Reduced Chart of Southern Lands by Bellin, ca. 1753

Bellin, Jacques Nicolas [1703-1772], Carte reduite des terres Australes pour servir a l'histoire des voyages / par le Sr. Bellin, Ing. de la marine de la Societe Royale de Londres && ca. 1753, 22 x 29.5 cm (plate size). Original copperplate-engraved map of a Reduced Chart of the Southern Lands by Jacques Nicolas Bellin for Prevost's L'Histoire Generale des Voyages (General History of Voyages) published in Paris in 1753. Published nearly 20 years prior to Cook's 'discovery' of the east coast in 1770, Bellin used a dotted line for his theories of the east coast of Australia, joining Van Diemen's Land to Espiritu Santu (New Hebrides) and Papua New Guinea and New Britain. In French, along this imagined coast Bellin wrote 'I suppose that the land of Diemen could join with the land of the Holy Ghost but (this is) without proof'.