Sales catalogue 534: Maggs Bros

Date:
1930
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/89
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 534: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/180 page 3
    FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST BOOK ON AMERICA PRINTED IN SPANISH. 1519 A.D.- [503] FERNANDEZ DE ENCISO (Martin). Suma de Geographia que trata de Todas las Partidas y Provincias del Mundo: en especial de las Indias y trata largamente del arte del Marear: juntamente con la Espera en. Romance: con el Regimiento del Sol y del Norte: nuevamente hecha. First Epition. Black Letter. Folio. A magnificent copy in blue levant morocco, the sides covered with gold tooling to a floral pattern, doublure of maroon levant morocco elaborately tooled, watered silk fly leaves, g.e., enclosed in a levant morocco case. Seville, Jacob Cromberger, 1519. (SEE ILLusTRATION, OvERLEAF). | {£650 First Edition of the first book printed in Spain and in Spanish on America. Only six libraries are re¢orded as possessing copies of this valuable work. In English the title reads :—‘‘ Compendium of. Geography, which treats of all the parts and regions of the world, especially of the Indies; also at length of the art of navigation and of the sphere in the Spanish language, together with the Rule of the Sun and North. Newly composed.’’ Enciso’s object in writing this work was to aid pilots and mariners in accom- plishing discoveries, and also for the instruction of Charles ve The description of America was principally from his own. observation. Martin Fernandez de Enciso first went to the New World with Rodrigues de Bastidas. He was the owner of the vessel as well as the planner of the expedition in which Vasco Nufiez de Balboa acquired so much fame. Having lived in San Domingo, where he acquired wealth as a lawyer, he returned to Spain in 1512, but came back to America with Pedrarias Davila in 1513, where he held the office of Alguazil Mayor of the Golden Castile. A great hydrographer and explorer, his work is inaAldebin for the early geographical history of the Continent of America. His accounts of his intimation to the Indians of Zenu to surrender to the King of Spain is one of the most singular relations that ever escaped the scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition. On the page which occupies the reverse of h4, he records the curious conversa- tion with two chiefs of Zenu, in which he informed them that the Pope had bestowed all'those regions upon the King of Spain; they replied ‘‘ that the Pope must have been drunk and that the King of Spain was an idiot.”’
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