1673 Engraving of Inuit and a Kayak from Frobisher's Voyages
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Inuit and a kayak from Frobisher's voyages appears in this excerpted leaf from the America's Discoverers section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
Beside a tent pitched beneath a palm, three figures in hooded fur coats stand together, one holding a spear. On the water beyond, a paddler in a long, pointed boat raises a bow, while arrows and birds fly toward a rocky headland and a ship lies offshore.
The engraving appears to illustrate the text below on the people Martin Frobisher met in the far north of America. Tents like the one seen here are described as being woven of whalebone and covered with stretched hides, with their doors always facing south. Their largest boats are said to carry seventy people. The smaller ones were of leather, shaped almost like a weaver's shuttle, with a hole in the middle where a single man sat, laced the leather cover around his waist, and drove the boat along very fast with one oar. The text calls the land barren, home only to deer, wolves, hares, polar bears and wolf-like dogs, all eaten raw. Frobisher returned to Milford Haven with shining stones he took for gold and with a man, a woman, and a child the text names Kalichoe, Egnoge and Nutiok, all of whom soon died in London. The reverse follows Francis Drake's voyages. In one, a king crowned Drake with a golden crown, and in another the English found the Spanish king's arms at Santo Domingo with the motto Non sufficit orbis, "the world is not enough." It goes on to the voyages of Thomas Cavendish and John Smith.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld 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 Die Unbekante Neue Welt, 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.
CONDITION
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