Tag: Location: North America

North America

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This map is a map called “North America” that was made by a mapmaker named John Tallis in, um, 1851. Tallis was well known for the high quality of his engraving work and also known for the, uh- the ways in which he would illustrate various features of the subject of his map. So, in this particular case we have a wonderful collection of images: uh, images of the indigenous peoples of the north, Eskimos you might say, in the very top. Off to the right, images of, uh, beavers, the beaver having been a major economic force in the development of the Americas because their pelts were so widely, uh, desired. Pictures of travelers and explorers. Pictures on the left-hand side of Indians next to their teepee and a magnificent buck, uh, on the left-hand side as- as well. Tallis also has a unique border – very delicate, very attractive. And all together, this, uh, beautifully colored map makes a nice impression.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935560

Insulae Americanae in Oceano Septentrionali, cum Terris adiacentibus

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This is a map by a mapmaker by the name of Jan – j-a-n – Jansson – j-a-n-s-s-o-n – who lived from 1588 to 1664. This was one of the prize maps in my collection, and I’m so glad that it is now in Villanova University’s Special Collections. It is a depiction of the lower portion of the then-known portions of North America, plus the, uh, Central American region, and the very top of the continent of South America. Featured are the great islands of the Caribbean, including Cuba and Hispaniola, and then of course the string of islands that radiate to the east from Hispaniola and circle down to the South American continent, the so-called Windward Islands. In this map we have two compass roses; each is the starting point for a series of lines called rhumb lines, thats r-h-u-m-b. Rhumb lines which could, and in many cases were, used by mariners to plot courses, at least portions of courses, as they navigated from one part of the world to another. Like so many maps of the day it also is rich with, uh, with illustrations – there are ships on the on the, uh, on the sea, there are various creatures – a lizard, a turtle, a snake and others – and circling the cartouche in the upper left-hand corner of this map. Again this map is called Insulae Americanae in Oceano Septentrionali, and it is a prize, prize edition of an early map of the Caribbean.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935545

America: Noviter Delineata

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This map is a depiction by a mapmaker by the name of Hondius, Hendrikus Hondius, dating, uh, to roughly to 1630 (or) 1631. It is full of activity. Uh, there are galleons. There are large sailing ships. There is a conflict going on between two of them in the Pacific, the so-called Mar-del-Zur. And, uh, there is activity all over. At the very foot of South America, uh, there is a sea creature, a fairly large sea creature belching water – probably not a creature that the average mariner would want to run into. And a similar creature appears on the left-hand side.

There are various insets. Uh, one depicting the top of the world, the Arctic region. And one depicting the bottom of the world, the Antarctic, uh, region.

If, uh, if one looks through the map at various points where there may be a blank spot, the mapmaker has chosen to fill them in with some interesting animal life or other activity that characterized that part of the world. Uh, obviously, by this date, not too much was known by the interior either of South America or North America, and when one looks up to the North American portion of the map, there is a great deal of blank space, a great deal of geography yet to be discovered.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1933458

Nova Virginiae tabvla

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This map is “Nova Virginiae Tabula” and it’s a map by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, who lived from 1571 to 1638. It’s an extraordinary map, and Clive Burton, one of the great, uh, compilers of antique maps in the United States has described it as one of the most important maps ever published about America or a part of America. What it shows is, uh, a good portion of the state of Virginia, particularly that portion surrounding, uh, the Chesapeake Bay, which is clearly indicated. It’s, uh- It’s nicely colored. The map is a little bit toned but the color still is striking.

One of the things that your eye is immediately drawn to is the, uh, print material in the upper-left left-hand corner which features the Indian Chief Powhatan, uh, sitting in a longhouse along with the leaders of his tribe with a smoking fire before him. Now Powhatan, as most people have heard, is associated with a daughter by the name of Pocahontas, and the legend has it that Pocahontas, Powhatan’s daughter, met and had an amorous relationship with one of the earlier explorers, Captain John Smith – no relation to me, by the way! In any event, uh, Powhatan took a shine to Captain Smith, uh, not necessarily on behalf of his daughter but perhaps because his tribe was being pressed on all sides by other Indian rivals and, uh, the speculation is that he may have seen the English, uh, Captain John Smith, as potential allies in- in a conflict.

