Compendium and Description of the West Indies by de Espinosa, Antonio Vazquez - 1942

Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1942., 1942. First edition. First edition. Large 8vo. 862 pp. Translated by Charles Upson Clark. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 102. Beautifully bound in blue leather with gilt illustration on the front cover; gilt ruling; gilt lettering to spine; gilt dentelles; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers. Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa (d. 1630) was a Spanish Carmelite friar who abandoned his academic ambitions in order to serve as a priest in the Americas. His manuscript of 1628 was a "lost" manuscript until translator Clark found it in the Barberini collection in the Vatican. Spending the years from 1610 to 1622 in the Indies, this compendium details descriptions of the people, products, history and administration of the whole Spanish empire from Mexico to Chile, not omitting the Philippine Islands or Paraguay ... most of these places he visited himself , and he frequently closes his chapters with the statement that 'all of this I verified with my… Read More