Western Hemisphere

Scarce map of the Western Hemisphere, published by EW Happel in Ulm.

From "Mundus Mirabilis". It contatins a description of America and describes and dating the manners and customs of the inhabitants.

Happel's map shows an incomplete New Zealand, California as an Island on the Briggs model, The straits of Anian and a very nascent and oddly shaped Mississippi River. The Rio Grande is still shown flowing into the Gulf of California. The Straits of Anian are named, with a very promising course for the Northwest Pasasge. Only a single massive Great Lake is shown, with a direct connection with the St. Lawrence River. South America is in an extra wide configuration.

The allegorical representations of the 4 continents are male figures, a very unusual departure from the normal convention of representing the continents in the female form.

Map engraved by Heinrich Irsinger, an obscure German engraver from Ulm. The Western Hemisphere features California as an island with the coastline of Anian to the northeast of the island. In the South Pacific, New Zealand's western coastline is depicted as well as a group of Polynesian islands. In South America, the mythical Lago de los Xarayes is shown at the center of the continent.  According to Shirley the map appeared in Happel's Mundus Mirabilis (1687) and Historia Moderna Europae (1692) and may have been included in other works published by Matthaeus Wagner.

Eberhard Werner Happel (August 12, 1647 - May 15, 1690 ) was a German author, novelist, journalist and polymath. Though little is known of his education and apprenticeship, he was a prolific author whose works shared freely the qualities of both fiction and nonfiction. He was adept at the inclusion and elucidation of contemporary knowledge in his many works, thus providing his readers with novel scientific and political ideas in the context of his novels.

Copperplate with fine later hand colour, good condition.