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Description

Attractive  example of De Wit's map of the northeastern part of Asia.

The map extends from the Island of Formosa, the Ganges and the eastern part of the Caspian in the south to Yesso, Tartaria, Siberia and Molgomzaia in Russian Asia in the north.

The Great Wall of China is shown, along with a nice representation of Japan and the mythical lands to the north. Russia is truncated with no Kamchatka peninsula and Yedso is shown according to the voyages of De Vries.

The mythical Chiammay Lacus is shown with its five major rivers.

Strapwork title cartouche with two putti and a compass rose embellish the map.

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.