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Description

Scarce 1726 edition of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas' general map of America, the Pacific Ocean and the Eastern part of Asia, from his Descripcion de las Indias Occidentalis, first published as part of his Historia General, in Madrid in 1601.

Herrera y Tordesilla's general map is drawn from the manuscript map of Juan Lopez de Velasco (ca 1575), of which there are 4 known surviving examples, including one at the John Carter Brown Library, which this printed version most closely follows. The map illustrates the Line of Demarcation between the Spanish and Portugese colonial claims (running through Brazil in America and through China and the Malay Peninsula in Asia), although the East Indies are shifted some 40 degrees to the East, placing them (not surprisingly) under Spanish control. California is named, as are the Isle of Cedro and C. de Fortun, with Florida named in the East. Burden notes that the general map provides greater detail in Florida, curiously so.

This edition of the map was unknown to Burden at the time of printing of Volume I of his Mapping of North America. Burden notes in his Addenda and Corrigenda to Volume II of his Mapping of North America, that this rare edition, with a more elaborate cartouche in the Pacific and shading in the Gulf of California, appeared in Nicolas Rodriguez's Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos, published in Madrid (1726-30) and that there have been two appearances of the map on the market in the past 10 years, Reiss & Sohn, April 1998, lot 221 (map only) and Sothebys London, June 12, 2000, lot 247 (complete book).

Reference
Burden 140.