Jan van Linschoten: The Dutch Marco Polo

Crowell, 1964-01-01. Hardcover. Acceptable/Acceptable. Thomas Y Crowell [Published Date: 1964]. Hardcover, 312 pp. No other printings listed. Acceptable in acceptable dust jacket. Brown cloth covered boards with gold compass rose on front has moderate scuffing and scratching (looks like insect damage) to covers with the color scuffed off along edges and front cover. Binding tight. Interior pages are in very good condition, clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has heavy scuffing and several holes from insect damage. Moderate overall aging and soiling to jacket. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. But for the insect damage to the jacket and front cover, a good reading copy. Black and white illustrations, index, bibliography. [From front jacket flap] For almost a century after our own continent was discovered, the Spanish and Portuguese remained the dominant colonial and sea powers of the world. However, in 1579 a very young man named Jan sailed from the Netherlands to seek his fortune with little but a notebook in his pocket. Jan, the son of the innkeeper at Enk- huizen, a Dutch town on the Zuider Zee, went first to Spain to work for his twin half-brothers, who were in business in Seville. He was in Portugal during the period when Philip II of Spain assumed the crown, and from there he sailed out to Goa as a clerk on the staff of the new archbishop of the Portuguese Oriental empire.But Jan was no ordinary commercial clerk. He was an active, alert young man who kept a journal and a sketchbook - weapons far more dangerous to the Portuguese than cannon and gunpowder. The author, following Jan's writings and supplementing them with his own research and wide knowledge, describes the numerous hazards of Jan's sea voyages, from shipwreck, pirate attack, and mutiny, to the unimaginable filth and disease that beset crew and passengers on the long passage to India in the annual pepper fleet. . . The adventures on the homeward voyage were even more perilous than on the passage out, and Jan did not get home for over three years. He reached home in 1592 and finally published his book containing secret data about the sea routes and countries of the Orient for which the Dutch were avid. . . Jan van Linschoten became famous. Even before his book was printed, he embarked upon another voyage of adventure and exploration, this time in the Arctic Seas north of Russia in search of the Northeast Passage to China. . . Charles McKew Parr, with enormous understanding of the age of exploration and its underlying economic drives, relates the history of Jan's life and times with verve and authority.