Neck, Jacob Corneliszoon van (1564-1638).

8vo (158 x 107mm.), ff. [1], 58, [4], Black Letter, illustration: woodcut illustration on title-page, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials, extra-illustrated with 19 engraved plates (numbered 1-3, 19, 4-18) from Neck's Historiale Beschrijvinghe (Amsterdam, 1619), text and plates remargined to size (232 x 172mm.), pencil markings to margins, binding: nineteenth-century calf, gilt double-fillet border, spine gilt in compartments, brown morocco lettering-piece, lacking dedication leaf [paraph 2], lacking Q4 (presumably blank, the most complete BL copy also lacks this leaf), pages shaved (with occasional slight loss to the lower margin), rust hole to P3 (affecting a couple of letters), tear to Q3 with loss (not affecting text)

STC 18417; Howgego, Exploration N13

A first-hand account of the second Dutch voyage to the East Indies, translated here by William Walker. There are vivid descriptions of the islands visited by the expedition of eight Dutch vessels, and at the end are Malish and Javanese vocabularies and a list of the numbers in Moluccan.

this is a rare book. The last copy we have traced at auction was the Boies Penrose copy (his sale in these rooms 9 November 1971, lot 179). The plates from the equally, if not more, unusual, Dutch edition are (notably inferior and often reversed) imitations of those found in the fifth part of De Bry's Indiae orientalis navigationes (1601, see lot 3129) but with the occasional interesting emendation, such as the western spectators added to the ball game.