Tenerife (Teide) – The Pike Mountaine Upon The Island Tenerieto / De Piek-Bergh op het Eilant Tenerifto

Mount Teide

A seventeenth century view of the volcanic rock formations of Mount Teide, on the island of Tenerife, from the German edition of Dapper’s Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten, commonly known as the Description of Africa. The mountain is the highest peak in the Atlantic islands, the scale of which is shown by the diminutive ships in the foreground of the view.

Olfert Dapper’s ‘Description of Africa’ was an ethnographic book which offered a detailed description of the parts of Africa known to Europeans in the mid-seventeenth century. Despite the work being regarded as one of the most important and detailed seventeenth-century publications on Africa, Dapper himself never actually visited the continent. Instead, he relied on the reports of Jesuit missionaries and Dutch explorers. The ‘Description of Africa’ was first published in 1668 by Jacob van Meurs in Amsterdam, with a second Dutch edition appearing in 1676. In 1670, a German translation of the publication was issued, and in the same year, an English translation, which is generally attributed to John Ogilby. A French edition was published in 1676, although it was not as true to the original as the other translations. This translation is considered as the best English account of the continent at the time.