DE BRY'S VIRGINIA, FIRST LATIN EDITION WITH MAP BRY, THEODOR DE. Admiranda Narratio Fida Tamen, de Commodis et Incolarum Ritibus Virginiae. Double-page map of Virginia, 28 plates. Folio, later calf gilt, rebacked in morocco, minor wear; restored tears on leaves d7 and E4, moderate toning, short marginal tears on map; later owner's inked armorial stamp at base of title page. Frankfurt: Wecheli, 1590
first latin edition of the first volume of De Bry's Great Voyages. Most of the volume is devoted to a Latin translation of Thomas Hariot's Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. This account of the Roanoke Colony was written as a promotional tract to attract new settlers. Europe did not learn of the Roanoke Colony's mysterious disappearance until John White returned to England on 24 October 1590. The Virginia text is illustrated with 23 stunning engravings after watercolors by John White, who had commanded the 1585 expedition to Roanoke. It also includes the important double-page map, based on John White's 1585 manuscript, which depicts the stretch of coast from what is now Chesapeake Bay, VA to Cape Lookout, NC. Cumming calls it "the first printed map of this degree of detail and accuracy for any part of the present area of the United States." Burden calls it "one of the most significant cartographical milestones in colonial North American history" and notes that it "records the first English attempts at colonisation in the New World." It also featured the first identification of the Chesapeake Bay on a map (here called "Chesepiooc sinus"). The last five plates and accompanying text are devoted to Picts, most of them heavily tattooed. The great majority of the volume including the title page conforms to Church and Sabin's points for the first issue, with the exception of the text to plates V, VI, IX, and XV, which they would describe as from the second issue. Most copies of the Admiranda Narratio are mixed issues to some extent. Burden, Mapping of North America, 76 (second state) and 77; Church 140; Cumming, Southeast in Early Maps 12, 13, page 3; European Americana 590/31; Sabin 8784, page 24; Streeter sale II:1091.
