Add it to the Wishlist: Four Gorgeous 1757 Bellin Antique Maps of Canada - Hudsons Bay, St Lawrence River, Quebec City

I'm not a person with much money, so it's easy for me to decide that I can't afford a map I love. If I had the disposable income though, boy would I love this set of four, 18th century maps of Canada on sale by Classical Images, of Melbourne, Australia.

Here there are, four beautiful Bellin maps. I'll present them and what I love about them one at a time.

There's a lot to love about this map of Hudson's Bay. It's an attractive example, the map itself is nice to look at, it has a beautiful cartouche and nice geographic features, like mountains. It's also wonderful in that it seems to have totally made up islands, like "Isle de Bonne Fortune, which does not correspond with anything modern I can find. It also gets the shape of the Bay quite wrong (though James Bay looks pretty good), and Quebec seems to have no Ungava bay in its far north. I also love the note on the far left, in French, about the lands being 'entirely unknown' and a similar annotation at 65 north and 65 west of the 'strait without a name'.



At the time this map of the upper St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario was made, there was considerable settlement in the colony of New France between the downstream city of Quebec and Montreal. For some reason, from this map, you'd hardly know it. Montreal is on the map, but as an island. There's not much there to speak of a settlement, or the importance of the settlement. The names of rivers appear to be quite detailed--perhaps because rivers were truly the highways of the time--and a number of forts and small settlements are indicated. The drawings of the mountains add to the attractiveness of the map, but points which probably should have been emphasized, are omitted.

Here's the downstream portion of the St. Lawrence. Another attractive map with surprising accurate naming of places like rivers, islands and mountains, but little in the way of cities and towns. A detail of this one, that appears in the others as well, is the identification of the longitude being from Paris, not Greenwich.

This last one may be my favorite, a view of Quebec City, from 1757 during the Seven Years War and while under French rule, before the "Conquest" by the British. In two years time, a battle at the Plains of Abraham (approximate location indicated on the map below), would dramatically alter the course of North American and Canadian history. This map gives wonderful details about the city and seems to make special note of its fortifications. Indeed, the city was very well defended, and it was a series of gambles and good luck that allowed for British success in their assault on the town. One of the most interesting details shown on the map are the walls of the city. Today, Quebec City is the oldest walled city north of Mexico City whose walls still exist.

Approximate location of the British landings at the Plains of Abraham

At the time that these maps of Canada were published, the Seven Years War was already ongoing. It's an amazing thought to imagine the possibility of British, or French officers studying any of these maps to plot strategies, attacks or routes. These maps may not have been practical for military purposes, but at a time when perhaps little was known about these places by rival powers, maps like this may have been the key to successful campaigns.