Carte Reduite Des Costes de la Louisiane et de la Floride

Florida and Louisiana coast showing Florida as an archipelago of islands.

Bellin's large and spectacular chart of the southeast coast is based on an amalgam of sources. As chief hydrographer to the French Navy, he had unrivalled access to French manuscript charts; he also used D'Anville's map of the French coastal region as well as Spanish manuscript charts, especially for Florida. Indeed, it is these that lead to this map's most famous feature, which is the extreme portrayal of the Everglades, effectively turning southern Florida into an archipelago. While Bellin's map was not the first to show this, it was widely circulated in the latter half of the 18th century and was instrumental in perpetuating this strange cartographic fallacy.

An inset on the lower left shows the mouth of the Mississippi River, here also called St. Louis. SL [USA9061]