Historic Map : Pinkerton Map of South America, 1818, Vintage Wall Art

Pinkerton's extraordinary 1818 map of South America. Covers the entire continent from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. Includes the Falklands and South Gerogia Island. Pinkerton offers impressive detail throughout noting indigenous groups, missions, towns and cities, swamps, mountains, and river systems. Lower right hand quadrant features the title plate and four distance scales, British Miles, Portuguese Leagues, Castile Leagues and French Leagues. Cartographically speaking this is an often neglected part of the world - especially in the early 19th century. Though the coastlands and open plains had been well mapped early in the 17th and 18th centuries, the interior was rarely penetrated. The combination of mountainous terrain, daunting jungles, malaria, and unfriendly indigenous groups combine to make this area all but unexplorable - even today. Nonetheless, Pinkerton make a commendable attempt to piece together early conquistador accounts, explorer's journals, missionary records, and indigenous reports into a coherent mapping of the area. In doing so he achieves a number of significant advances. Probably the most interesting aspect of this map is Pinkerton's treatment of the apocryphal Lake Parima. Raleigh associated the lake with indigenous legends of Manoa and the supposed site of El Dorado. Many early maps actually show El Dorado on the shores of Lake Parima, though Pinkerton curiously does not. However, his rendition of Lake Parima is vastly larger than most previous examples from the late 18th century - even those by other English cartographers such as Laurie and Whittle. In the Andes, he identifies the sites of a number of important mountains and volcanoes including Aconcagua, Coquimbo, Petoroa, and others. He also identifies the site of the majestic ruined pre-Columbian city on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Drawn by L. Herbert and engraved by Samuel Neele under the direction of John Pinkerton.