A rare Italian edition of Hennepin’s landmark map of Louisiana

The general map from Valerio Zani's 'Il Genio Vagante Biblioteca Curiosa', a collection of 23 accounts of voyages, including Reverend Father Louis Hennepin's 'Description de la Louisiane', first published in Paris in 1683. Hennepin's map, the first to use the name 'Louisiana', illustrated the first published account of La Salle's journey past Niagara Falls into the Illinois country and onto the Upper Mississippi River. All five of the Great Lakes are depicted and, unlike the original, a conjectural line shows the route of the Lower Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. The river is called 'R. Colbert' after Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), French finance minister.