A rare issue of this famous English carte à figures map of Tartary

A highly decorative map of the northern Asia, finely engraved by Dirck Gryp for Speed's 'Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World', with eight costume vignettes down the sides and four city prospects, including Astrakhan & Samarkand, along the top. On the map the Caspian Sea is still wider than it is tall; the Straits of Anian appear with no sign of Kamchatka; and Korea is an island. First published in 1627, this example comes from the Roger Rea issue, which was beset with disaster. According to an advert for the 1676 Bassett & Chiswell edition, ''the greatest part of an Impression, then newly Printed, [was] destroyed by the late dreadful Fire, 1666". Surviving examples of any Rea map are thus rare.