{"product_id":"engraving-of-a-papaya-grove-and-hunters-stalking-waterbirds","title":"1673 Engraving of a Papaya Grove and Hunters Stalking Waterbirds","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn engraved scene of a papaya grove and hunters stalking waterbirds appears in this excerpted leaf from the \"Cannibal Islands\" (modern-day St. Martin) section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the center of the scene, a burst of musket smoke rises beneath a papaya tree from a hunter at right camouflaged under an ox hide beside a second disguised hunter. In the foreground a variety of native fauna are shown: a long-necked bird with a broad spoon-shaped bill standing on a rock at the water's edge as another swims nearby, lizards basking on the bank, and a waterbird flying low over the plain. Behind them, trees labeled \u003cem\u003eArbor Papaya\u003c\/em\u003e droop with long leaves and clusters of fruit, a pineapple and a halved fruit full of seeds lie on the shore, and a palisade and houses stand on the hill beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth sides of the leaf belong to the book's account of the Caribbean islands. The text below finishes a description of the papaya, which is said to bear new fruit every month, fleshy and sweet and shaped not unlike a woman's breast, with a center of round, pungent seeds like those in the cut fruit here. It then turns to St. Martin, famous for its salt pans, and to the Dutch West India Company fleet under Adriaen Pater and Maarten Thijssen. The fleet waited in vain for the Spanish silver fleet, took on more than a thousand goats at Blanca and a hundred thousand lemons on Hispaniola, and in 1629 anchored before the town and fortress of St. Martin. The reverse explains the hunters. Flamingos crowd the island's salt ponds, it says, and post a sentry that cries out and flies off at any sound, so hunters creep downwind under an ox hide until they are close enough to shoot. Because the text compares the flamingo to the spoonbill, the artist may have drawn spoonbills in its place. The reverse goes on to St. Martin's division between the French and the Dutch after the Spaniards abandoned it in 1648 and to the soap trees of St. Barthélemy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled \u003cem\u003eDe Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld\u003c\/em\u003e from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and \u003cem\u003eDie Unbekante Neue Welt\u003c\/em\u003e, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New World Cartographic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43826391220285,"sku":"92440","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0390\/9705\/files\/92440a.jpg?v=1792080349","url":"https:\/\/nwcartographic.com\/products\/engraving-of-a-papaya-grove-and-hunters-stalking-waterbirds","provider":"New World Cartographic","version":"1.0","type":"link"}