Laet, Johannes de.

folio (323 x 211mm.), [30 (including half-title and engraved title-page)], 690, [18]pp., illustration: engraved title-page, 14 double-page engraved maps by Hessel Gerritsz, woodcut illustrations in the text, woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces, binding: seventeenth-century mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, the map of Florida loose, binding rubbed

Alden II:337; Borba de Moraes p. 451; JCB ii 246; Sabin 38557; Willems 382

first edition in latin of one of the earliest books to deal exclusively with america, its inhabitants, customs, flora and fauna. The original Dutch text was first published in 1625, and again in 1630, with an expanded suite of maps. Gerritsz, chosen as cartographer to the Dutch West India Company in preference to his tutor Willem Blaeu, compiled this series of maps, which served as prototypes for the mapping of the Americas, copied and expanded by the Blaeu and Janssonius families.

The map of New England was particularly important, and was the first to apply the term "Manhattes" to Manhatten Island.