1855 Colton's Map of Patagonia with South Atlantic Islands Insets

About this piece

Colton's Patagonia, an original steel-engraved map of southern South America published by J. H. Colton in New York in 1855, with outline and wash color. The title "Colton's Patagonia" stands at the lower left with the publisher's imprint beneath it, and a plate number appears at the lower right edge.

The large map on the left shows the southern tip of the continent from the Pacific coast of Chile to the Atlantic, with the Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego and the offshore Falkland Islands. Rivers, capes and coastal settlements are lettered along the shores, while the interior is left mostly blank. A note at the head of the map concerns the Argentine claim to the part of Patagonia east of the Andes. Three framed insets at the right give South Orkney or Powell's Group, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia Island, each with its own scale of miles and each colored by island or district. The plate is enclosed in the familiar Colton border of interlaced scrollwork.

The islands in the insets were already well known to the sealers and whalers of the South Atlantic when the plate was engraved.