Published to encourage settlement in the New World, it appeared in an English translation by Pierre Erondelle in the very same year.
It was a first issue copy of that version which sold for a record $200,000 (£157,480) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.
The map reproduced above, extending up the St Lawrence river as far as the Indian village of Hochelaga that we now know as Montreal, appeared in both editions.
Formerly in the Boise Penrose library and many years later, in 2007, sold for $120,000 in the same New York rooms as part of the Frank Streeter library, this copy boasts a much later, dark green morocco gilt binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.
Sold for £32,000 – some 10 times the estimate – at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a manuscript plan of ‘A Plan of the Town of Brunswick on the Turtle River…’, described as a 1771 “true copy” of a plan drawn up by surveyor general, Henry Younge, of the only town of lasting significance established in the state of Georgia during the colonial era.
