
Luke Batterham
Senior Valuer
This auction has ended. View lot details
Sold for £3,500 inc. premium
Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialist
Senior Valuer
In 1630 Walter Hamond spent four months on the island of Madagascar, whilst acting as surgeon in the employ of the East India Company. By 1637 Charles I was being advised that Madagascar was a convenient place stopping place en route to the trading stations of the Persian Gulf and the Far East. Hamond's treatise portrays an exaggerated prospect of the island, stating that "for wealth and riches, no Island in the world can be preferred before it. As for gold, silver, pearle and precious jems, questionlesse the Island is plentifully stored with them... great quantities of Aloes... the first fruits of a most plentifull harvest, which is better than the gleanings of America". "In his desire to present Madagascar and its allegedly primitive peoples as a semblance of the Garden of Eden, Hamond's writing can be seen as a precursor of the eighteenth-century salute to the noble savage" (ODNB).