OVIEDO Y VALDES, Gonzalo Hernandez de.

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La historia general de las Indias. First edition of the first encyclopaedia of the Americas, signed by the author as issued. Oviedo, the "Pliny of the New World", travelled extensively in the Americas on behalf of the Spanish crown and was named Historian of the West Indies in 1523. "His sprawling book provides a detailed account of the natural history of the Americas, as well as the history of the early Spanish colonization of the Caribbean... Oviedo was intrigued by the many new species he saw and made drawings as well as written notes almost from the beginning of his tenure in the Indies. His industry provides an extraordinary description of the period, one that his high offices and education gave him a unique ability to record. More than any other writer in the first century after Columbus, Oviedo perceived the great differences between New World flora and fauna and anything known in the Old World. Other early chroniclers almost always discuss new species observed in the Americas in comparison to familiar European models; everthing in relationship to something it resembled at home" (Creating America). The book is noted for its woodcuts, the earliest reliable pictures of the New World. These include botanical subjects, such as the prickly pear, artefacts like the hammock, and indigenous peoples, the most famous of which depicts natives panning for gold. According to Arents, this work also contains the first occurrence in print of "the now almost universal word 'tobacco'",

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