Details
JOUTEL, HENRI. A Journal of the Last Voyage Perform'd by Monsr. de la Sale, to the Gulph of Mexico, To find out the Mouth of the Missisipi River. London: for A. Bell, [et al.] 1714. 8vo, eighteenth-century speckled calf, rebacked, original spine laid down, corners restored, edges stained yellow, front endpaper loose, map with a short marginal tear at the mount edge, slight foxing to title and first two leaves. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, folding engraved map of the North American Atlantic coast.
In 1684 La Salle set out from France with a group of colonists intending to found a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, which he had reached two years previously, but his ships overshot the delta and landed on the coast of Texas. During an overland expedition in search of the river, La Salle's men mutinied and shot him. His aide Joutel's narrative, published in French in 1713, "is generally considered the most trustworthy account of La Salle's ill-fated expedition...after La Salle's assassination [Joutel] made his way across Texas to the Red River, and thence to the Arkansas and up the Mississippi to Fort St. Louis [eventually reaching Quebec]. The map and the account are important documents of the East Texas region that was explored by La Salle" (Streeter sale I, 112). This English translation, which was contested by Joutel as being unfaithful to his original text, gives the text of Louis XIV's grant of Louisiana to Crozat. Alden and Landis 714/70; Church 859; Field 809; Howes J266 ("The map...was the first accurate delineation of [the Mississippi] river"); Sabin 36762; Wagner, Spanish Southwest, 79a.
Provenance: Henry Bradshawe, contemporary ms. inscription on title; George Finch, bookplate.
In 1684 La Salle set out from France with a group of colonists intending to found a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, which he had reached two years previously, but his ships overshot the delta and landed on the coast of Texas. During an overland expedition in search of the river, La Salle's men mutinied and shot him. His aide Joutel's narrative, published in French in 1713, "is generally considered the most trustworthy account of La Salle's ill-fated expedition...after La Salle's assassination [Joutel] made his way across Texas to the Red River, and thence to the Arkansas and up the Mississippi to Fort St. Louis [eventually reaching Quebec]. The map and the account are important documents of the East Texas region that was explored by La Salle" (Streeter sale I, 112). This English translation, which was contested by Joutel as being unfaithful to his original text, gives the text of Louis XIV's grant of Louisiana to Crozat. Alden and Landis 714/70; Church 859; Field 809; Howes J266 ("The map...was the first accurate delineation of [the Mississippi] river"); Sabin 36762; Wagner, Spanish Southwest, 79a.
Provenance: Henry Bradshawe, contemporary ms. inscription on title; George Finch, bookplate.