In the English interests there were several leading maps: A new and accurate map of North America (wherein the errors of all preceding British, French, and Dutch maps respecting the rights of Great Britain, France, and Spain, and the limits of each of His Majesty’s Provinces are corrected), by Huske. This was engraved by Thomas Kitchin, and published by Dodsley at London, 1755. It gives the names of the French trading posts and stations. John Huske also printed The Present State of North America, Part I., London, 1755, which appeared in a 2d edition the same year with emendations, giving Huske’s map, colored, leaving the encroachments of the French uncolored. It was also reprinted in Boston, in the same year.[149]
Another is A map of the British Colonies in North America, with the roads, distances, limits, and extent of the settlements. This is John Mitchell’s map, in six sheets, engraved by Kitchin, published in London by Jefferys and Faden, 1755. John Pownall, under date of February 13, 1755, certifies to the approval of the Lords of Trade.[150] It was reëngraved, with improvements, a year or two later, at Amsterdam, by Covens and Mortier, under the title Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, on four sheets, with marginal plans of Quebec, Halifax, Louisbourg, etc.[151]
Lewis Evans issued his General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America in 1755,[152] and it was forwarded to Braddock after he had taken the field, for his assistance in entering upon the disputed territory of the Ohio Valley,—indeed, its publication was hastened by that event, the preface of the accompanying pamphlet being dated Aug. 9, 1755.
HUSKE’S MAP, 1755.
This is sketched from the colored folding map in John Huske’s Present State of North America, &c., second edition, London, 1755. The easterly of the two pricked (dots) lines marks the limits within which the French claimed to confine the English seaboard colonies. Canada, or the region north of the St. Lawrence, east of the Ottawa, and south of the Hudson Bay Company and New Britain, together with the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the northerly coasts of Newfoundland (to dry fish upon), constitute all that the British allowed to France. The stars represent the forts which they had established in the disputed territory; while the circle and dot show the frontier fortified posts of the English, as Huske gives them. The English claimed for the province of New York all the territory north of the Virginia line, west of Pennsylvania, and west of the Ottawa, and south of the Hudson Bay Company’s line. Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia extended indefinitely westward. The northern line of Virginia was established by the charter of 1606; the southern bounds mark where the Carolina charter of 1665 begins, and the bounds of Spanish Florida denote that charter’s southern limit, the territory being divided by the subsequent grant of Georgia. The space between the pricked line, already mentioned, and the other pricked line, which follows the Mississippi River to the north, is the land which is called in a legend on the map the hereditary and conquered country of the Iroquois, which had been ceded by them to the British crown by treaties and a deed of sale (1701), and confirmed by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle. Cf. Description of the English and French territories in North America, being an explanation of a new map, shewing the encroachments of the French, with their Forts and Usurpations on the English settlements; and the fortifications of the latter. Dublin, 1755 (Carter-Brown, iii. 1056).
Jefferys pirated Evans’ map, and published it in 1758, “with improvements by I. Gibson,” and in this form it is included in Jefferys’ General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768. Pownall, who was accused of procuring the dedication of the original issue by “a valuable consideration” (Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 136), called Jefferys’ reproduction badly done, and reissued Evans’ work in 1776, under the following title: A map of the Middle British Colonies in North America, first published by Mr. Lewis Evans of Philadelphia in 1755, and since corrected and improved, as also extended ... from actual surveys now lying at the Board of Trade, by T. Pownall, M. P., Printed and published for J. Almon, London, March 25, 1776. In this form the original plate was used as “Engraved by James Turner in Philadelphia,” embodying some corrections, while the extensions consisted of an additional engraved sheet, carrying the New England coasts from Buzzard’s to Passamaquoddy Bay.
A French copy, with amendments, was published in 1777.[153]
The map was also reëngraved in London, “carefully copied from the original published at Philadelphia by Mr. Lewis Evans.” It omits the dedication to Pownall, and is inscribed “Printed for Carrington Bowles, London; published, Jan. 1, 1771.” It has various legends not on Evans’ map, and omits some details, notwithstanding its professed correspondence. Evans had used the Greek character [Greek: ch] to express the gh of the Indian names, which is rendered in the Bowles map ch.
Another plate of Evans’ map was engraved in London, and published there by Sayer and Bennett, Oct. 15, 1776, to show the “seat of war.” It covers the same field as the map of 1755, and uses the same main title; but it is claimed to have been “improved from several surveys made after the late war, and corrected from Governor Pownall’s late map, 1776.” The side map is extended so as to include Lake Superior, and is called “A sketch of the upper parts of Canada.” Smith (1756) says: “Evans’ map and first pamphlet were published in the summer, 1755, and that part in favor of the French claim to Frontenac was attacked by two papers in the N. Y. Mercury, Jan. 5, 1756. This occasioned the publication of a second pamphlet the next spring, in which he endeavors to support his map.”[154]