Nodal, Bartolomé García de and Gonçalo de:

$125,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

RELACION DEL VIAJE QUE POR ORDEN DE SU. MAG[ESTA]D. Y ACUERDO DEL REAL CONSEJO DE INDIAS, AL DESCUBRIMIENTO DEL ESTRECHO NUEVO DE S. VICENTE Y RECONOSIMIENTO DEL DE ... First edition of this account of the expedition sent out by Philip III for the exploration of the extreme south of America, complete with the vanishingly rare map. "One of the rarest books of its class" - Sabin. The map is the first to show the Le Maire Strait (here named the Strait of San Vincente), and depicts Tierra del Fuego as an island.Alarmed to learn that the Schouten-Le Maire expedition of 1616 had rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific from the Atlantic, the Spanish crown sent the Nodal brothers in 1618 to examine the Le Maire strait and study the possibility of maintaining control over this new passage. With the cosmographer Diego Ramírez de Arellano Chamás serving as pilot, the Nodals passed around the Horn through Le Maire's strait, turned northward, and sailed back to Spain via the Strait of Magellan, thus circumnavigating Tierra del Fuego for the first time. En route, they discovered the Diego Ramírez Islands, for 150 years the southernmost land reached by European explorers. They returned to Spain with accurate observations of the tides in the Strait of Magellan and precise sailing instructions for the area. The expedition was orchestrated by the government of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, and the crew was composed entirely of Portuguese prisoners or men taken by force, as it wou

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