Freti Magellanici ac novi Freti vulgo Le Maire..

The very rare first state with the address of J.Hondius. After the acquisition of the copper plate by Willem Blaeu, the name of J.Hondius has been erased and substituted by his own.
Blaeu added a Dutch translation of the explanatory text of the passage by Barent Jansz. Potgieter who accompanied captain Sebald de Weert to the Straits in 1599/1600, being the first Dutch vessels to sail through the Strait of Magellan.
Collector's item.
A fine, dark impression of Hondius' second chart of Tierra del Fuego without printed text on verso.
After various English voyages, the Dutch appeared in the Strait of Magellan in 1599. One of the Dutch pioneering voyages to the south-west was the one by Jacques Mahu and Simon de Cordes, who were sent out by Rotterdam merchants. The five ships of this fleet were the first Dutch vessels to sail through the Strait of Magellan. One of them, the De Liefde , completed the crossing of the Pacific, reached Japan and laid the foundations for Dutch trade there.


Jodocus Hondius Jr. planned to produce a new modern atlas less dependent on the Mercator plates that his father had acquired in 1604. It would make sense that he considered putting together 'ad hoc collections' of the maps already cut to stimulate further interest. According to van der Krogt, only six of these collections are known today. One of them has a letterpress title Atlantis Maioris Appendix and was made up by Jodocus or his widow in mid 1629 to be displayed in the autumn of 1629 at the Frankfurt book fair as a continuation of the great Mercator atlas. On Jodocus death on August 18, 1629, this among 39 other Hondius copper plates were purchased by Willem Blaeu who deleted Hondius' name and added his own to the imprint. Blaeu published immediately 34 of them as part of his first atlas.
This is the rare first state of which Peter van der Krogt list only 5 other copies in his updated Atlantes Neerlandici.
Collectors item of great importance!.