5 Incredible Historic Details from Herisson's 1806 Map of North America

My wife and I took a road trip through the Southern USA and on our travels, I had hoped to find a good antique map of the region, or even of the colonial United States. I didn't get exactly what I wanted. In Savannah, Georgia I spent some time in the lovely shop of V & J Duncan (as always, no affiliation) and picked up Herisson's 1806 Map titled L'Amerique Septentrionale and L'Amerique Meridionale. Both maps are from the "Atlas du dictionnaire de géographie universelle" and are each so chock-full of amazing features I have to separate them into two blog posts.

For anyone interested, a high quality zoomable image of the map is available on this site (where it is also for sale and where I have no affiliation) though I think the coloring on mine is more attractive.

Without further ado, the 5 most awesome things about this map:

1) The Arctic: It's clear nobody really knows what's going on up there. Greenland appears to be attached to the north American mainland, there is no Arctic Archipelago and the map-maker is pretty sure that there's no North-West Passage.

2) The fortress of the Appalacian Mountains: While there are settlements on the east coast of the continent and in central Canada along the St. lawrence, Settlement has not ventured west of the Appalacians at the time and the west is tantalizingly blank.

3) The Interior: As alluded to above, so little is happening in the interior of this map. There is some good detail of lakes and rivers, even in remote locations, like Great Slave lake, far in the Canadian north. We also get some detail of various forts or trading posts and an interesting village of first nations people. Other than that though, the west is basically unknown to the map maker.

4) The political boundaries of the map: The barely 30 year old United States is shown, as is Louisiana, whose border with New Mexico and British Canada is undefined, especially in the west, where it just sort of stops. Much of central America is identified as Mexico or New Spain, and Florida was a Spanish possession, though that is not clearly indicated on this map.

5) There are mistakes! Maybe this isn't a historic detail, per se, but the map has a number of mistakes. Three jump out at me. For one, Mount Hood seems to be referred to as Mount Sood. This probably isn't too big a deal, and the location seems accurate. The second is Cape Cod. It's way south. South of Annapolis even. It's not even close to Massachusetts. Finally, Haiti does not appear on this map. Haiti gained independence in 1804. This map, from 1806, two years later, makes no allusion to a Haiti existing at all.

This is a great map. I'd love to hear the thoughts of others on what you find interesting about it.