| Summary: | 18th century Copper engraving handcolored with watercolor. Outline color. Relief shown pictorially. Printed in bottom left corner: "Carte Générale de l'Amérique Septentrionale. Par M. Bonne, Ingénr. Hydrographe de la Marine. Fever. 1781." Printed at top outside border: "Longitude du Méridien de I'Isle de Fer." Printed in upper left corner outside border: "No. 81 G. No. 7 M." Printed in upper right corner outside border: "No. 8 A." Printed in lower left corner outside border: "Grave par Perrier." Printed in lower right corner outside border: "Ecrit par Andre." Of note, a large inland sea called Sea of the West or "Mer de L'Ouest" appears in the northwest portion of North America above "Quivira". At the entrance to this inland sea is the note "entree de Martin d'Aguilar". D'Aguilar, commander of the ship Tres Reyes, was a Spanish explorer who left Mexico in 1602 in pursuit of the mythical city of Quivira. His log contains one of the first written descriptions of the coast of the U.S. and the state of Oregon although he may have only reached as far north as Coos Bay. The upper entrance to this inland sea is labeled "entree de Jean de Fuca". South America is referred to as "Amérique Méridionale." Prime meridian: Ferro and Paris. Scale: c.a. 1:38,000,000. Rigobert Bonne (1727-1795) was a mapmaker and Royal Hydrographer in France. Much of his work involved creating sea charts. However, Bonne produced a number of atlases using his own maps as well as the work of other cartographers. These works include "Atlas Maritime" (1762), "Neptune Américo Septentrionale," "Atlas Moderne" (1762), "Globe," (1771), Raynal's "Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes," Abbé Grenet's "Atlas Portatif" (1781) and "Atlas Encyclopédique" (1787-88) in two volumes with Nicolas Desmaret (Moreland and Bannister, 138; Tooley, 69). This map was most likely published in Grenet's "Atlas Portatif" in 1781. Source(s): Moreland, Carl and David Bannister. "Antique Maps: A Collector's Handbook." New York: Longman Group, Ltd., 1983. Tooley, Ronald Vere. "Tooley's Dictionary of Mapmakers." Hertfordshire: Map Collector Publications Limited, 1979.
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