This is the first Dutch edition of Bossu’s very rare work. ‘The Nouveaux Voyages is a collection of twenty-one letters written by Bossu, a French army officer, telling of his life and travels from 1751 to 1762 in the vast Louisiana country to as far north as Fort Chartres in what is now Illinois, and as far east as the French post at Mobile. Bossu wrote well and his letters not only give an interesting picture of life and travels in the Mississippi Valley and the Mobile country to the east at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century, but incorporated also are many sketches of events of the preceding years. Bossu came to New Orleans only thirty-three years or so after its founding and only eighty years after La Salle’s journey down the Mississippi, and the first and second hand recollections were still fresh.’ (Streeter). ‘For comments, too critical of the ministry, Bossu was imprisoned and his book banned for a while in France; this probably account for the scarcity of the first edition, of which Sabin found no record.’ Howes B 626. Sabin 6465, Streeter 1518.