Mappe-Monde, ou Carte Generale de la Terre.

Rare, large French c.18th double hemisphere world map by Nicholas de Fer (1746-1720), engraved by Van Loon and richly embellished with numerous vignettes showing thunder, lightening, tempests, tides and volcanoes.

In The text de Fer notes that the map is a reduction of his four sheet wall map of the world, issued in 1695 and further states that this map is the first map to be prepared based upon the astronomical observations of the Royal Academy of Sciences. For California, Australia and Japan it seems that different sources were used.

Australia and New Zealand are shown with the discoveries made by Dutch explorers on the western and southern coasts of Australia, including those of Abel Tasman’s two voyages of 1642-44. California is mapped as an island following the famous error dating back to Cortes’s discovery of what he thought was an island on 3rd May 1535 which was in fact the Baja, California Peninsula. The myth of California as an island, would be finally dispelled by the Jesuit missionary and cartographer Eusebio Francisco Kino who made a series of overland expeditions from northern Sonora to areas around the Colorado River’s delta in 1698–1706.  Additionally De Fer places the Mississippi River far to the west, so its delta lies in what is now Texas, based on the incorrect accounts of Rene-Robert  La Salle’s explorations in 1682.