1785 Clouet Map of North America and South America

This is a beautifully hand colored 1785 map of North America and South America. The cartography of the North America west coast is conjectural at best, with islands, inland seas, and hopeful northwest passages in abundance. The Antarctic regions are depicted in a fascinating configuration of two land masses. A great western continent called 'New Zealand' and an eastern continent called 'Antarctiq,' separated by an Ice Sea. Curiously this conjectural error of Clouet in some ways more accurately portrays the true sub-ice Antarctica than modern day maps. Includes detailed geographic, political, and cultural descriptions of areas the cartographer, Clouet, considered important: The continent, Tierra del Fuego (Terre de Feu), New Zealand, Solomon Islands, The Azores (Acores), and the Cape Verde Islands. Printed for inclusion in the 1785 edition of J. Clouet's Geographie Moderne.