First edition, a very attractive copy of this early imaginary voyage through the Pillars of Hercules – the Strait of Gibraltar – to the "new world."

First edition, a very attractive copy of this early imaginary voyage through the Pillars of Hercules – the Strait of Gibraltar – to the "new world."

A wild farce, with everything from courtiers to pirates, a Turkish eunuch and a substantial dissertation on knight errantry, the book also has an important series of reflections on the Pillars of Hercules, long considered the edges of the known world (not for nothing did Plato claim that Atlantis lay beyond them).

In the classical account of Hercules' twelve labours he was commanded to retrieve the golden apples from the garden of Hesperides, far to the north of Europe. Bouciquault denounces this as a transparent fiction, announcing that Hercules actually sailed past Gibraltar, was caught in a storm and blown far to the west where he made landfall in the Americas. Although the author hints darkly that the Greeks had their own reasons for maintaining this absurd deception, he concludes that the mystery was finally revealed by Colombus, 'l'Alcide des Espagnes' (the Hercules of Spain).

The author was a cavalry officer known for his political and economic pamphlets, at one point writing a stern series of letters critical of John Law, the architect of the South Seas Bubble.