Histoire Naturelle des Indes
90 of 122
Accession number: MA 3900
Credit: The Morgan Library & Museum. Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983.
Title: Histoire Naturelle des Indes [supplied on an 18th century title page]
Contents: 199 images of West Indian plants, animals and human life, with accompanying manuscript captions written in late sixteenth-century French.
Medium: Most of the illustrations consist of a black chalk underdrawing and a combination of pen and brown ink with watercolor; on some images selected areas have also been glazed with a gum.
Dimensions: Binding: 30 x 21 cm; individual leaves: 29.3 x 19.7 cm.
Binding: Bound or rebound in brown leather in the late 18th century.
Pagination: Penciled folio numbers (1–125) in lower right corner of each page were added by The Morgan Library & Museum. Folios 92v–93, 93v–94, and 95v–96 are fold-out leaves.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Come Le Bled Croist En Vne Prouince Nommee Leresne Pais-des Yndes Du Perou. . .(How the Wheat Grows in a Province Called Leresne, Land of the Indians of Peru, Being Two Hundred Leagues Inside the Country Where a River Called La Magdalena, Also Called the Great River, Originates, Which Is Seven Leagues Wide and Empties Fresh Water into the Sea for a Good League and a Half)
This province is fertile in wheat, meat, fowl, gold, and gems, like emeralds and other precious stones, and, with these, is found plenty of rock crystal. The Indians ordinarily harvest wheat twice a year which they take to other places where there is none at all, completely ground by them, and put it into sacks filled to capacity, sending them by sea and land in exchange for wine from the Canaries, linen, knives, hoops, and other things which they need, like fish-hooks, because they have only those made of fish-bone.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 90v–91)
