Beschreibung:

PEDRO FERNÁNDEZ DE QUIRÓS (c.1565-1615) Historia del decubrimiento de las regions Austriales. Publicada por Don Justo Zaragoza. Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernandez for the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina, 1876-1880-1882. 3 volumes bound in 2, 8° (207 x 143mm). 5 folding maps, half-titles, titles in red and black. (Some scattered spotting.) Contemporary Spanish tree-patterned sheep, spine gilt in compartments, gilt leather lettering-pieces in two. Provenance : Libreria Hispano-Americana de Manuel Garcia, Buenos Aires (contemporary bookseller's label on paste-downs). BEST SPANISH EDITION OF THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRIALIA by Quirós on his voyages 1595-1596 and 1605-1606. This authoritative and most detailed narrative of both voyages remained in manuscript in the private library of the king of Spain and in the Ministry of Marine until edited and first published by Zaragoza. According to Zaragoza, Sabin and Clements Markham, it was dictated by Quirós or taken from his notes and compiled by Luiz de Belmonte Bermudez, his secretary on the 1605 voyage. The Historia contains the only eight surviving Memorials, or petitions made by Quirós to Felipe III, of the fifty that he wrote. It also contains the first printed account of the narrative of Gaspar Gonzalez de Leza, pilot on the 1605 voyage. Further inclusions are Mendaña's voyage to the Solomon Islands 1567-69 and his 1595-96 voyage on which Quirós sailed; Diego de Prado's letters from Torres' separate voyage along the south coast of New Guinea and through the straits which bear his name; a bibliography and appendix of geographical data. Beaglehole called Quirós 'an apostle and prophet'; he was certainly a talented navigator and cartographer and also a visionary. His study of maps, and his voyages from the Philippines to Mexico before 1595, convinced him that a great southern continent extended to the South Pole. His discoveries in the Pacific culminated with his landing in the New Hebrides which he believed formed the northern coast of that continent, and so it was named Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. The Memorials were written from 1606-1612 to petition Felipe III for a third voyage to further confirm his discovery. Few were printed, most were distributed in manuscript because of cost, but all were more or less dismissed or felt to be too sensitive to be published and possibly used by foreigners. So popular was his eighth memorial printed in Spain in 1610 (and reprinted here) that it was soon translated into German, Latin, French and English. Even French mapmakers such as Bellin, Vaugondy and Buache joined the coastline of Espiritu Santo to a hypothetical Australian coastline, confusing mariners into the 18th century. The king rid himself of his irksome explorer in 1614 by sending him to Peru; Quirós died en route believing that he had added the great southern continent to Spain's dominions. Palau 89605; Cox II, pp. 293-294; Sabin 67359, vol. I only; not in Hill. (2)