Voyages, Travels and Explorations

John Work Garrett Collection of American Discovery and Exploration

A life-long interest of John Garrett's is reflected in this collection, which includes Columbus' letter to Queen Isabella, De Insulis in Mari Indico (Basel, 1494), in which he describes the discovery of America with the first printed illustrations of the New World; Richard Eden's annotated copy of Peter Martyr's De Rebus Oceanis & Orbe Nove (Basel, 1533), which Eden used for his translation Decades of the Newe World (London, 1955); and Thomas Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Frankfort, 1590).

Another English explorer and colonist represented in the Garrett collections is John Smith (1580-1631), who helped to found the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and who led exploring expeditions up the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers and around the Chesapeake Bay. He was prolific in describing his discoveries in several books which are included in the Garrett Library; among these are his Generall historie of Virginia (1624) and The true travels, adventures, and observations of Captaine John Smith in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (1630).

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the publication of many important compilations of early voyages. Theodor de Bry's Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam orientalium et Indiam occidentalem, issued between 1590 and 1634, was a monumental undertaking of two series--the "Great Voyages" which relate to North and South America, and the "Small Voyages" which relate to the East Indies and Africa. Although the plan was to publish all parts in Latin, German, English, and French, only the first part of the "Great Voyages" was ever published in this four language format. All other parts were issued in German and Latin only. The Garrett Library has copies of the first volume, Thomas Hariot's A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1590), in all four languages, the French one containing particularly fine hand-colored illustrations. These illustrations had a great impact on the European image of the New World. The remaining volumes of the Garrett set of the "Great" and "Small" voyages are printed in Latin only. These volumes include accounts of the voyages of Francis Drake, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Willem Schouten, and others. The eighteenth century witnessed the voyages of James Cook (1728-1779), an English explorer who sailed to many parts of the world including Antarctica and who was killed in a native ambush in the Hawaiian islands. In the United States in the early nineteenth century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the continent of North America and reached the Pacific Ocean in 1806. The Garrett Library has several editions of the history of their expedition.

Peabody Collection

The Peabody Library has an extensive collection of works from the seventeenth, eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries with a particularly good representation of French explorers and circumnavigators. Included are accounts of the voyages of Bougainville, Freycinet, Vaillant and Dumont d'Urville. Along with the publications of major, officially sponsored voyages, there are writings of individual explorers, Doughty and Burton among them in addition to many less well known travelers who entertained and informed the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reading public. Their works appear to have been acquired as they were published resulting in a strong collection for the study of the appearance, manners and customs of Europe, Asia, North America and Africa before World War I.