The map itself is actually based on a map that John Smith, the original, uh, in 1612 drew of this same area, the Chesapeake Bay area. When you look at the map, you’ll realize that north is essentially to the right, west is where we would normally think “north” to be, and east is at the bottom of the, uh- of the frame. Captain John Smith’s map was largely laid out the same way. It was then emulated by still another mapmaker, Jodocus Hondius, in 1618, and, ultimately, Willem Blaeu created this masterpiece, uh, one of the great maps of America’s Mid-Atlantic in the 1600s.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935518

America

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This map is a map of America by, uh, Ruscelli. He is a 16th Century mapmaker. This is heavily annotated, and so it is fun to look closely at both what is set forth as North America and also what is South America, and to compare the names of that day with those of the, uh, present. So, one can find, by looking closely, Florida. The islands of Cuba and Hispaniola are there, as are literally dozens and dozens of other locations. It’s all a little congested, but it’s beautifully engraved with all the flourishes that Ruscelli was known for, and, uh, again, in pretty good condition for a map that’s more than four-and-a-half centuries old.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1700142

Passage par terre a la Californie decouverte par le R.P. Eusebe- François Kino, Jesuite depuis 1698 jusqu’a 1701 ou l’on voit encore les Nouvelles Missions des PP. de la Compag.e de Jesus

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This map, uh, records a historic event that took place a few years before it was published. The background is that once upon a time, the very earliest mapmakers described California as part of the North American continent, part of the mainland. And then in 1625, a mapmaker by the name of Briggs[1] decided that it was really an island[2], and he was so famous that succeeding mapmakers followed his example and described California on their maps also as an island. It wasn’t until Father Kino[3] decided to try out, uh, how you got to this so-called “island” and he began walking west, uh, and he continued walking west, and he continued walking west, until he got to the Pacific Ocean without having gotten his feet wet in the meantime. All of a sudden, people realized that the island notion was a mistake the whole time and California was, in fact, part of the North American mainland. Of course some people think that there may come a day with earthquake activity that California might someday, again, be seen as an island. We will see!

[1] “Henry Briggs (bap. 1561-1631) was an English mathematician. He is best known for his pioneering work on logarithms and his 1625 map depicting California as an island, the first English map to do so.” https://www.raremaps.com/mapmaker/1190/Henry_Briggs Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.
[2] “In 1622 [Briggs] published a small tract on the Northwest Passage to the South Seas, through the Continent of Virginia and Hudson Bay. The tract is notorious today as the origin of the cartographic myth of the Island of California. In it Briggs stated he had seen a map that had been brought from Holland that showed the Island of California.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Briggs_(mathematician) Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.
[3] “Eusebio Francisco Kino (10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was a Tyrolean Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer and astronomer born in the Territory of the Bishopric of Trent, then part of the Holy Roman Empire.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebio_Kino Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1700139

Tierra Nueva

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This map is entitled “Tierra Nueva” which is a rendering by, uh, Ruscelli of the east coast of the, uh, North American continent. Again, it’s very hard to match what you see here with what might be found on a current modern-day map. In the lower left-hand corner, Florida appears – not clear what Florida’s real shape is, but it’s at least indicated. Uh, and then there is a potpourri[1] of different islands, or would-be islands, up in the vicinity of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and, uh, and Maine. There’s a lot of speculation that there were water passages in and around and behind, uh, what one sees on the coast. Much of that was speculative. One fun thing about this map is that it shows the prototypic version of the island of Manhattan. Well, it’s not shown as an island. It is shown as a peninsula with the label “Angouleme,”[2] but that, as reflected on later maps, is what the, uh, mapmakers of the day thought of what, at the time, was considered an island- I mean, a part of the mainland, but obviously is, uh, is an island, the most built-upon island, perhaps, in the world.

