Histoire Naturelle des Indes
122 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
Continued from fol. 124
Cacique who is like a king and whom they obey in everything. And when their land no longer bears fruit or is tired of producing, they leave it and go to live in another place where they cultivate the land and where they know there is fresh water. Then after three or four years, they return to their first land where they settle down as they had done before.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 124v–125)
