Voyage to Exotica

Johannes Nieuhof (or Nieuhoff) (1618-1672) lived in Brazil for nine years in the 1640s and was subsequently employed as an agent by the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

Surprisingly, there is scant information online about Nieuhof. He obviously travelled to India and Indonesia and the Far East (as seen from the illustrations above) and was later part of an official delegation to China which formed the backbone for another book. He was killed by locals in Madagascar during a return voyage to the East Indies.

The material above comes from Volume II of a series translated from the original Dutch and published by Churchill in London in 1703. From memory - (I looked into this ages ago in reference to the BibliOdyssey book but as usual my own copy has been purloined by family, friends and neighbours for the majority of time since it was released and is currently on leave) - the Churchill firm were veritable travel book entrepreneurs, exploiting the popularity of this new form of publication. Consequently, they seem to have produced a number compilation works in multiple editions that included variable sources for both the narratives and, in particular, the illustrations. In other words, their publications were a motley assortment of unreliability, but memorable for the large numbers of weird and wonderful images they included.

I have posted about Volume I (mostly about Brazil) previously. The short title of the work is: 'Voyages and Travels into Brasil and the East Indies' and is available from Cornell University's South East Asia Visions Collection. Once you click to get inside the book, there's a drop down menu that lists the copious number of plates, illustrations and maps.