Americae sive Indiae Occidentalis

The present work is De Laet's general map of America, providing a fine outline of America as known to the Dutch at the beginning of the 17th Century. The most interesting feature of this map is that although it is known that de Laet had seen maps of California as an island, he focused upon more reliable accounts, such as Herrera, in depicting a peninsular form. The map has the best west coast delineation to date. De Laet also does not speculate on the unknown polar regions and avoids any depiction of geographical detail regarding the speculative cartography of the Northwest Passage.

De Laet's map appeared in his seminal work on America, which is widely regarded as the most important and influential treatise on the subject published in the 17th Century, the Novus Orbis seu descriptionis Indiae occidentalis Libri XVIII printed in Lugduni Batavorum: Elzevir, 1633.

Third edition of one of the most important of seventeenth-century New World voyages collections, compiled by a director of the recently formed Dutch West India Company, Johannes de Laet (1581-1649). Previous editions were published: the first in Antwerp in Dutch (1625), the second edition-the first in Latin-in Leiden, in 1630, also by the publisher Elzevir.

This issue include for the first time four American regional maps: "Americae sive Indiae Occidentalis", the best West Coast delineation to date, and interestingly depicting California as a peninsula not an island, and stopping short of the controversial region of the North West Passage; "Nova Francia et Regiones Adiacentes", one of the foundation maps of Canada, the first printed map to include an accurate depiction of Prince Edward Island, and the earliest of a north-south oriented Lake Champlain, and still relied upon by Blaeu in 1662 and Coronelli in the 1690s; "Nova Anglia" is of "extreme importance being the first printed one to use the names "Manbattes" (Manhattan), and "N. Amsterdam", or New York, founded in 1626. It is also the earliest to use the Dutch names of "Noordt Rivier" and "Zuyd Rivier", for the Hudson and Delaware Rivers respectively, as well as the Indian "Massachusetts", for the new English colony" (Burden); and "Florida, et regions vicinae" a largely derivative map with one notable alteration in the "placing of "C.Francois" further east into the Atlantic Ocean. Florida, as we know it today, is here called "Tegesta Provinc." This name, applied here for the first time, is that of a tribe of Indians living on the south-west coast. "Florida" was at this time applied to a far larger region" (Burden "The Mapping of North America", p. 284). 

A fine impression, on contemporary laid paper, very good condition.

Bibliografia

Burden, "The Mapping of North America", pp. 284-285, n.229; McCorckle 630.1. Augustyn & Cohen pp. 26-7; Schwartz/Ehrenberg, pl. 57, p. 103.