the Americas.

Bound in later beige crushed morocco with a double gilt fillet border by Bayntun (signed at the lower edge of the front paste-down). (One small tear near the gutter). On the spine, five raised bands with dashed gilt roll. Double gilt fillets top-and-bottom in the panels. Title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. Author gilt to blue morocco in the fourth panel. Alternating double and single gilt dashes to the head- and tail-pieces. Blind roll to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle. Edges of the text-block speckled red.

The faintest scuffing to the lower edges of the board. Some sunning to the spine. Lovely and fresh inside, with some very scattered toning and foxing. A rather lovely example. With the bookplate of  Eugene & Sadye Power (from their 1995 sale at Christie’s East in New York).


René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (Englished to “Monsr. de la Sale”) canoed down the Mississippi river in 1682, and claimed for France its basin — La Louisiane, the land of Louis (XIV) — on the Gulf of Mexico. He returned in 1684, and that is the voyage described in this volume. It did not go well; La Salle landed in Texas, failed to find the Mississippi and was killed by his men, who mutinied. Joutel led the expedition after La Salle’s death, and his journal provides perceptive first-hand accounting of their onward journey into Canada. The accompanying map contains “the first accurate delineation” of the Mississippi (Howes). The English translation (first edition: Paris, 1713) surpasses the original for its inclusion of the terms of the grant of Louisiana to Crozat.

The present item enjoys a distinguished modern provenance. It comes from the sale of Eugene and Sadye Power at Christie’s East in 1995 (lot 273). E.B. Power was a pioneer of the technologies of microfilm and xerography, which were developed in the O.S.S. during the second world war; for these services and their subsequent commercialization he was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1977. He was a prominent member of the American Philosophical Society. The volume reappeared in Christie’s New York rooms in 2007 as part of the Krasnoff Collection of Western Americana (lot 11).

Alden & Landis 714/40, Church 859, Clark Old South I:14, Field 808, Graff 2252, Howes J-266, Sabin 36762, Streeter sale I:112, Wagner Spanish Southwest 79b.

Item #6JLR0017

Price: $13,500