[1] Potpourri can be defined as “a miscellaneous collection” or “medley.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/potpourri Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

[2] “On January 17, 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano, (1485-1528) in command of La Dauphine, became the first European to enter New York Harbor, during a voyage sponsored by King Francis I of France. […] Francis I (1494-1547, King of France 1515-1547) was the son of Charles of Orleans. Prior to Francis’ ascension to the throne, he had been known as Francis of Angouleme. In the King’s honor, Verrazano named the harbor ‘Angouleme’ and reported to Francis: I ‘Called [the harbor] Angouleme from the principality which thou attainedst in lesser fortune…’” http://www.newyorkmapsociety.org/FSAngouleme.html Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1678261

Descrittione dell’isola et terra di santa croce, overo : mondo nuovo

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This map is a map by Thomaso Porcacchi of the New World – “Mondo Nuovo.” As you can see, it is part of a larger page, uh, a page that would have been in a book of maps, and he was famous for a collection of what he basically called his collection “Islands of the World.” Well, he included continents in that category as well. So, here we have North America, and North America is in a distorted shape that one would have some trouble recognizing today, but, uh, there it is.

There’s a little blob in the middle representing Florida. One can go up the coast all the way to, uh, Labrador. Uh, on the western side, we see California- Baja California, and, uh, it is attached to the North American continent. As is the case with several later maps, California gets disconnected from the North American continent, but the early-most mapmakers got it right, and there it is.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691633

La Florida / Peruviae Auriferae Regionis Typus / Guastecan

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This map is actually a collection of three maps that formed a part of the famous atlas that Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish mapmaker, made in the 16th Century. Uh, it actually includes three sections: one a part of the, uh, connecting tissue between the two continents of North and South America; one showing Florida; and one showing the Peruvian coast. Ortelius was one of the most decent mapmakers and collectors of maps. When he published his atlas, unlike many others who simply stole, uh, the ideas or the maps from someone else and attributed them to themselves, Ortelius always gave credit to the actual mapmaker. Uh, I particularly like the Peruvian coast, and, if you look at that, you’ll see the mountain ranges, of course the mountainous western coast of South America is famous. And this map would have been very useful to the Spanish as they continued their exploration and conquest of the South America and Central American portions of the Western Hemisphere. It’s also illustrated with some wonderful ships at sea, and, uh, communities that probably did not have anything very substantial in them are represented by little castles and somewhat larger structures than are real, uh, at various points in the mountainous Peruvian coast.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691629

A map of Pennsylvania exhibiting not only the improved parts of that Province, but also its extensive frontiers

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This very large and wonderful map is a map of Pennsylvania that was made in approximately 1770, uh, before our Declaration of Independence and before our Constitution, but the colony of Pennsylvania was well established at that point, and the surveyor-mapmaker, Scull, in this case, has done an extraordinary job in rendering, uh, the colony in its then-glory. There is so much here that one could spend an hour-and-a-half just pointing to this part or that part, but some of the things that stand out are that it is really a snapshot. It is a freeze-frame of what Pennsylvania looked like at the time. In the lower right-hand corner, in the area where the red patch appears, that’s the, uh, street plan of Philadelphia. One sees all manner of locations, streams, uh, historic spots, uh, etc. And then as one moves more to the center and to the left, not surprisingly, the amount of detail, uh, starts to disappear. In the very left-hand-most part where the, uh, two rivers that form the Ohio come together at what is now Pittsburgh, one sees the, uh, indication that that was the location of Fort Pitt, formerly Fort Duquesne – of course “Duquesne” was the name when the French, uh, dominated that section. Pitt, uh, when the British later took that part over. There’s vast empty spaces on the left-hand side of the map because, to a large degree, colonists, explorers just hadn’t gotten that far, hadn’t gotten to find all the, uh, wonderful detail that one might find today.

Unfortunately, the map of the colony is not complete because we don’t see, uh, Lake Erie in the upper left-hand corner. But, again, if we go back over to the right, up in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, we see reference to the Pocono Mountains. We see, uh, reference to the “Endless Mountains” up toward Wyalusing. There is a reference here to the “Great Swamp.” And, of course, as one goes back down south toward Philadelphia tracing the route of the Delaware River, one gets back into, uh, the part of the world that we are familiar with here in, uh, southeastern Pennsylvania. There is a reference here to Radnor, and, of course, we are here in Radnor Township. There’s a reference to Lower Merion, and, uh, there are a number of historic spots that are picked up by this methodical and wonderful mapmaker. One could spend, literally, hours and hours enjoying all of the many facets that are backed up by Mr. Scull. A wonderful map. An extraordinary map.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691581