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These extraordinary illustrations come from one of two journals kept by a German recruit to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Jörg Franz Müller was a gunsmith from Alsace who enlisted as a midshipman aboard VOC vessels that sailed between Europe and Batavia [in Indonesia] from 1669 to 1682.



The imaginative renderings of peoples, animals and plants from Asia and Africa make up for their lack of strict accuracy with an endearing naive style. It's likely that Müller had at least seen (if not attempted to reproduce drawings remembered from) some earlier natural history works containing fanciful creatures. Although there is little around in english online about this work, there is mention of Müller being aboard vessels taking exotic creatures in cages back to Holland, so he definitely had access to specimens.

