SCHOUTEN, Willem Corneliszoon (ca 1567-1625). Journal ou Description du Merveilleux Voyage de Guillaume Schouten. Amsterdam, 1619.
Small 4to (188 x 138 mm). Engraved vignette on title-page, 4 engraved maps (one map with a new guard and a few pale stains), 5 engraved plates. (A few leaves with minor mostly marginal dampstaining.) Late 17th or early 18th-century continental full calf (spine ends chipped). Provenance: Campagnon (armorial bookplate); early inscription on front pastedown; a few early marginalia; Pierre Guillaume (signature). Second Amsterdam edition in French. Schouten sailed as captain of the Eendracht on this circumnavigation commanded by Jacob Le Maire, who sailed on the Hoorn. According to Cox, this circumnavigation and first passage through the Strait of Le Maire was "one of the most remarkable voyages ever undertaken, [which] contributed much to the science of cartography...the numerous editions of the voyage attest its popularity, indicating how much the new passage into the South Seas was appreciated which would open a route to lands thought to lie south of those monopolized by the Dutch East India Company." After making fast time across the Pacific, Unity was seized by the Dutch East India Company for infringing on its monopoly on trade via the Straits of Magellan. Schouten and Le Maire were sent back to Holland with Spilbergen, who was completing his own circumnavigation (see lot 190), but Le Maire died en route. When Schouten arrived in Holland, Le Maire's relatives tried to keep the new passage to the Pacific a secret, and mapmaker and publisher Willem Blaeu was banned from publishing the route maps of the voyage. In 1618, the ban was lifted, and Blaeu and other publishers quickly printed a dozen editions of the discovery by the mid-17th century. The work's publication in Madrid in 1619 prompted Spain to send the Nodal brothers immediately on a voyage to confirm the existence of the passage and to investigate its possible fortification (see lot 144). RARE: according to American Book Prices Current, no copy of this edition has appeared at auction in 25 years. Alden & Landis 619:115; Sabin 77948; see Hill pp.269-270.
