Historic Map : Covens and Mortier Map of Southern Africa , 1730, Vintage Wall Art

An extraordinary example of Covens and Mortier’s c. 1730 issue of De L’Isle’s important c. 1707 map of Africa south of the Equator. Depicts the southern Africa in stunning detail with numerous notations an comments regarding the people, geography, and wildlife of the region. De L’Isle was very a cautious and scientific cartographer, basing his maps on the first hand reports from sailors, merchants and missionaries that, at the time, were flowing into Paris at an unprecedented rate. This map offers significant detail throughout the interior naming numerous tribal areas and kingdoms including the Jaga, the Kongo, the Angola, the Kingdom of Numeamaie or Mono-Emugi, Monomotapa, Gingiro, and others. Shows the Portuguese trading colonies of Sena and Tete (Santiago) on the Zambezi River. Also near the Zambezi, La Victoire Couvent de Dominicains is worth a mention. Also notes the predominantly Arab island kingdoms of Pemba and Zanzibar. Identifies the Dutch colonies near the Cape of Good Hope, including “Fort Hollandois” (Cape Town). Near the Equator, De L’Isle identifies an enormous lake almost exactly in the modern location and form of Lake Victoria. He notes that this is a “ Grand Lac place sur le raport des Negres .” What is remarkable about this is not the appearance of a lake in this region, one of the two Ptolemaic sources of the Nile appeared on maps of this area for hundreds of years, but rather that it seems to be based on actual evidence and it is not connected to any of the great African river systems. It seems highly likely that this is one of the first clear references to Lake Victoria to appear on a map.