Acarete du Biscay was a Frenchman, possibly of Basque origin, about whom very little is known. In December 1657 he embarked from Cádiz, Spain for the Plate River region of South America, posing as the nephew of a Spanish gentleman to circumvent a ban by Spain on visits by foreigners to its New World possessions. In 1658 he traveled overland across the Argentine pampas to the silver mines of Potosí, located in present-day Bolivia. In 1672, Acarete published an account of this trip in his native French. A later version of the work was published in Paris in 1696 under the title <i>Relation des voyages dans la rivière de la Plate. </i>This English translation of the later edition was published in London in 1698. It is part of a larger work entitled <i>Voyages and Discoveries in South-America</i> that contains accounts of three early voyages to the continent. Acarete made detailed observations about the places he visited and the people he encountered, and his work is an important source for the history of Argentina and Peru in the early years of Spanish settlement.
<br>Description and travel; Mines and mineral resources; Rio de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay)
Acarete, du Biscay (17th century)
1698<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1698-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
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