Outline Map of Oceania Showing Routes of Early Discoverers.

Detailed map made in celebration of 100 years of English settlement in Australia, with a complete survey of historical voyages of exploration in the Pacific with tracks shown in red.

This rare map is from The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia
which was the most ambitious publishing venture in Australian history up
to the 1900’s. It was conceived and financed by American publishers
under the name of the Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co Limited, Sydney
and Melbourne. It’s ambitious aims of using the best artists, the best
paper, the finest printing engraving techniques and for it to be the
most comprehensive survey of Australia’s colonial history ensured that
it inevitably was doomed to be a financial failure. The legacy that it
left on the other hand was some of the finest engravings and maps
printed in Australia in the C19th.