[PERU]

L'histoire de la terre neuve du Peru en l'Inde Occidentale, que est la principale mine d'or du monde

      Pierre Gaultier for Jean Barbe and Vincent Sertenas 8vo [16.5 x 10 cm], (56) ff. Extra-illustrated with (1) folding map of Peru in facsimile. Bound in blue Lortic morocco, gilt title on spine, even toning and very minor foxing throughout, excellent. Very rare first French edition of the first printed account of the conquest of Peru (editio princeps 1534), including a dramatic rendering of the capture of the Inca king Atahualpa and hyperbolic estimates of the mineral wealth of a country which was quickly becoming the focus of the European gold rush in the New World. The only earlier printed documents relating to Peru in French are Nouvelles certaines des Isles du Peru (Lyon, 1534), an eight-leaf pamphlet with a translation of a letter by Pizarro, and a brief mention of Peru in Peter Martyr's Extraict ou receuil des Isles nouvellement trouvees en la grand Oceane (Paris, 1533).The present text "is the first published report on the conquest of Peru. Although anonymous, it has been attributed to Cristobal de Mena, a captain in Pizarro's army who arrived in Spain in December 1533 with news of the conquest. The report narrates the events from the preparation for the expedition to the recent imprisonment of the Inca Atahualpa. It is written from a soldier's point of view in a personal tone similar to that of a modern journalist's eyewitness report and manages to capture the tense atmosphere of the conquest. It is particularly rich in details about the military operations culminating in the capture of the Inca leader and the ransom demanded by Pizarro for his liberation, consisting of vast amounts of bullion sent from Cuzco and Pachacamac. "The account was first published in Seville in 1534. In the same year, an Italian translation appeared in Venice, as the third part of a longer work about the New World. It was reprinted in Rome in 1535 and then by G. B. Ramusio in Venice in 1556. In 1545 a French translation with a map of Peru was published under the title L'histoire de la terre neuve du Peru en l'Inde Occidentale, and finally, an English abstract was included in the fourth volume of Purchas's His Pilgrimes in 1625." (Delgado-Gomez, pp. 32-33) The majority of bibliographers agree that the map is not integral to the work. Harisse writes "The copy in the Imperial Library, at Paris, contains a map which is not in the copies we have examined in this country." (p. 410) The binder Lortic issued facsimiles of the Paris copy map and it is these that are bound with the present copy as well as with that at NYPL. A note at the foot of leaf B2 has led some authors, among them Sabin and Medina, to view the present work as a translation of a text by Oviedo y Valdes, but this has been rejected by W.H. Bowen. (See his "L'histoire de la terre neuve du Peru," Isis, XXVIII [1938], 330-340.) Nonetheless, Oviedo y Valdes, whose XX first appeared in XXX, is considered the fountainhead of much writing on the New World. Fray Bartholome de Las Casas remarked bitterly that "Oviedo should have written at the head of his history: !This book was written by a conqueror, robber and murderer of the Indians, whole populations of whom he consigned to the mines, where they perished.'" The translator, Jacques Gohory (1520-76), was "a French astrologist, poet, historian and prolific writer on almost every subject, well known for his eccentricities, and who, !disgusted with the world and all within,' ended his days poor and almost forsaken." (Harisse, p. 411.) A long-time member of the Paris Parliament, he also served as ambassador in England, Flanders and Rome, where he may have come across the Italian edition of the Peru account. After his retirement from public service he devoted himself to natural history; one of the resulting studies was the first printed work on tobacco (Instruction sur l'herbe Petum, 1572).The Italian edition appeared as the third and final part of the Summario de la generale historia de l'Indie Occidentali edited by Ramusio under the title Libro ultimo del Summario de le cose de le Indie Occidentali. Venice, [n.p.], 1534. OCLC: NYPL. Not at JCB.*Alden & Landis 545/56; Brunet III, 188; Harrisse 264; Sabin 57994. Both Sabin and Harrisse call for only 53 leaves.