ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Didier (1723-1786)

Amérique Septentrionale, dressée, sur les Relations les plus modernes des Voyageurs et Navigateurs, et divisée suivant les differentes possessions des Européens.

Paris: Vaugondy, 1750 [but 1757]. Copper-engraved map, with original outline colour. Bottom right margin re-inforced. Center fold creased, otherwise excellent. Sheet size: 20 x 25 3/4 inches.

A very fine eighteenth-century map depicting all of North America, by one of France's greatest cartographers.

This highly attractive map depicts North America during an especially fascinating time in its history, the period immediately before the French and Indian War. The British Colonies hug the Atlantic seaboard, outlined in pink, while the immense Gallic empire, outlined in green, embracing both New France (Canada) and Louisiana (the Mississippi Basin) occupies most of the interior of the continent. This highly detailed map labels numerous native villages and European forts in the interior of the continent. Spanish Mexico reaches all the way north to modern-day Colorado, and Baja California is shown accurately to be a peninsula, and not an island as previously thought. The Pacific Northwest remains entirely enigmatic, labelled as the "Terres Inconnues." The map also depicts the islands of the Caribbean, which are shown to be in the possession of the various European powers. Vaugondy consulted several sources in devising his map including Bellin's excellent rendering of the Great Lakes, and Guillame De L'Isle's and Jean-Baptiste D'Anville's maps of the Mississippi Basin. The composition is graced by an elegant title cartouche featuring a waterfall inhabited by a cayman, and framed by coulisses of palm trees accompanied by native Americans. This map was included as one of the most important maps in Vaugondy's celebrated Atlas Universel, which was first published in 1757.

Lowery Collection, 399; Pedley, Bel et Utile, 448; Sellers & Van Ee, Maps & Charts of North America & the West Indies, 8; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West I, 129.

Item #19782

Price: $1,000.00