RELACION del Viaje que [...] Hizieron los Capitanes Bartolome Garcia...

RELACION del Viaje que [...] Hizieron los Capitanes Bartolome Garcia de Nodal y Gonçalo de Nodal [...]. En Madrid. 1621.

RELACION del Viaje que Por Orden de Su Mag. y Acuerdo del Real Consejo de Indias. Hizieron los Capitanes Bartolome Garcia de Nodal y Gonçalo de Nodal hermanos, naturales de Ponte Vedra, al descubrimiento del Estrecho nuebo de S. Vicente, y reconosimq. del Magallanes. En Madrid: Por Fernando Correa de Montenegro, 1621.

¶-¶¶¶4, A-G8, H9, a-b8; [12], 65, 15, [1 br.] ff.; 1 mapa; 205 mm. Full vellum; facsimile map; wormholes on margins; stained.

FIRST EDITION, VERY RARE of this description of an expedition sent by Philip III to the extreme south of America, according to Sabin, "one of the rarest books of its kind". Upon learning of the expedition of Jacob Le Maire and Willem Scouten in 1616 that they had discovered a new strict, D. Filipe sent the brothers Nodal, Bartolomé and Garcia, in the caravels NS de Atocha and NS do Bom Sucesso bound for the Le Maire strait to try to understand how to maintain control over the new passage. With cosmographer Diego Ramírez de Arellano Chamás as pilot, the Nodals rounded Cape Horn through Le Maire Strait, turned north and sailed back to Spain through the Strait of Magellan, thus circumnavigating Tierra del Fuego for the first time. Along the way, they discovered the Diego Ramírez Islands, for 150 years the southernmost land reached by European explorers. The map, drawn up by Diego Ramirez de Arellano and Pedro Teixeira, Royal Cosmographer, shows for the first time the Strait of Le Maire, here renamed the Strait of San Vicente, and shows Tierra del Fuego as an island. About the work, Borba de Moraes states, “This first edition, particularly with the map, is very rare and in fact is considered one of the rarest travel books of the 17th century. Copies containing the map are so rare that it is believed to have been removed... [The book] is of great value as a work of navigation."

¶ BdM2, 616; Palau 99485; Sabin 55394