gems, jade, Fischer-Other

John Ogilby’s America: Being the Latest, and Most Accurate Description of the New World is an extensively illustrated 17th-century survey of the Americas, largely adapted from Arnoldus Montanus’s De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld. It describes the geography, natural history, Indigenous peoples, settlements, governments, religions, customs, commerce, and European colonization of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. The work is notable for its numerous maps, views, and engravings depicting cities, landscapes, peoples, plants, animals, and natural resources. Of particular interest to gemologists are accounts of gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, precious stones, and other mineral resources, including descriptions of their localities, mining, Indigenous use, and trade. Although much of the information was compiled from earlier sources rather than Ogilby’s firsthand observations, the book provides an important synthesis of contemporary European knowledge of the mineral wealth and precious materials of the New World.