8vo. 600 pp., 2 [errata], with 4 plates: a large folding map of Gran Chaco and the bordering territories engraved by Giuseppe Ballanti after Joaquín Camaño and 3 large interesting letterpress tables on the number and state of the Jesuit missions in the area. Contemporary mottled calf, gilt-tooled spine with lettering over red morocco label, preserves original marbled endpapers. Fine copy, minor or inconsequential foxing and toning, overall very clean and crisp throughout.

Jolís (San Pedro de Torrelló, 1728 - Bologna, 1790) entered the Society of Jesus in 1753. He arrived at Montevideo in July 1755 with Father José Peramás as members of Father Baltasar Hueber's expedition. Finished his theological studies in Córdoba del Tucumán, he was ordained a priest there in 1758. Then, he was sent to the missions of the western Gran Chaco where he carried out missionaryactivity for ten years, working among the indigenous Lule, Vilela and Toba peoples with Father Roque Gorostiza. In 1762, being based in the San Ignacio de Ledesma reduction (an Indian centre evangelised by the Jesuits and subject to a highly regulated regime of communal living based on obedience, work and socioeconomic egalitarianism), Jolís undertook journeys of exploration in the region of the Bermejo river in search of not previously known indigenous tribes. Thanks to his efforts, the reductions of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Macapillo and Nuestra Señora del Buen Consejo in Ortega were founded in 1763. In 1764, he opened a road between Jujuy (Argentina) and the SalinasValley (Bolivia). After the expulsion of the Society from the Spanish West Indies, he fled with the majority of the Jesuits of the province of Paraguay to Italy, where he resided in Faenza and Ravenna. Jolís published only the first volume of his Saggio sulla storia naturale della Provincia del Gran Chaco. In the first part of the book, he describes the region, its flora and fauna. His observations on medicinal and tinctorial plants and on South American camelids (llama, vicuña, alpaca and guanaco) are of particular interest. The second part deals with the tribes that inhabited the Gran Chaco. In the last part, he illustrates the Spanish cities near the Chaco: Asunción, Corrientes, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Salta, Jujuy, Tarija, Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz. In addition, he includes in his book a map of Father Joaquín Camaño. According to Hervás, who corresponded with Jolís since the latter was an important source of information on the Chiquita and Lule languages, of which Hervás provided the numerals and the Lord's Paryer (Idea dell'universo, vols. XVII, 40, XIX, 97-98, and XXI, 99-101), Jolís had already written three other volumes of his Saggio: “Esta obra contenía cuatro tomos. El autor murió antes de que se publicase el segundo, casi totalmenteimpreso. En el tercero y en el cuarto ponía tres diarios de tres viajes, que había hecho a lo interior de tierras de las naciones bárbaras del Chaco.” (For further information, see Antonio Astorgano Abajo s life of José Jolís for the Real Academia de la Historia s online biographies).

The work includes a large folding map of Gran Chaco and the bordering territories engraved by Giuseppe Ballanti after Joaquín Camaño, and importantly 3 large letterpress tables on the number and state of the Jesuit missions in the area, titled: ‘Catalogo delle Riduzioni, o Popolazioni, dette Missioni, degli Indiani del Chaco, che già furono sotto la direzione degli estinti Gesuiti, descritte secondo lo stato in cui trovavansi nell anno 1767’; ‘Annua delle missioni degli indiani Guaranis che appartengono al Vescovato dell'Assunzione del Paraguai fatta l'anno 1767’; ‘Annua delle missioni degl'indiani Chiquiti che appartengono al Vescovato di Santa Croce della Sierra fatta l anno 1766’.

Sabin 3641; Streit, Bibliotheca missionum; Palau; Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. IV, Bruxelles-Paris, 1890, col. 812.