Cape of Good Hope

This map is probably the most important map of the region published at the beginning of the Great Trek. The importance and cartographic history of this map were elaborated by Professor Elri Liebenberg.  

 This example of the map is the first update of the landmark map of Southern Africa, first published two years earlier, which provides a cartographic snapshot of settlements and expansion during the early phase of the Great Trek by discontented Boers beyond the Orange River.

 This is one of the very few maps to record a very short-lived toponym: "K.GEO Cataract IV  400 ft. high" - the traveller George Thompson was led to the Augrabies Falls by the Koranna people in 1826; his name of King George IV Falls did not take on, but the original Khoi name Aukoerebis, which means ‘place of great noise’, did. 

         The map records that the Zwart Land, in today’s Western Cape, is ‘very fertile country: it may be considered the Granary of the Cape Colony'. Along the Zeekoei River, a southern tributary of the Orange River, Arrowsmith shows the location of Van Plettenberg’s Beacon (remnants now at the Iziko Museum), the north-east corner of the Cape in the 1770s, but subsequently replaced by the Orange River, as depicted on the map.

  The map displays eleven magisterial districts and provides historically important documentation of travel and exploration in South Africa. It shows the routes taken not only by Thompson, who mostly followed well worn tracks, but also those of more pioneering travellers such as Burchell, Cowie and Green & Capt Gardiner, Bain and Biddulph.

  This state and subsequent updates of this map provide one of the best cartographic records of the expansion of the Boer settlements to the north and east of the Cape Colony. For example, Arrowsmith indicates on the map, near Phillipolis, then just a missionary station, that this ‘country lately taken possession of by the Colonial farmers because of the protracted drought.’ 

 The map shows the approximate location of indigenous groups, assigning a large area to the ‘Koras or Koranas’, a group that now has been absorbed into the Griqua and other groups. The map shows the tracks of William Burchell who described and drew Kora people and recorded some of their language. Durban is shown in the Colony of Victoria. The Hemel en Aarde or Leper's Institute of which Dr James Barry had been critical.

   John Arrowsmith was one the nephews of the patriarch, Aaron Arrowsmith. He worked out of London; was was one of the foremost cartographers of the era and, like his uncle, he aspired to design maps that were up to date Therefore this maps was regularly updated his maps. This map first was published in 1834; the example on sale was an update two years later; the map was so highly regarded that it was updated a further seven times to 1890.  Arrowsmith's map is about 60cm x 50cm to which he added a small additional segment in the NE of the map (11cm x 23 cm). The map was both issued separately, some dissected and laid on linen, and also published in Arrowsmith's The London Atlas of Universal Geography.

  The map has outline colouring and is in good condition. Irregular folds and cracks at the base of the page, outside the map border, which are common in old Atlas maps, indicate that this map probably was bound in Arrowsmith's atlas. This minor defect has been professionally restored and strengthened with colour matching archival Japanese Tissue Paper.

Additional Reference:

Tooley pp 18 - 19 in which he details changes since the 1834 edition,