Second edition (first published in 1543) of a collection of Venetian voyages to the Near and Middle East, edited by Antonio Manuzio, son of Aldus. "Tana was the name which the Genoese gave to their factory at Azov at the mouth of the river Don. This volume contains voyages by Giosafat Barbaro (Tana in 1436, Persia 1471), Ambrogio Contarini (Persia 1473-77), and Luigi Roncinotto (Ethiopia 1532, Persia and India in 1529). It also includes Benedetto Rambertis account of the Turkish Sultans campaign against the Portuguese settlement of Diu in northern India in 1538" (Atabey). "This appears to be one of the very few travel books from the Aldine press" (Blackmer).
Contemporary owner's inscription in ink on the title-page, another cut away at the foot (paper restored without loss); another contemporary owners inscription, "Gioseppe Custodi", below the colophon. Modern owners inscription "J. W. S. M./Caius./Cambridge./Jan. 1899" on front paste-down - very likely the Caius-educated English entomologist John William Scott Macfie (1879-1948). Later himself a traveller to the East, he served as director of the Medical Research Institute in Accra between 1914 and 1923, having undertaken the same responsibilities in an acting capacity at Lagos in 1913. Lacking the final leaf, blank except that it repeats Alduss device (and the name "Aldus") from the title-page. Extremities rubbed and bumped, short cracks in joints. Light water stain in first few leaves. Adams V624; Blackmer 1071; Göllner 861; Renouard 134 (of the 2 eds. he notes the present is "bien mieux imprimée"); cf. Atabey 761 (1st ed.).