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Description

Scarce Zurner Map of America -- California shown as an Island.

Fine old color example of this scarce map of America, showing California as an island, published by Zurner and engraved by Pieter Schenk.

Zurner's map is a fascinating compilation of up to date information and cartographic myths. The main body of North America reflects corrected information, including De L'Isle's treatment of the Mississippi River Valley and the Rio Grande River properly flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. In depicting California as an Island Zurner uses the Second Sanson model but makes the Northeastern part of the Island very tentative in nature, clearly aware that other map makers have abandoned the myth of the island of California.

The map also shows a massive Terra Esonis Incognita, a vestige of the prior century, when popular (mythical) cartography showed a near-continuous land bridge from the Straits of Anian to Japan. The Pays de Moozemlek is shown to the East of the Straits of Anian, a myth which would become very popular in the early 18th Century and would combine with Lahontan's mythical river to dominate the landscape of the region in the first part of the 18th Century.

Includes two beautiful allegorical cartouches, including a title cartouche, flanked by two Native Americans and a large vignette at the bottom showing explorers seated around a table, natives worshiping in a temple, and a battle. Latin text enclosed in the cartouche discusses the explorations of Columbus and Catholic missions.

California as an island

The popular misconception of California as an island can be found on European maps from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. From its first portrayal on a printed map by Diego Gutiérrez, in 1562, California was shown as part of North America by mapmakers, including Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. In the 1620s, however, it began to appear as an island in several sources. While most of these show the equivalent of the modern state of California separated from the continent, others, like a manuscript chart by Joao Teixeira Albernaz I (ca. 1632) now in the collection of the National Library of Brasil shows the entire western half of North Americas as an island. 

The myth of California as an island was most likely the result of the travel account of Sebastian Vizcaino, who had been sent north up the shore of California in 1602. A Carmelite friar, Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, accompanied him. Ascension described the land as an island and around 1620 sketched maps to that effect. Normally, this information would have been reviewed and locked in the Spanish repository, the Casa de la Contratación. However, the manuscript maps were intercepted in the Atlantic by the Dutch, who took them to Amsterdam where they began to circulate. Ascensión also published descriptions of the insular geography in Juan Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana (1613) (with the island details curtailed somewhat) and in his own Relación breve of ca. 1620.

The first known maps to show California as an island were on the title pages of Antonio de Herrera’s Descripción de las Indias Occidentales (1622) and Jacob le Maire's Spieghel Der Australische Navigatie (1622). Two early examples of larger maps are those by Abraham Goos (1624) and another by Henry Briggs, which was included in Samuel Purchas’ Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). In addition to Briggs and Goos, prominent practitioners like Jan Jansson and Nicolas Sanson adopted the new island and the practice became commonplace. John Speed’s map (1626-7), based on Briggs’ work, is well known for being one of the first to depict an insular California.

The island of California became a fixture on mid- and late-seventeenth century maps. The island suggested possible links to the Northwest Passage, with rivers in the North American interior supposedly connecting to the sea between California and the mainland. Furthermore, Francis Drake had landed in northern California on his circumnavigation (1577-80) and an insular California suggested that Spanish power in the area could be questioned.

Not everyone was convinced, however. Father Eusebio Kino, after extensive travels in what is now California, Arizona, and northern Mexico concluded that the island was actually a peninsula and published a map refuting the claim (Paris, 1705). Another skeptic was Guillaume De L’Isle. In 1700, De L’Isle discussed “whether California is an Island or a part of the continent” with J. D. Cassini; the letter was published in 1715. After reviewing all the literature available to him in Paris, De L’Isle concluded that the evidence supporting an insular California was not trustworthy. He also cited more recent explorations by the Jesuits (including Kino) that disproved the island theory. Later, in his map of 1722 (Carte d’Amerique dressee pour l’usage du Roy), De L’Isle would abandon the island theory entirely.

Despite Kino’s and De L’Isle’s work, California as an island remained common on maps until the mid-eighteenth century. De L’Isle’s son-in-law, Philippe Buache, for example, remained an adherent of the island depiction for some time. Another believer was Herman Moll, who reported that California was unequivocally an island, for he had had sailors in his offices that claimed to have circumnavigated it. In the face of such skepticism, the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, had to issue a decree in 1747 proclaiming California to be a peninsula connected to North America; the geographic chimera, no matter how appealing, was not to be suffered any longer, although a few final maps were printed with the lingering island.

Adam Friedrich Zurner Biography

Adam Friedrich Zürner (15 August 1679 – 18 December 1742) was a German Protestant priest, cartographer and the head of construction of the Kursächsische Postmeilensäulen in Saxony.

Zurner's first project of note was a map of Saxony, for which he was retained by August III, King of Poland, in 1711.  

Zurner was appointed Geographer of Poland and the Electorate of Saxony, a position in which he served until 1732.  In this time period, he reportedly traveled nearly 18,000 miles and created over 900 maps.

In 1721, he was tasked with establishing a postal road system in Saxony and marking the distances with stone posts.  

His work resulted in the Atlas Augusteus Sauronicus (40 maps plus key sheet), which remained incomplete until after Zurner's death, but was ultimately sold to Pieter Schenk in Amsterdam in about 1745.  Schenk's completed work (49 maps, published in Amsterdam and Leipzig) was issued without reference to Zurner's name, under the title Atlas Saxonicus.

Despite his prolific work product, none of Zurner's original manuscript maps seem to survive.