An early English chart of northern Canada with Hudson Bay

THORNTON, John.

A New and Correct Chart of the North Part of America from New Found Land to Hudson Bay.
London: W. & J. Mount and T. Page, 1748. 440 x 560mm.

Repairs to top edge, affecting printed border.

A chart of northern Canada, with Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. It shows the English obsession with finding the North-West Passage to the East Indies, with Hudson Bay full of English names despite the early date. Of interest are the names of the three original Hudson Bay Company forts, at Albany (founded 1679), Moose (here 'Mouse') River and Rupert's River.
Further south the French-dominated areas around the St Lawrence are depicted only vaguely, without the Great Lakes, indicative of the blanket ban on British shipping by the French.
The chart was compiled by John Thornton (1641-1708) and first published in his 'Atlas Maritimus' in 1704. This example was published in an edition of Mount & Page's 'The English Pilot. The Fourth Book Describing The West India Navigation... Also, a New Description of Newfoundland, New-England, New-York, East and West New Jersey, Dellevar-Bay, Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina'. This was the first sea atlas of America containing charts only from English sources.

See SHIRLEY: Maps in the Atlases of the British Library, M.M&P-5c for an edition of the following year.
Stock ID : 15550