Map of the Gulf of Mexico [Carte d’une partie de l’Amérique pour la navigation des isles et du Golfe de Mexique]

This is a rare, early map of the Gulf of Mexico. Is is a reduced engraving of Popple’s 20 sheet map. The map shows Florida, Texas, the Gulf Coast, Central America, Yucatan, and the Caribbean. It also details part of the interior of South and Central America as well as part of present-day Texas and Georgia. The map includes the routes taken by Spanish Ships and ocean currents in the Caribbean Sea.

Philippe Buache (1700-1773) was a renowned French geographer. He was a pupil of Guillaume Delisle. In 1729, he became Premier Géographe du Roi (First Geographer to the King) and became a member of the Académie des Sciences the following year. Buache was a proponent of theoretical geography and produced many inaccurate details of Western America. Despite this, he was the first to suggest America and Asia had once been joined at the Bering Strait, he was a an early adopter of physical geography (diving land and water by mountain ranges and basins), and the first to use the isobath technique or contour on his 1737 map of the English Channel.