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Description

Fine early charting of the Bay of Fundy, with a large inset of Annapolis Royal, drawn from the work of Nathaniel Blackmore.

The map charts the majority of the bay, with the New Brunswick coast at the top and at Nova Scotia bottom right.

The inset of the harbor of Annapolis Royal.

The map includes meticulous notes and observations for sailors in the region.

Nathaniel Blackmore surveyed the coastline of L'Acadie between November 1711 and September 1712 on board the brigantine Betty. The map is drawn from Nathaniel Blackmore's "This Plaine Chart of the Coasts on the Province of Nova Scotia et L'Accadia &…by Nathaniel Blackmore anno 1714/15". Nathaniel Blackmore's survey of the region would become the standard for the region, until the work of Charles Morris in the winter of 1748-49. Morris' observations, contained in a 107-page manuscript entitled "A brief survey of Nova Scotia," led Andrew Hill Clark to identify him as Nova Scotia's first practical field geographer. The "survey" contains a "General Discription of Nova Scotia, its Natural Produce, Soil, Air, Winds, etc," identifies three climatic regions, and describes the Indians. It also includes an account of the trade, husbandry, settlements, and population of the Acadians and is an important source of information about them.

Herman Moll Biography

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s. 

Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. 

Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.