Fig. 9. Detail of the
industrious beavers building
a dam with Niagara Falls in
the background in Herman
Moll’s A New and Exact
Map of the Dominions of
the King of Great Britain
on ye Continent of America
(1715). Moll filled the blank
space in the Atlantic Ocean
with this image, causing the
map to be known as the
“Beaver Map.” Wisconsin
Historical Society LibraryArchives (CAGE LC GZ
1712 M).
the Cape of Good Hope, as well as numerous city and town plans
America, including Peru, Mexico, and Canada) as well as exotic
including Mexico City, Veracruz, and Havana. Other marginal
plants (a pineapple, bananas, potatoes) and animals (llamas, a
vignettes range from narrative scenes, such as the arrival of Cortés
penguin, turtles, various birds, an opossum) are also illustrated.
in Mexico; the destruction of the Aztec idols; and the baptism of
Châtelain’s world map was copied from the Carte de la Mer du
Magiscatzin before his being murdered, close to another human
Sud … by the French cartographer Nicolas de Fer (1646–1720),
sacrifice in which the victim’s heart is removed at the foot of an Aztec
printed in Paris in 1713, to which the former added the “very
temple. Other images show the colonial economies in America based
curious” hue in the title. De Fer included some motifs that he had
on codfish-processing factories in Greenland; hunting of beaver,
previously used in other maps, such as that of the beavers building a
moose, and bear; gold and silver mines (such as in Potosí); and sugar
dam with Niagara Falls in the background, designed and engraved by
mills and cassava growing in South America. Natives (from all over
Nicolas Guérard, which first appeared in a map of 1698, and which
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