Historic Map : Zatta Map of California and The Western Parts of North America, 1776, Vintage Wall Art

An exceptionally stunning example of Antonio Zatta's 1776 map of the northwestern parts of America and the northeastern parts of Asia. This map is one of the most sought after and decorative 18th century pre-Cook maps of the Pacific Northwest ever issued. Covers the region from the Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes westward as far as Siberia and Japan, north well into the Arctic, and southwards as far as Cabo San Lucas in Baja California. In this stunning map, Zatta, combining almost every 17th and 18th century myth and fact of the American west into a single map, offers up a veritable smorgasbord of speculative geography. The idea of a Northwest Passage linking the Hudson Bay to the Pacific is central to this map. In this Zatta embraces the speculative geography advocated by Nicholas De L'Isle and Phillipe Bauche. De L'Isle and Bauche were supporters of the Northwest Passage theory associated with the apocryphal voyage of the 17th century Admiral de Fonte. The De Fonte legend first appeared in a 1706 English publication entitled "Memoirs of the Curious". This short-lived magazine published a previously unknown account by a supposed Spanish Admiral named Bartholomew de Fonte. De Fonte is said to have sailed up the Pacific coast of North America in 1640. On this voyage he apparently discovered a series of gigantic lakes, seas, and rivers heading eastward from the Pacific towards Hudson Bay. The De Fonte story relates how, on one of these great inland lakes, he met with a westward bound ship from Boston that must to have come through the Northwest Passage. In later days Fusang was commonly used in Chinese poetry to designate Japan, however earlier references keep it distinct. In any case, Hui Shen's description of Fusang with regard to distance and geography, corresponds more with the coastlands of North America than with Japan. The French historian Joseph de Guignes in his 1761article Le Fou-Sang des Chinois est-il l'Amérique? promoted this idea.