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1719 |
Voyages aux côtes de Guinée & en Amerique. Par Mr. N***.
Amsterdam, aux depens d'Etienne Roger: 1-416. Frontisp. 38 pls.
–An extremely rare work. The copy I examined (in the library of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, Brazil) was accompanied by an excerpt from the catalog of an anonymous bookseller, who felt convinced after considerable research that the author was the Dominican priest Godefroy Loyer (born 1660 or 1666, died 1715). Loyer wrote a Relation du Royaume d'Issyny, Côte-d'Or, Pais de Guinée, avec ce qui s'y passé ... dans l'etablissement que les François y ont fait.... (Paris, 1714). I have not seen the latter, but the bookseller states that it is remarkably similar in content to the 1719 Amsterdam work, and he suggests that the latter was a version of Loyer's book adapted for a Protestant rather than Catholic audience, perhaps actually printed in France and sold in Amsterdam by Roger with his own title-page.
Half the book is devoted to West Africa (Ghana, Gambia, Senegal, etc.) and the rest to the West Indies (Martinique, Cayenne, and St. Domingue). The following account of the (African?) manatee is on p. 70:
{"Il y a plusieurs autres sortes de Poissons le Requiem, le Lamantin, la Bécasse de Mer, la Bécune.
"Je parlerai du Requiem dans la suite, pour le Lamantin c'est un monstre marin, qui a la tête fort semblable à celle d'une vache; ce poisson monstrueux est fort bon à manger. Il vient d'une grandeur & d'une grosseur prodigieuse, la fémelle met ses petits dehors à la façon des vaches, & elles ont d'eux tetines avec lesquelles elles les allaitent; elles les portent entre deux petits bras qu'elles ont, comme vous le pouvez voir dans la Figure."}
The plate facing p. 69 (labelled "Page 70") is redrawn and reversed from that in C. de Rochefort (1667 and earlier eds.).
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