An early 18th century map of South America on two sheets

MOLL, Herman.

To the Right Honourable Charles Earl of Sunderland, and Baron Spencer of Wormleighton, One of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State,, &c. This Map of South America According to ye Newest and most Exact observations is most humbly Dedicated...
London: Moll, John Bowles, Thomas Bowles, Philip Overton & John King, c.1725. Coloured. Printed on two sheets and conjoined, total 960 x 580mm.

Moll's large-format map of South America, first published 1714, with a large title cartouche engraved by George Vertue after Bernhart Lens, and a view of Potosi, a mountain famed for its rich veins of silver, mined by the Spanish. The map is interesting for its early depictions of the Galapagos and Falkland Islands, as well as the apparance of 'Pepys Island'. This was invented by the publisher of buccaneer Ambrose Cowley's journal to flatter Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty and diarist.
It also has one of Moll's famous diatribes against his fellow map publishers. An engraved text begins 'The world is nothing more scanalously imposed upon, than by Map put out by ignorant Pretenders'. He describes 'a falsely projected French map of South America, done in Paris in 1703' that a British publisher copied with an added dedication to Edmund Halley that suggested that the astronomer had corrected the cartography. He ends 'ye projection of these Maps is also noririously false. This unnamed publisher was John Senex.


Stock ID : 23282