Cabeça de Vaca, Alvar Nuñez: [Smith, Buckingham, translator and editor]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

RELATION OF ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEÇA DE VACA TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY BUCKINGHAM SMITH. The greatly expanded, posthumously-published second edition of Buckingham Smith's translation of Cabeça de Vaca, from an edition limited to 100 copies. The original text describes the first recorded journey by Europeans across North America, recounting the author's adventures with the Narvaez expedition to Florida in 1527, his capture and escape from natives on the Mississippi coast, and his later overland journey across Texas before finally making his way back to Spanish controlled lands in Mexico. The original work was the first on Texas, and the first American travel account. This edition is greatly expanded from the original (which was also published in a limited edition of 100 copies) of 1851, and includes nearly one hundred pages of Smith's notes and additions. Buckingham Smith was an eminent scholar of Spanish America as well as a slaveholder who nonetheless sided with the Union during the Civil War. After his death, he dedicated his estate to the establishment of the Buckingham Smith Benevolent Association, an organization which was dedicated to supporting African Americans in St. Augustine, and which continues to carry out that mission today. "The sudden death of the talented translator, occurring while these sheets were passing through the press, filled the hearts of many bibliophiles with sadness" - Field.This copy bears the bookplate of "Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn" (i.e. Anna Fenn P

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.