Histoire Naturelle des Indes
95 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
Comme Les Yndes Font La Chasse Au Poisson (How the Indians Hunt for Fish)
The Indians go to the seashore and seeing a fish playing outside the water, quickly shoot at it with their arrows, making it die for when it is struck, it can no longer swim nor go to the bottom of the water.
Leport Appelle' Le Nombre De Dieu (Port Called Nombre De Dios)
This is a beautiful and spacious harbor having a depth of seven to eight fathoms of water in which the fleet of ships from Spain arrives to trade merchandise with those from Peru which is located in a mountainous region where the air is heavy and unhealthy and the Spaniard cannot live there for a long time.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 96v–97)