1758 Bellin Speculative Map of the Arctic (Canada, Siberia, Alaska)
SeptentrionalesGlobe-bellin-1758
Title
1758 (undated) 9 x 14 in (22.86 x 35.56 cm) 1 : 25000000
Description
Entrances to the apocryphal sea called ‘The Sea of the West’ are noted for both Martin d'Aguilar, who charted a 'swift flowing river' (the Columbia River?), and Juan de Fuca (the modern day Strait of Juan de Fuca) are noted near the bottom of the map. This body of water, alternatively called the Sea of the West or Mer de l'Ouest, was speculated by Philippe Buache and De l'Isle in the early 18th century based upon wishful thinking, American Indian stories, and the somewhat questionable 16th century explorations of Juan de Fuca. Just southwest of the unmapped Sea of the West, Bellin points out the dubious existence of Quiviara and Teguayo, mythical undiscovered cities of gold sought since the days of the Conquistadores.
Moving west, Bellin notes a peculiar landmass in the North Atlantic just east of Kamchatka sighted in 1741 by Tchirikow. This might be considered a proto-form of Muller's Peninsula. It was based upon sightings of the Aleutian Islands by Vitus Bering on his first voyage in 1725 and an actual landing by Tchirikow (Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov). Tchirikow sighted many of the Aleutian Islands on his 1741 voyage, but landed only once.
Further west, near the edge of the map, Bellin notes the ‘Land seen by Juan de Gama’. Gama or Gamaland was supposedly discovered in the 17th century by a mysterious figure known as Jean de Gama. Various subsequent navigators claim to have seen this land, but it was left to Bering to finally debunk the myth. In 1729, he sailed for three days looking for Juan de Gama land but never found it. Gama remained on maps for about 50 years following Bering's explorations until the explorations of Cook confirmed the Bering findings.
A note below the title states that it is ‘unknown whether this area is land or sea’. Overall a fascinating map of the pacific northwest. This map was drawn by Jacques Nicolas Bellin and published as plate no. 4 in volume 9 of the 1758 French edition of Abbe Provost's L'Histoire Generale des Voyages.
Cartographer
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 - 1772) was one of the most important cartographers of the 18th century. With a career spanning some 50 years, Bellin is best understood as geographe de cabinet and transitional mapmaker spanning the gap between 18th and early 19th century cartographic styles. His long career as Hydrographer and Ingénieur Hydrographe at the French Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine resulted in hundreds of high quality nautical charts of practically everywhere in the world. A true child of the Enlightenment Era, Bellin's work focuses on function and accuracy tending in the process to be less decorative than the earlier 17th and 18th century cartographic work. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bellin was always careful to cite his references and his scholarly corpus consists of over 1400 articles on geography prepared for Diderot's Encyclopedie. Bellin, despite his extraordinary success, may not have enjoyed his work, which is described as "long, unpleasant, and hard." In addition to numerous maps and charts published during his lifetime, many of Bellin's maps were updated (or not) and published posthumously. He was succeeded as Ingénieur Hydrographe by his student, also a prolific and influential cartographer, Rigobert Bonne.