Fine Books and Manuscripts

Le Canada faict par le Sr. de Champlain, ou sont la Nouvelle France, la Nouvelle Angleterre, la Nouvelle Holande, la Nouvelle Suede, la Virginie & c. Paris, c.1664. Engraved map hand-colored in outline of the Great Lakes region and Canada, image 352 x 541 mm (425 x 584 mm sheet). Burden's State 4, with "ou Nau ECOSSE" erased in Acadia. The copperplate engraving for this map was originally executed after Champlain by the house of Melchoir Tavernier. Though it is believed that the map was intended for inclusion in Champlain's 1619 Voyage et descouvertures faites en la Nouvelle France, it was never printed for that work. Du Val acquired the plate in the early 1650s, whereupon he added place names and his own imprint; he first published the map with his imprint in 1653. The map's association with Champlain wasn't discovered until 1953, when Lawrence Wroth published a study of an untitled (and apparently unfinished) map of New France bearing the inscription "faict par le Sr de Champlain. 1616," which the John Carter Brown Library had recently acquired. Wroth was able to demonstrate that it had been pulled from the same copperplate that was later used by Du Val in 1653 and was a proof state of that map. The 1616 map depicts Champlains' dicoveries in New France after the publication of his 1612 map. According to Burden, "in the intervening years he made probably the most epic journey of them all." Less finished than the 1612 map, it illustrates possible routes via waterways to the Pacific; it also includes the Chesapeake Bay, presumably drawn from John Smith's 1612 map. SCARCE. Burden describes "a total of six states. All are rare, the fourth being identified by the author is previously unrecorded." According to American Book Prices Current, only two copies dated 1664 have appeared at auction in over 40 years. Burden I 309; Kershaw 77.