The English map engraver and geographer Emmanuel Bowen drew this map based on an earlier French map by Jacques Bellin. It focuses primarily on the English and French territories of North America, particularly Canada and Louisiana.

Detail of title block

The western-most section of the map is based on descriptions from the important French cartographer Guillaume de l’Isle (Delisle).

Detail of lower-left corner of this map where Bowen cites his sources.

Detail of the area that became Texas.

Unlike many mapmakers of the era, Bowen credits the sources he used in the making of his map in the lower-left corner.

Bowen identifies the Pass d’ St. George (El Paso) at the “bend” of the Rio Grande but shortens the distance between the pass and the Presidio de San Juan Bautista, near present-day Laredo. He also drew the Nueces River flowing into the Rio Grande instead of the Gulf of Mexico.

Although Bowen understood the different claims of the Spanish, French, and English empires in North America, he shows no political boundaries between the three.

This map is one of the earliest English maps based on de l’Isle’s highly accurate mapping of the Mississippi River.

A reproduction of this map can be purchased on the GLO website.