ACUÑA, Cristobal de. Account of the Amazon River. With a Dissertation on the Amazon River to Serve as a Preface.

First French edition of the account of the voyage of Cristobal de Acuña (1597–after 1675), a Jesuit missionary sent to Paraguay, Chile and Peru in 1639, who accompanied General Pedro Texeira on his exploration of the Amazon from Quito to its mouth in the east.

Borba de Moraes, vol. I, p. 11 ; Chadenat, no. 3105 ; Sabin, no. 151.

Acuna, in the company of Pedro Texeira, had travelled down much of the Amazon in 1639–1640.

The work offers a detailed description of the Amazon’s course, its tributaries, geography, fauna and flora, as well as the many Indigenous peoples encountered during the expedition. Keen to promote missionary activity and the interests of the Spanish Crown, Acuña emphasizes the strategic and economic importance of this vast territory, which was still largely unexplored.

The French edition is supplemented by the travel journal of the Jesuit fathers Jean Grillet (1624–1677) and François Béchamel (1637–1676), published here for the first time. The journal is of great ethnographic value, as these two explorers were the first Europeans to venture, at great peril, through the Guiana region and the territory of the Nouragues and Acoquas peoples.

Their journal is an ethnographic document of the first order on the Indigenous peoples of the region.

The work is among the major texts devoted to the exploration of South America in the 17th^e century.

Without the “extremely rare map drawn by Sanson, which is almost always missing” (Chadenat, 3105).

This rare and highly sought-after edition is also found with the imprint of the Widow Billaine.

“Borba de Moraes thought the map could only be found in the simultaneous issue with the publisher’s address of the widow of Louis Billane”.

Copy preserved in its contemporary binding with the emblem of the Minims of Paris: the motto Charitas radiating light and surmounted by a closed crown.