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Description

Rare late edition of Hondius' decorative map of the South Polar region, including the earliest appearance of New Zealand and Van Dieman's Land.

The supposed coastline of the unknown southern continent continues to appear. Includes notes regarding the affirmation of the discovery of islands by Magellan and Hernando Galego. Nice detail in Australia showing t' Lant van P. Nuyts discovered in January 1627, Edel's Lant discovered in 1619, Eendrachts discoveries in 1616, as well as notes mentioning Williams Renier and Dirck Hertogs Ree and several other place names and early contacts with Australia. This late edition includes references to the new discoveries of New Zealand in 1642, and new discoveries in Australia from 1644 and the discovery of Van Diemans Land in 1642, providing significant new information not present in the earliest states of the map.

The new additions first appeared on Jansson's 1657 edition of the map, which was the first to appear without a title cartouche and later re-issued by De Wit (1680) and Valk & Schenk (1700).

Reference
Tooley 731.
Frederick De Wit Biography

De Wit (1629 ca.-1706) was a mapmaker and mapseller who was born in Gouda but who worked and died in Amsterdam. He moved to the city in 1648, where he opened a printing operation under the name of The Three Crabs; later, he changed the name of his shop to The White Chart. From the 1660s onward, he published atlases with a variety of maps; he is best known for these atlases and his Dutch town maps. After Frederik’s death in 1706, his wife Maria ran the shop for four years before selling it. Their son, Franciscus, was a stockfish merchant and had no interest in the map shop. At the auction to liquidate the de Wit stock, most of the plates went to Pieter Mortier, whose firm eventually became Covens & Mortier, one of the biggest cartography houses of the eighteenth century.