A[my], T[homas] (fl. 1682).

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Carolina; or a Description of the Present State of that Country, and the natural excellencies thereof. London: for W.C. and to be sold by Mrs. Grover in Pelican Court in Little Britain, 1682

small 4to (218 x 172mm.), [2], 40pp., brief ink manuscript corrections to text on pp.14, 15 and 17, binding: eighteenth-century vellum-backed boards, lightly browned and spotted, boards rather foxed

Literature

Wing A3032aA; Arents 370; Church 673; Howes A349; Alden 682.37; JCB II i p.95; Sabin 2172; Streeter sale 2:1109; Vail 200

Catalogue Note

first edition. the earliest account of the port royal settlement before its transference to the west bank of the Ashley River. The author "T.A." identifies himself as a clerk on board the Richmond, which went out in 1680 and returned to London in 1682. "Thomas Ash, otherwise unidentified, has long been ascribed as the author of this tract, but in the absence of substantial evidence in his favour it seems more likely that it was written by Thomas Amy, relative of Lord Proprietor Sir John Colleton. Amy, later a Proprietor in his own right, was made a Cacique late in 1682" (St Julien Ravenel Childs, Malaria and Colonization in the Carolina Low Country (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), 189.)

Among the products of the country that are listed is a "strong Spirit like Brandy" that may be drawn with an "alembick" from a "Maceration" of corn; probably one of the earliest mentions of the invention of corn whiskey.