18th century chart of the West Indies in contemporary colouring.

A large and detailed chart of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean islands, showing from Savannah in Georgia south to the mouth of the Orinoco River. The keys shows how the chart depicts the colonies of the French, Spanish, English, Dutch and Danish. This example is the first of at least three editions, with the Pacific coast of Central America with a note about the lack of confirmed detail, and Lake Nicaragua shown with a conjectural shoreline. The next two editions (c.1760 & c.1780) are considerably updated, with much more detail inland, but both show Florida as a vast archipelago rather than the peninsula shown here. In the Gulf is the mythical island of Bermeja, first mentioned by Alonso de Santa Cruz in 1539 and still marked on maps in the 20th century; its disappearance has led to a theory that the CIA blew it up to alter Mexico's economic zone.