|
||
|
|
|
|
This color-lithographed Map of Manitoba and the North-West Territory comes from the Illustrated Atlas of the Dominion of Canada, first publisehd by H. Belden & Co., Toronto, in 1880. Drawn to a township grid at a scale of 18 miles to the inch, the sheet spans the 49th-parallel boundary with Dakota (bottom neatline) to include Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis, and westward beyond the Assiniboine River into what was then still surveyed as “North-West Territory.” A bold title cartouche with floral elements anchors the left foreground, and graduated longitudes run along the upper border west from Greenwich and along the lower border west from Washington, D.C.
The landscape is organized in alternating pastel blocks that represent surveyed townships, each subdivided into thirty-six numbered sections; a small inset matrix at top right explains the Dominion Land Survey section layout. Large capital letters identify provisional electoral districts such as ROCKWOOD, ST. ANDREWS, and MORRIS, while finer lettering labels settlements (e.g., Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie), agency posts, and Métis river lots along the Red and Assiniboine. Two bold diagonals trace the Canadian Pacific Railway’s projected main line and southern branch, underscoring the atlas’s promotional purpose at the peak of transcontinental railroad construction.
