Ost-Indianische Räysen und Krieges-Dienste

[8 plates] [10] pp 1-298, Index [14] [Wanting Portrait and Map] The first edition of Frick's Voyages to the East Indies. The text is complete with eight engravings, most folding, bound in. Only the stub of the map opposite page 1 is present and the portrait frontispiece is absent. The title page is marked with a small square razored out. The first gathering is beginning to pull. The contemporary pigskin binding is in very good condition apart from minor discolouration. Frick was a volunteer with the Dutch East India Company, a shrewd and observant man who provides an account of trade and administration and everyday life in the Empire of the seventeenth century Netherlands. Frick's journey begins aboard the Ternate which foundered off the Cape of Good Hope. In Batavia the writer served in the Bantam War as well as visiting Sri Lanka, Japan, Bali, Burma, India and Siam. The engraved illustrations show off several of the more dramatic and bizarre of the author's experiences including battles, sieges and several scenes showing bizarre animal and human encounters. As C Ernest Fayle puts it 'Frick is more concerned with relating facts than with reflecting upon them, but his occasional comments on the Dutch East India Company's monopolistic policy are just and shrewd.' Frick's account was extensively translated but the German original is very scarce.