Journal Historique du Dernier Voyage que feu M. de laSale fit dans le Golfe de Mexique, pour trouver l'embouchure, & le cours de la Riviere de Missicipi, nommée à present la Riviere de Saint Loüis, qui traverse la Louisiane...
AN EXCEPTIONAL EXAMPLE OF THE FOLDING MAP
Paris: Chez Estienne Robinot, 1713. First edition.
Duodecimo (6 1/2” x 3 5/8”, 164mm x 91mm). With woodcut head- and tail-pieces.
Bound in contemporary speckled calf (rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down). On the boards, a blind fillet border. On the spine, five raised bands with a gilt foll. Panels gilt. Title gilt to brown morocco in the second panel. On the edges of the boards, a gilt roll.
Rebacked (very subtly indeed). Front board splayed. Front hinge cracked. Fore-corners (except the front lower) restored quite subtly. Internally lovely and bright save for quire D, which is somewhat tanned. A strong, bright impression of the vital “Carte Nouvelle de la Louisiane et de la Riviere de Missisipi...”
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, 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).
Alden & Landis 713/103; Church 855; Graff 2251; Howes J 266; Jenkins, Basic Texas Books 114; Sabin 36760; Wagner Spanish Southwest 79.
Item #6JLR0054
Price: $26,000