Without mentioning the name of the author, the well-known Natural and Moral History of the Indies by the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta was included in Vol. 9 - originally the last one - of the Latin and German versions of Theodore de Bry's finely illustrated Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem, together with fourteen new drawings. This collection of accounts of voyages and travels has been analyzed thus far as just a collection of illustrations, neglecting the texts accompanying them and emphasizing the ideological dimension of De Bry's work. In this essay I'll try a novel approach. I'll consider the illustrations as supplementary to a text; furthermore, I'll reflect upon the relative power of the ethnographic representation of both drawings and texts by closely comparing them to one another in the light of the original testimonies.

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