NEW NETHERLANDS, Anon. c 1695 facsimile

The original map was produced 1695, and the manuscript map was reported in 1860 by Jacob Swart as in his collection and published in his Journal, 'Van de reis naar het onbekende Zuidland in den Jare 1642, door Abel Jansz Tasman.' A copy of this reproduction was also published by J.E. Heeres in 1898 from which this photocopy was made. It has been described as the 'Tasman Map', having been thought to have been made by Tasman in 1644 but is now considered a copy made at the end of the seventeenth century. It was later sold to Prince Roland Bonaparte and presented by his heirs to the Mitchell Library Sydney and is now known as the 'Bonaparte Map'. It shows New Guinea, Carpentaria and the west coast joined to Van Diemen's Land. It has apparently been copied 'from a map with increasing degrees of latitude on to a plane map, resulting in a cumulative discrepancy in the degrees' (see G. Schilder, Australia Unveiled, 1976 147–8, 190, 353). The map bears the legend in Dutch: 'Company's New Netherland. In the east of the great land of New Guinea with the first known South Land being one land and all joined together as can be (seen) by this dotted track by the yachts Lirnmen, Zeemeeuw and the quel d'Braq Anno 1644'. Under the heading 'Carten''these lands were discovered by the Company explorers except for the northern part of New Guinea and the west end of Java. This work thus put together from different writings as well as from personal observation by Abel Jansen Tasman, Anno 1644, by order of His Excellency the Governor General Anthonio van Diemen.' The map is coloured, decorated with compass roses, scales, ships and whales, and is criss-crossed with bearing lines and square guide lines – New Guinea, Carpentaria, Van Diemen's Land.

(Royal Society Map Collection RS Mp 53) Size: 41 cm x 54 cm

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