8vo (178 x 112 mm). Engraved title page vignette by J. Goeree, engraved folding map “Land en Volk-ontdekking in’t Noorder ge deelte van America, door P. Marquette en Joliet”; 2 folding engraved plates. (Small wormtrack to gutter margins, stab holes from old binding in gutter margin, minor chipping with loss to lower corner of title-page). 19th-century wrappers, waste leaves from an 1867 collection of German poetry (chipping with losses); board folding case.  Provenance: Chicago Historical Society (perforated stamp and manuscript annotations, withdrawn September 1948); Wright Howes (1882-1978), Chicago bookseller and bibliographer (pencil-written note about the first edition of the present work on personal memo sheet).

 

FIRST EDITION IN DUTCH, BY THE CO-DISCOVERER OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI, a translation of Marquette’s Découverte de quelques pays et nations de l’Amerique septentrionale in Thevenot's Recueil de voyages published Paris,1681. The publisher, Vander Aa, published the present edition in parts and also issued them separately. Marquette first arrived in Quebec in September 1666 and later founded the mission of St. Ignace on the Straits of Mackinac, the first settlement in Michigan. In 1673, he joined Louis Jolliet's expedition in search of an overland route to the Mississippi River, during which they became the first Europeans to explore the Upper Mississippi, travelling as far south as the mouth of the Arkansas River. On their return, they travelled back to the mouth of the Illinois River and reached Lake Michigan near the site of present-day Chicago by way of the Chicago Portage. Alden & Landis 707/102; Sabin 44666n.