Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis

8vo [22.5 x 15 cm]; xxxv, 193 pp, frontis, 9 plates and charts, maps, including folding and including two folding maps, partly colored at end, bibliog, index. original blue blind-stamped cloth, gilt vignette, gilt spine title lettering, small light stain on rear cover, else a fine clean copy with a presentation inscription signed by Kimble on the endpaper. A picture of this book is available upon request by ema Duarte Pacheco was deemed in his own day to be as eminent as Vasco da Gama, was unnoticed for nearly 400 years until his work was first published in 1892, here translated into English for the first time and with an excellent introduction, providing a good historical perspective. Duarte Pacheco had sailed around the coasts of Africa and provides the only eyewitness description of these coasts, as well as a description of navigation problems. W. F. Morris contributes Appendix IV on the map. Other appendices are on the Senegal-Niger-Nile controversy, snakes, silent barter. 'It is still a most valuable volume of eyewitness information on the sea, the coast, and the peoples of the west coast of Africa as far south as the Cape of Good Hope'. [Hart]