Pascaerte van Nieu Nederland Streckende vande Noordt Revier tot Hendrick Christiaens Eÿlandt
THE FIRST SEA CHART OF LONG ISLAND FROM THE PREMIER MARITIME ATLAS OF THE AMERICAS
Roggeveen, Arnet. Pascaerte van Nieu Nederland Streckende vande Noordt Revier tot Hendrick Christiaens Eÿlandt. Amsterdam: Jacobus Robijn, 1681 [but Pieter Goos, 1675]. First edition, first state.
Double-page engraved map with original hand-color (24 9/16” x 21 3/8”). Presented in a finely embellished gilt wood frame (34 1/8” x 30 7/8”).
Light peripheral tanning and cockling, as expected. Paper fla extending from the right-hand margin, not affecting the map. Ink spotting to the margins. Plate numbered “30” in graphite manuscript to the top right corner.
1675 saw the initial publication of Arent Roggeveen’s landmark martitime atlas, Het Brandende Veen (a play on the mapmaker’s last name, in which veen translates to fen, or peat, a material historically burned on the shores of coastal communities to ensure safe passage). Roggeveen, who was born on the outskirts of Rotterdam, traveled to Middleburg where both the Dutch East and West India Companies were headquartered. It was here that Roggeveen was employed by colonial authorities to teach the art of navigation to burgeoning pilots and maintain the Companies’ large collection of hydrographic manuscripts.
With access to the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) and WIC’s (Westindische Compagnie) archives, Roggeveen set out to synthesize the work of previous surveyors of the Americas such as Gerritsz, De Laet, and Vingboons. Roggeveen was well suited for the task, as he had worked as a surveyor and measurements expert in the Netherlands’ wine and spirits industry (wijnroeier). What is now Het Brandende Veen took 5 years of sifting through the disparate records kept by the VOC and WIC, and only through partnerships with printing and publishing powerhouses did the tome become available to shipmen, resulting in the first usable navigational scale for the harbors, bays, and shoals of the North American and Caribbean coastlines.
Pieter Goos saw the first edition through the press the same year that he died, and with Roggeveen following suit only four years later, a second edition did not appear until 1680, by which time Jacobus Robijn had acquired the plates for the tome from Roggeveen’s widow and added his own name to the cartouche. The present example is of particular interest, as it hails from Robijn’s 1681 publication, L’Atlas de la Mer, ou Monde Aquatique… but does not bear the imprint Royn. ex. below the title, which Burden notes was added prior to Monde Aquatique’s release. In the third state (post 1698), the plate mark “28” is removed from the lower right corner. Burden additionally notes that, due to the nature of its use, the chart is “of legendary rarity on the open market.”
Of the map’s geographical features, Stokes writes that “Roggeveen gives to Manhattan Island a very narrow shape, and locates Nieuw Amsterdam upon it. The surroundings of the island are given in considerable detail: Staten Island, the ‘Hoofden,’ ‘Broncken,’ ‘Hoobooken,’ etc.” The neighboring regions were drawn from Pieter Goos’s Paskaerte Van de Züydt en Noordt River (1666), but they have been improved upon with details added to anchorages, particularly around Martha’s Vineyard. It seems the two men were continually learning from and improving upon one another, as Goos then utilized the first part of Het Brandende Veen for the fifth installation of the Zeespiegel. In this way, the Pascaerte van Nieu Nederland epitomizes the evolving language of XVIIc. charting as measurement and experience transformed the coastline from a terrain navigated by fires on the shore into one navigated by ink on the page.
Atlas Neerlandichi Rog 1; Burden, The Mapping of North America II 449; Stokes, I. N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, vol. II pp. 157-8.
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock
Item #GRM0104
Price: $135,000