Quatriesme voyage du Sr de Champlain Capitaine Ordinaire pour le Roy en la marine, et Lieutenant de Monseigneur le Prince de Condé en la Nouvelle France, fait en l annee 1613 Champlain, Sieur [Samuel] de Canadiana,Voyages

Quarto (9" x 6 11/16", 230mm x 170mm): [Full collation available on request]. 26 leaves, pp. 1-2 3-52. With woodblock initials and headpieces. Bound in modern speckled calf. Blind fillet and rolled paneling, blind corner ornamentation, and blind superlibros to the boards. On the spine, four raised bands. Some rodent nibbling to the lower fore-corner throughout, not affecting the text. Excerpted from Les Voyages de Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois and rebound to stand alone. Bookplate of Ernest E. Keet, completed in ink manuscript "10780," to the recto of the first free endpaper. Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) was the great French navigator-explorer of Canada, founder of Quebec City and governor of Nouvelle France (the whole of the French colonial territory in America, less Acadia, Louisiana and the cities of Trois-Rivières and Montréal). Champlain came of age in a time of tremendous religious unrest, political chaos, and endemic warfare, due to the civil wars which raged throughout the kingdom of France at the time of his birth. Little is known about the minutiae of his childhood, but his father was a sailor, and Samuel verifiably became a soldier. In the late 1590s, Champlain served in King Henry IV's army during the Wars of Religion in Brittany. As a quartermaster and, later, a company captain, he developed a reputation for discipline, discretion, and intelligence; secondary literature from the XVII and XVIIIc often describes Champlain during his tour of duty not as a man, but a saint. Following the war and on the cusp of a new century, King Henry IV entrusted the now-revered Champlain with a voyage to the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Champlain disguised himself as a merchant and spent two years observing fortifications, colonial practices, and the imperial mechanisms of the New World. Though his visit was unofficial, Champlain shared intelligence collected on New Spain with the French court. Perhaps it was this stint in the colonies that spurred a desire to explore lands yet unknown to the Old World. Throughout the first decade of the XVIIc, Champlain undertook four major voyages to North America (see our first edition example of these expeditions). During his travels, he explored the region of the St. Lawrence River, attempted to colonize Acadia (modern-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), and established the permanent colony and trading post of Québec city, which would become the capital of Nouvelle-France. The present edition is the first appearance of Champlain's 1613 voyage to the Ottawa River Valley. Prior to this fourth voyage, Champlain had set the publication of Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois underway while in Paris. He ventured out again and reached the mouth of the Ottawa River in May of 1613. After a summer of exploring the region, he returned to Paris in October, where the publication of his 1604, 1610, and 1611 voyages were still a work in progress. This final section was incorporated with separate pagination and its own section title, and the complete text was released by Jean Berjon later that year. Ernest "Lee" Keet, a longtime resident of Saranac Lake, New York, comes from a family with deep roots in the Adirondack region, where his ancestors have lived since 1805. An engineer by training and a private equity investor by profession, Keet has maintained and enriched his family's legacy through active engagement in regional development and cultural preservation. Beginning in the 1980s, he assembled a significant collection of rare books, with a focus on early French and English exploration in the American Northeast, as well as the history and natural heritage of the Adirondacks.Alden & Landis 613/30; Church 360; Sabin 11835. Cataloged by G.R. Murdock.