Pieter van der Aa; 1659-1733.
Van der Aa, started his own bookmaking shop in Leyden in
1672, publishing an enormous amount of materials. He did branch
out seriously in the atlas business in 1707, probably on account
of the strong interest for geography with the Dutch public
of that time. The golden age of the East India Company was
over, but international trade was still a major economic trump
for the Low Countries.
His cartographic knowledge and skills were rather limited,
but he borrowed extensively from the masters of the art. His
maps were quite decorative, and made the success of "Atlas
Nouveau et Curieux" in 1710, and above all of the 27
volume "La Gallerie Agréable du Monde" in
1729.
't Amerikaans gewest van Florida door Ferdinand
de Soto nader ontdekten groot deels bemagtigd
This small map (8 15/16" X 5 15/16") was originally
prepared by van der Aa for inclusion in his 1707 "Naaukerige
Versameling der Gedenk-Waardigste Zee en Land-reysen na Oosten
West Indien". This particular example seems to have been
printed for "Cartes des Itinéraires et Voyages
Modernes"; issued in the same year.
The same map was recycled in the 1710 "Atlas Nouveau
et Curieux";, which was re issued twice, in 1714 and
in 1728.
The peninsula delineation is very much in line with the 1656
and 1657 Sanson seminal maps. It exhibits also the same topographical
errors (notice the east-west mountain chain), the wrongly
located mouth of the Mississippi (Spiritu Santo River), the
fantasy hydrography (mythical lake, interconnected rivers,...).
Notice also that by that time, present day Florida was known
as the Tegesta province.
The cartouche is an allegory of De Soto travails during his
expedition from Tampa Bay in 1539, to the Mississippi where
he died of fevers in 1542. Here we see him negociating thru interpreter Juan Ortiz (one of the four survivors of the Narvaez expedition eleven years earlier) with local caciques for the hiring of porters.
Afret his death, the remnants of his expedition
crew built small boats and made it to Tampico a year later.
The failure of the enterprise made the King of Spain to proscribe
future colonization attempts in Florida.
No text on verso.
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