Before Jamestown or Plymouth was founded, two European artists roamed the forests of North America. They found the New World as lovely as a daydream and as weirdly frightening as a nightmare, painted it with wideawake precision and detail. Last week their historically priceless pictorial reporting, long scattered and out of print, was reissued in one of 1946's handsomest books (The New World, Duell, Sloan & Pearce; $20).
Frenchman Jacques le Moyne and Englishman John White returned with watercolors to inspire stay-at-homes. A Fleming named Theodore de Bry engraved their paintings in 1590-91. Now all but one of Le Moyne's originals have...
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