With a Fine Map of the Strait of Magellan Not in Earlier Editions
A famous 18th-century voyage of discovery to the Pacific and expedition to establish a British foothold in the South Atlantic Ocean. The Spanish edition is the first to include a fine map of the Strait of Magellan by Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla. The English edition, issued with the title: A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Ship The Dolphin (1767), did not have a map. The translation is by Casimiro Gómez de Ortega, a botanist with the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid who identified plant species collected during Spanish expeditions to the Americas in the 18th century. The present example is styled the second edition, issued the same year as the first Spanish edition, with the additional 55-page account of Magellan's voyage which appears herein for the first time: Resumen Historico del Viage emprendido por Magallanes, y concluido por el Capitan Español Juan Sebastian del Cano.
In July 1764, HMS Dolphin, commanded by Captain John Byron, departed Plymouth accompanied by a transport vessel, the Tamar. After a brief stop at Rio de Janeiro, where Byron met with Lord Clive, the expedition continued southward. Only after leaving Rio did Byron disclose the true purpose of the voyage to his crew: an exploration of the Pacific Ocean, aimed at expanding British naval and geographic knowledge. The Dolphin successfully navigated the Strait of Magellan without significant incident, a notable achievement given the notorious dangers of the passage. Once in the Pacific, Byron charted a number of previously unrecorded islands and coral reefs, contributing important new discoveries to British maritime exploration during the mid-18th century. Byron was shipwrecked near Chiloé and spent three years as a prisoner of the Spanish in Chile, until he escaped in 1744 and returned home.
It was on this voyage that Byron claimed the Falkland Islands for Britain. Notably, Britain was unaware at the time that France had already established a settlement in 1764 at Port Louis on East Falkland, under the leadership of Louis Antoine de Bougainville. France would later cede its claim to Spain in 1767. Byron’s claim initiated a complex series of overlapping claims among Britain, France, and Spain, ultimately leading to increasing tension and eventually Britain's formal re-establishment of a settlement in 1766 at Port Egmont.
The frontispiece plate shows the Patagonian giants that Byron reported seeing.
This account of the voyage became famous because of its description of the Patagonian giants. These giants were first observed by the crew of the Magellan's fleet, and other authors refer to them but, as the travellers of the nineteenth century were unable to encounter them, their existence came to be considered a fable or an optical illusion. What impresses the reader of Byron's book, however, is the tone of veracity in the description of these very tall men whom the crew observed at close range, and with whome they had some contact - Borba de Moraes.
Strait of Magellan Map
This handsome map, whose title translates as "Maritime Map of the Strait of Magellan," was created by Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla in 1769. The map, which features a beautifully decorative cartouche, is considered the most comprehensive map of the Strait of its time, with a rich and detailed toponymy, particularly its depiction of the western archipelago of Tierra del Fuego. Juan de la Cruz created this chart while he was working on his large map of South America, using the same cartographic sources available to him for this region, which he cites in a note: a map by Narbrough, another by Bellin, Francisco Milhau’s map of South America, and the maritime chart of the Pacific Ocean by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. To these he added "various memoirs and travel accounts, both printed and manuscript, especially those of Sarmiento," as indicated in the large cartouche.
Two alphabetical keys are included in a single inset table: one for cartographic elements (in uppercase letters) and another for toponyms (in lowercase or small capitals). Coastal relief is depicted with stylized, stipple-shaded mountain profiles, tending toward an almost figurative style. Conventional symbols for coastal features (anchorages, shoals, rocks, etc.) are used without a legend. Particularly interesting are the numerous textual notes on the map addressing matters related to navigation, exploration, and positioning, often citing sources.
Rarity
Nice complete examples with the map are quite scarce in the market.
Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla (1734-1790) was a Spanish cartographer and geographer. Initially trained in Madrid, he was sent to Paris with another promising student, Tomas Lopez de Vargas Machuca, to study under Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D'Anville. They worked together on a map of the Gulf of Mexico, published in 1755. Cano y Olmedilla is best known for his monumental eight-sheet map of South America (Mapa Geografico de America Meridional), published in Madrid in 1775 and made at the bequest of the Marquis de Grimaldi. Cruz Cano y Olmedilla's name appears on a number of other maps and charts published in eighteenth-century Spain, most notably on the maps in Torfino de San Miguel's Atlas Maritimo de Espana.