![De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]](http://usm.maine.edu/maps/sites/default/files/MatthewEdney/featured_maps/map-image/world 1672 de wit large 20pc.jpg "De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]") |
Current Exhibition:American Treasures October 18, 2009 - August 21, 2010American Treasures celebrates the reopening of the newly renovated and expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. It explores the library’s rich and varied collections and its mission to preserve those collections and make them accessible. Beginning with the foundational gifts by the Smith and Osher families, the library’s collections emphasize Maine and New England, followed in order by the United States, the Americas, and the (continued) |
(click on image to view in greater detail) | CORNELIS DE JODE (Flemish, 1568-1600) AMERICÆ PARS BOREALIS, FLORIDA ... From: Speculum Orbis Terrae (Antwerp, 1593) Engraving, 36.4 x 50.4 cm Smith Collection |
AMERICÆ PARS BOREALIS, FLORIDA ...De Jode gave a summary of the "North Part of America" as Europeans generally accepted it by 1600. He gave much space to the areas of Spanish and French colonial activity to the south and to the north. The little-explored regions between Florida and Nova Frãcia/New France, although extensive, required only a small part of the map. The north-south portion of his coastline, north of the prominent C. de las Arenas, represents the present-day middle states. The east-west portion--labeled Norombega--constitutes what is now New England, greatly reduced in area; the triangular estuary of the Penobscot is prominent. The rest of the map, from the Atlantic island labeled S. Brendan to the large land masses in the Arctic, is substantially derived from old European myths. |
