Print from steel engraving titled Fete autour d'un feu - Feast around fire - from 1st edition of Jean B.G. Roux de Rochelle's Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, [1837], approx. page size 20.5 x 12 cm, approx. image size 14 x 9 cm, nice hand coloring.

This is early 19th century redrawing of engraving from Part II of Theodore De Bry's Grand Voyages (Frankfurt 1591), based on illustrations by Jacques Le Moyne, describing the first French attempt at colonizing Florida. This redrawing was done by Vernier, engraving by Montaut. Original engravings were approx. 16.5 x 21.5 cm on full sheet of text, so this is reduced version.

From a set of illustrations for Roux de Rochelle's work on the United States. Roux de Rochelle, the French Minister to the U.S., included this volume in a large series entitled L'Univers. The American volume included 96 images of the United States and it was first issued in 1837. Beginning in 1839 the plates were reissued in several French editions, as well as editions in Italian, Spanish and German.

Volume II of Theodor De Bry's Grand Voyages.

In 1562, Jean Ribaut led a French expedition of reconnaissance to 'la Florida.' Ribaut left thirty volunteers behind when he went back to France, and they established a fort at "Charlesfort," near Beaufort, South Carolina. Ribaut promised to return in six months, but he was unable to because of the religious civil war then raging in France. The men of Charlesfort eventually abandoned the settlement, built a ship and set off for home, finally being picked up by an English ship in the Atlantic. In the meantime the Spanish had heard of this attempted settlement, and they set off to destroy it. By the time they arrived, the French were gone so the Spanish satisfied themselves by burning Charlesfort and destroying one of the columns that Ribaut had erected.

Ironically, at this very time a second French expedition was under sail for Florida. This group, under the command of René de Laudonniere, landed south of Charlesfort where they built a new fort named Caroline. Things did not go well, and the French were again about to sail off when Ribaut arrived to take over command. By the time Ribaut had arrived, the Spanish got wind of this second French settlement and sent a force under the command of Pedro Menendez de Avilez to wipe out the French. The Spanish landed south of Fort Caroline, where they constructed a fort named St. Augustine, and so founded the longest continuously inhabited settlement in the United States. The Spanish marched north and massacred the French, with only Laudonniere and an artist named Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues escaping. It is to these two survivors that we owe this record of these French expeditions. The text was written by Laudonniere and the illustrations were copied by De Bry from water colors by Le Moyne, who had been sent specifically to draw images of the New World. We are lucky that not only Le Moyne but also his paintings survived to be recorded so wonderfully by De Bry. As Michael Alexander said, De Bry's work "brought to the European public the first realistic visualization of the exotic world opened up across the Atlantic by the explorers, conquerors and settlers."