1673 Engraving of Tobacco, Sassafras, and Wildlife on Tobago
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of tobacco, sassafras, and wildlife on Tobago appears in this excerpted leaf from the "Cannibal Islands" (modern-day Tobago) chapter of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a tall flowering plant labeled Petume, an old name for tobacco, spreads its long leaves and bell-shaped blossoms beside a leafy tree marked Auhiuba sive Sassafras. Snakes coil at either side of the foreground with two long-snouted animals crouched between them. Beneath the trees at right dark figures sit before a long arched hut, and in the distance a band of men with spears crosses the plain.
Both sides of the leaf describe Tobago, which the book counts among its Cannibal Islands. Tobacco like the plant seen here is said to bloom once a year with bright violet bells that give way to seed heads shaped like poppy pods, and growers cut back the tops of the stalks to keep it from shooting up too high. The hummingbird, the text adds, sometimes builds its nest beneath the tobacco leaves. The same column tells how Zeeland citizens of Walcheren sent some two hundred settlers to Tobago, most of whom were cut down by the Caribs, until Lampsins took up the work again and resettled the island. It closes with St. Christopher, which Columbus is said to have named for a great mountain bearing a smaller one on its slope like the giant Christopher carrying the Christ child across the sea. The reverse turns to Tobago's wildlife, from snakes as thin as a thumb that hunt grasshoppers and birds but harm no one to the sassafras tree, whose bark gives off a fennel-like scent and serves as a remedy for wounds. It also tells the story of crabs that wedge a pebble between an oyster's shells so it cannot close.
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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