(FLORIDA.) Jacques le Moyne de Morgues; and Theodor de Bry. Der Ander Theil / der Newlich Erfundenen Landschafft Americae,von Dreyen Schiffahrten, so die Frantzosen in Floridam. Letterpress title printed within engraved illustrated border, dedication with engraved armorial arms of George Wilhelm Count Palatine of the Rhine, engraved folding map of Florida, prefatory plate of Noah, 42, [4], [26] pages, and 42 engraved half-page plates illustrating the region and habits of native Floridians. Folio, 13½x9½ inches, attractive crushed morocco to style; iron gall oxidized and heavily offset in the text, plates 4 and 5 with small repairs at lower margin, map excellent. Frankfurt, 1591 [1603]
"...I have in hand the Historye of Florida wich should bee first sett foorthe because yt was discouvered by the Frenchemen longe befor the discoverye of Virginia, yet I hope shortylye also to publish the same, A Victorye, doubtless so Rare, as I thinke the like hath not ben heard nor seene" -- De Bry excitedly offering a teaser of this forthcoming work in his forward to the English edition of Hariot's Virginia, 1590.
Second German edition of the second volume to De Bry's Grands Voyages, a celebrated series of works recounting the sixteenth-century voyages of discovery in the Americas. Volume two describes the early Huguenot explorations and colonization attempts in southeastern North America by Jean Ribault and Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere in the 1560s. Laudonniere's expedition to Florida was accompanied by Jacques Le Moyne, a talented young artist who completed pioneering drawings and paintings of their encounters in the New World. Despite great hardship at sea on the crew's return passage, Le Moyne's overwhelmingly important artwork was successfully taken to London and after his death in 1588 the drawings were acquired by De Bry, who used them as models for the fine engravings which illustrate this account.
"Theodore de Bry was the first to illustrate the literature of American travel with any degree of accuracy or elegance. His great series of printed books, with their large number of beautiful copper-plate engravings, brought to the European public the first realistic visualization of the exotic world opened up across the Atlantic by the explorers, conquerors and settlers" -- Michael Alexander, Discovering the New World, page 7.
