JEFFERYS, Thomas (1719-1771)
Tobago from Actual Surveys and Observations
London: Printed for Robert Sayer, 20 February 1775. Detailed engraved map of Tobago, showing estate divisions, administrative districts, roads, rivers, settlements, Indigenous villages, elevations, coastal soundings, and anchorages. With inset plans of Great and Little Courland Bays at upper left, surveyed by David Ross, and Man of War Bay at lower right; compass rose near the north coast; engraved observations at lower center and upper left. Sheet size: 21 3/8 x 28 1/2 inches.
A highly detailed map of Tobago from Jefferys’ celebrated West-India Atlas (1775), one of the defining eighteenth-century cartographic works on the Caribbean. Published soon after Tobago passed to Britain, the map combines plantation survey, maritime chart, and colonial land record, showing estate divisions, anchorages, Indigenous villages, and inset plans of Courland and Man of War Bays.
Jefferys' map presents Tobago in the decade after the island passed to Britain under the Treaty of Paris of 1763. It is both a maritime chart and a plantation survey, recording the island's harbours, reefs, rocks, shoals, and anchorages alongside the inland divisions through which British settlement and plantation development were being organised. The map names the principal administrative divisions, including Sandy Point, Rocky Point, Barbados Bay, Great River, Queen's Bay, and North East, and notes the number of estates and acreage within several of them. Soundings are given in fathoms, bays and landing places are carefully named, and navigational hazards are marked throughout. Insets at upper left and lower right provide enlarged plans of Great and Little Courland Bays, surveyed by David Ross, and Man of War Bay, reinforcing the map's practical value for shipping and coastal movement. Inland, the hachured relief gives strong emphasis to Tobago's mountainous spine. The central ridge is labelled as woodland reserved for rain, an unusually early cartographic record of the environmental thinking that led, in 1776, to the formal protection of the Main Ridge Forest Reserve, established to preserve rainfall on which the fertility of the island was understood to depend. Thomas Jefferys was one of the leading English cartographers of the 18th century. From about 1750, he published a series of maps of the Americas, that were among the most significant produced in the period. As Geographer to the Prince of Wales, and after 1761, Geographer to the King, Jefferys was well-placed to have access to the best surveys conducted, and many of his maps held the status of "official work." Jefferys died on 20th November 1771, but Robert Sayer (in partnership with John Bennett) 'having acquired the sole property of the Plates' and other material relating to the work, 'minutely followed' Jefferys' plans for The West India Atlas although Sayer does note that additional work was done using various sources to ensure that the information was up to date.
See: D. Gestetner "Thomas Jefferys': West-India Atlas, 1775" in MapForum, issue 7 (2005), pp.40-48 & issue 8 (2005), pp.30-35; Phillips 2699.
Item #42751
Price: $1,700.00