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The Spanish "Vancouver."
Folio. Title, explanation of maps. 9 engraved maps (4 folding) and 8 engraved plates (2 folding).
Sometimes attributed to Dionisio Alcala Galiano.
Very rare and important collection of maps and plates relating to the the Spanish explorations and discoveries along the Northwest Coast of America at the end of the 18th Century.
This is the being the atlas volume to accompany the Relación del viage hecho por las goletas Sutil y Mexicana en el año de 1792, which detailed the last Spanish expedition to the Pacific Northwest, of Dionisio Alcala Galiano and Cayetano Valdes, which encountered Vancouver's expedition at Esquimalt Bay and reached Nootka Sound in September of 1792.
The maps depict the west coast of North America from Alcapulco to Unalaska and the coast of California on a larger scale, and also include plans of the ports of San Diego, Monterey (California), Nootka, Mulgrave, and Desengano. The plates include portraits of Juan de Fuca and the chiefs of Nootka, as well as two large folding plates of Cala de los Amigo and of a Nootka marriage feast. This is the last and very important voyage up the Pacific coast to be undertaken by Spain is detailed in the nine maps and eight plates of the atlas.
Galiano and Cayetano Valdes led the expedition, arriving in the northwest at the same time as Vancouver. Although the maps were published four years after the Vancouver maps, Wagner considers them in many respects to be superior, and Humboldt used them in his Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne.
Wagner further states: "The general impression today...is that the English discoveries of Vancouver were published four years before those of the Spaniards. This...is a misapprehension... The principal reason, however, why the nomenclature and geography of Vancouver came to occupy the field was that his maps were extensively copied by the famous English cartographer, Aaron Arrowsmith, and later by the English Admiralty."
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