New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America

WAFER, Lionel. A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America. Giving An Account of the Author's Abode There...the Indian Inhabitants...With Remarkable Occurrences in the South-Sea and Elsewhere. The Second Edition. To which Are Added, the Natural History of Those Parts...and Davis' Expedition to the Gold Mines, in 1702. London: James Knapton, 1704. [16],283,[13]pp. plus folding map and three engraved folding plates. 19th-century three-quarter black morocco and pebbled cloth, spine gilt with leather labels. Extremities rubbed. Closed tears discreetly repaired to large folding plates. Light scattered foxing. A few leaves trimmed a bit closely. About very good. SABIN 100940. HILL 1797. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 704/168. JCB (1)III:62. The second edition of this important narrative. Wafer, a British surgeon, abandoned the trading party with whom he had sailed for the West Indies in 1679, joining up with the celebrated buccaneers, Lynch and Cook. In their company he crossed the Isthmus, where he remained in order to recover from an injury, staying with the Darien Indians, whose confidence he gained. When he reached the coast again, he joined Dampier's party. The map is the same as that which appeared in Dampier's A NEW VOYAGE... (1697), and the folding plates depict scenes among the Indians, including a view of a Council, "smoaking Tobacco after their way." Appended to this edition is an interesting account, by Nathaniel Davis, of an expedition of Englishmen to the gold mines of Spanish America in 1702. This work is so complimentary to that of Dampier that it was subsumed into the third edition of Dampier's narrative.