Reflecting the artistic style of his Dutch colleagues, English historian and mapmaker, John Speed, published this beautiful double hemisphere world map for inclusion in his world atlas. It was one of the earliest maps to show California as an island as well as the settlement of New Plymouth, which was founded in 1620. The map's decorative elements include vignettes of the four elements, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, with symbolic human figures, and northern and southern celestial hemispheres. There are also diagrams of eclipses and an Earth-centered universe. Flanking the hemispheres are the portraits of four influential circumnavigators: Magellan, Drake, Cavendish, and van de Noort.
Relief shown pictorially.
Text on verso: The generall description of the world.
Appears in Speed's A prospect of the most famous parts of the world. London. 1627.