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This is an attractive 1849 example of the legendary American map publisher Samuel Augustus Mitchell's map of the Canadian province of Ontario, or Canada West. Centered on Lake Ontario, this map covers from Lake Erie eastward from Detroit, Michigan and Lake Huron at the northwest, as far as Quebec with Grand Manitoulin and Georgian Bay to the north. In the lower right quadrant, an inset on Lake Superior is also included.
Canadian provinces and territories were under British and French control from the 16th century, until France gave up its claims in the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Canada would remain a collection of British colonies until its confederation in 1867, when the British Province of Canada was divided into Quebec and Ontario and the British colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia incorporated as Canadian provinces.
Mitchell published this chart in his atlas from 1846 to the late 1850s before discontinuing the series and selling his map plates to DeSilver. This map was issued in the 1849 edition of the New Universal Atlas. It was the last edition of that atlas to be published by Mitchell prior to selling the plates and rights to the atlas to Thomas Cowperthwait in 1850.