Chapter VIII: Introduction: To the First Edition (5)

Besides De Veer’s narrative, Phillip translated from the Dutch the three works mentioned below. [229] As one then who performed so much for the cause which it is the object of the Hakluyt Society to promote, he has a claim to our forbearance for all the imperfections of his translation, which in spite of them, gives still no unapt representation of the simplicity and quaintness of its Dutch original.

The editor has already acknowledged the aid afforded to him by Mr. Vogel and Mr. Petermann. He has now also to express his obligation to Mr. R. H. Major and Mr. W. B. Rye, of the British Museum, for much valuable assistance in the bibliographical portions of this Introduction. And he has further to record, that to his worthy friend and preceptor in the Dutch language, Mr. John Bos,—who was employed by him to make a new translation of De Veer’s text into English, in order that he might be spared the inconvenience of collating the whole work in the Reading Room of the British Museum,—he is indebted for much help in the preparation of the index at the end of this volume, and also for many curious particulars of information which none but an old Amsterdammer could well have supplied.

February 15th, 1853.

NOTICE.

The accompanying Map, which has been reproduced by Mr. F. Muller of Amsterdam, is issued to Members of the Hakluyt Society, to be bound up with the volume containing the Three Voyages of Barents. It is the first Map on which the track of Barents, in his third voyage, is shown.

The Map is stated (on legends at the top, and also at the foot—to the right) to have been drawn by Willem Barents himself (“Auctore Wilhelmo Bernardo”). It was probably drawn by him at his winter quarters in Novaya Zembya, and brought home by Heemskerk. The legend at the foot further states that the map was engraved by Baptista-a-Doetichem, probably a son of Lucas-a-Doetichem, who engraved the plate of the funeral of Charles V, in 1558. The thirty-six plates in the tenth edition of Linschoten’s Itinerarium, were all engraved by the son Baptista, of Doetichem, which is a small town in Guelderland.

In the same legend it is added “Cornelius Nicolai excudebat.” The Dutch name of this publisher is Cornelius Claeszoon. He was the celebrated publisher at Amsterdam who published the three editions of Linschoten’s Itinerarium in 1595 and 1604, in Dutch. In 1599 he brought out an abridged Latin translation, in the second part of which is inserted a short narrative of the Arctic Expedition; quite distinct from the larger work written by Linschoten, and published in 1601 by Gerard Ketel at Franeker in Friesland, with entirely different maps, and without a narrative of the Arctic voyage.

It is, therefore, clear that the map was first published in 1599 by Cornelius Claeszoon (who was also publisher of the Journal of De Veer), in the second part of the abridged Latin edition of Linschoten’s Itinerarium; but it is wanting in some copies of this second part.