Reproduction only for non-commercial use.

© May 2005; revised 12 November 2009

Gallery Catalog No.  62

NOTE: This Gallery exhibit was posted in May 2005 as a reference for colleagues on the MapHist discussion list, then debating Adriaen Block’s explorations of the North American Atlantic coast during the 2nd decade of the 17th century. Viewers interested in further introduction or context for the Block map are referred to the appropriate discussion thread in the MapHist archives.

Adriaen Block’s Map of Chesapeake Bay to Penobscot Bay, 1614

Map of Chesapeake Bay to Penobscot Bay by Adriaen Block, 1614. From original MS. in The Hague, Algemeen Rijksarchief. Reproduced as Fig. 325 (p. 265) in The Discovery of North America, by William P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn.

View an enlarged 1430 x 2012 pixel JPG image (682KB)

Cumming, Skelton & Quinn’s brief gloss of the Block map reads in full:

This is the first map to show as a separate island the land of the “Manhates” Indians. Adriaen Block, a Dutch fur trader who arrived in 1611, began a coasting trip in the spring of 1614 on which he gathered information for his map. He sailed in his ship Onrust (the first boat built on Manhattan Island) “through Hellegat [East River] into the great bay [Long Island Sound] and explored all the places thereabout”. The territories of the “Mahicans”, “Pequats”, and other Indian tribes, soon to be well known to colonial settlers, are here shown; the “Meer Vand Irocoisen” (Lake Champlain) appears far east of the Connecticut River. Block Island was named after Adriaen Block.

(The Discovery of North America 264)

Related Links

• I. N. P. Stokes’ discussion of the similarities between the Figurative Map of Adriaen Block, drawn in 1614, and the “Velasco Map” of 1610/11 in the GALLERY exhibit, Color and/or modern reproductions of the “Velasco Map” — I

• a GALLERY exhibit on the 1610/11 map of North America, aka the “Velasco Map,” and its first printing by Alexander Brown in 1890 (reproduced as item CLVIII in Brown)

• a test of the new JPEG-2000 graphics format, using the Block map as a case study (includes a variety of JPEG-2000, JPEG, GIF, and PNG files)

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