HERRERA (Antonio de). Description des Indes occidentales, qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le Nouveau Monde, translatée d'espagnol en françois. A laquelle sont adjoustées quelques autres descriptions des mesmes pays, avec la Navigation du vaillant capitaine de mer Jacques Le Maire et de plusieurs autres. Amsterdam, Michel Colin, 1622. Small folio, red morocco, double gilt fillet, spine decorated, spotted edges (17th century binding). First edition of the French translation of this very rare and much sought-after work. This is the first decade of the Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, one of the best early histories of the conquest of America and the Spanish colonies from 1492 to 1554, written by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549-1626), royal chronicler of the Indies and historiographer to Philip II of Spain. The work was first published in Castilian in Madrid in 1601, followed by three further volumes up to 1615. The French translation was published at the same time as the first Latin and Dutch translations, by the same Amsterdam publisher. It contains four other important texts for the exploration of America. The first is the Journal et miroir de la Navigation australe by Jacob Lemaire (1585-1616), the Dutch navigator who was the first to round Cape Horn, thus proving that Tierra del Fuego was not a continent, and whose name was given to the Le Maire Strait between Tierra del Fuego and the Isle of the States. "The volume is valuable as containing the first edition of the genuine Voyage of Le Maire (also issued in Latin and Dutch the same year) as distinguished from that which had been, through the Dutch India Compagny's jealousy of Le Maire, published by Blaeu under the name of Cornelius Schouten, who had commanded one of Le Maire's vessels" (Quaritch, quoted by Sabin). The three other texts published subsequently are a Relation et abrégé de tous les voyages qui ont passé le Détroit de Magellan; the Description de l'Inde occidentale by the privateer and conquistador Pedro Ordóñez de Cevallos; and the Description d'Amérique taken from the Tabulæ geographicæ by Pierre Bertius. The book's finely engraved copperplate illustrations include an engraved title, 17 double-page out-of-text maps (including two fold-outs), an out-of-text portrait of Le Maire and 5 full-page figures in the text illustrating his Journal. The engraved title is adorned with a map of the Americas - the first to depict California as an island, according to R. V. Tooley - in a rich composition featuring the coat of arms of Castile and León and eight vignettes showing Aztec and Mexican deities and a pre-Columbian temple. An exceptional copy in contemporary red morocco. It is complete with the fine portrait of Le Maire, which is mostly missing, causing Sabin to say "the French translation has not the portrait of Le Maire", and the 2 ff. of preface and privilege which open his Navigation australe. From the Genard library (1882, I, no. 787), with bookplate. Auguste Genard (1819-1908), a master glove-maker in Grenoble, was one of the leading collectors in the Dauphiné region in the 19th century. Some light foxing, 2 browned ff. (pp. 89 and 95), very pale wetness at the beginning of Le Maire's relation, 4 ff. slightly shorter at foot (pp. 247-254). Sabin, n°31543 - Borba de Moraes, I, 400 - Alden, 622/67 - Tooley, California as an Island, 107 - Brunet, III, 133.