From Amsterdam and under date July 19, 1668, a summary of the earlier
Dutch issue with two paragraphs of introduction was sent to Paris, and
was printed in a four-page pamphlet by Sébastien Marbre Cramoisy, the
king's printer, whose name is so honorably connected with the Jesuit
Relations--stories as remarkable as any offered in the "Isle of Pines"
and of immeasurable value on the earliest years of recorded history
in our New England. Even this summary, thus definitely dated, offers
problems. The location of the island is given in general terms in
the half-title as "below the equinoctial line," and in the text as in
"xxviii or xxix degrees of Antartique latitude." Nowhere in the first
London part is either location used, and in the second London part,
which bears nearly the same date as the Cramoisy summary--July
22--twenty degrees of latitude is given. The writer of the summary thus
allowed himself some freedom.
A second French edition, without imprint, contains eleven pages and is
a translation of the first London part, paraphrased in sentences, but
on the whole a close rendering of the English text There never was
a title-page to this issue--the first page having the signature-mark
A--yet with eleven pages only, it [16]would seem fit that a title-page
should round out the twelve for the convenience of printing.