[California, Baja Peninsula] Karte van het Westelyk Gedeelte van Nieuw Mexico en van California Volgens de laatste Ontdekkingen der Jesuiten en anderen

Amsterdam: Isaak Tirion, 1765. Copper-engraved map, with full original colour, in excellent condition. A very attractive and detailed map of the American Southwest and Baja California, by a respected Amsterdam cartographer.

This highly detailed map, with beautiful full original colour embraces the area from what is now central Arizona and southern California down to Sonora and the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The map depicts the region during an especially fascinating time in its development. The Baja Peninsula and Sonora are shown to be dotted with Spanish garrisons and Jesuit missions established in the wake of Father Eusebio Kino who explored the area in the late 1600s. Kino was also the first cartographer to definitively establish that California is not an island, as previously thought. The notations on the map refer to various episodes in the exploration of the region. The shores of the Peninsula and the Sea of Cortés are charted in finely assured detail as are the courses of the lower Colorado and Gila Rivers, the latter running near the present-day site of Phoenix, Arizona. With reference to what is now known as southern California, the map depicts the Channel Islands, and extends past "Kaap St. Diego" up towards modern-day Los Angeles, however the shape of the coastline seems to be based more on conjecture than on actual discovery. The first mission in Alta California, San Diego (founded 1769), was yet to be established, and accurate charting of the region by such figures as the Comte de La Pérouse were still to occur a generation into the future. The present map was included in Tirion's well-regarded Nieuwe en Beknopte Hand-Atlas.

Lowery Collection, 498; Phillips, A List of Maps of America, p.494 and Atlases, 600-102; Wheat, TransMississippi West, 148; Wagner, Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America, 608.