Important early coastal chart of the Gulf Coast, from Apalachicola Bay and St. Marc in western Florida to St. Joseph's Bay and Pensacola.
The coastline includes to Mobile Bay, to Biloxi and Bay St. Louis, as well as Lake Ponchartrain and New Orleans, Lake Borgne and the Mississippi River to the Delta. On either side of the River are sand and mud banks, including an area of woods called "Bois de Chene Verd Propre pour la Construction." Fort La Boulaye is located and noted as having been abandoned.
The chart is drawn from manuscript sketches brought back to Paris by Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix ( 1682-1761) a Jesuit Priest who traveled through Canada and North America's eastern regions from 1705-1720. Engraved under the direction of Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1761), the Royal Hydrographer to the King in Paris, the chart was included in L'Histoire et Description Generale de la Nouvelle France, published in Paris in 1744.
In 1720, the Duke of Orleans sent the Jesuit scholar and explorer Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix to America to record events in New France and Louisiana and determine the best route to the Pacific Ocean. Charlevoix gathered geographic information from fur traders in Quebec and traveled through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River. After he returned to France, Charlevoix published his views on North America in his Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France, which has become one of the most important works on North America during the period prior to the French & Indian (Seven Years) War.
Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Charlevoix's Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France and recommended it, along with the accounts of Hennepin and Lahontan, as a "particularly useful species of reading." He referred to Charlevoix's book as he developed his own ideas of Louisiana and the Northwest.
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) was among the most important mapmakers of the eighteenth century. In 1721, at age 18, he was appointed hydrographer (chief cartographer) to the French Navy. In August 1741, he became the first Ingénieur de la Marine of the Depot des cartes et plans de la Marine (the French Hydrographic Office) and was named Official Hydrographer of the French King.
During his term as Official Hydrographer, the Depot was the single most active center for the production of sea charts and maps, including a large folio format sea-chart of France, the Neptune Francois. He also produced a number of sea-atlases of the world, e.g., the Atlas Maritime and the Hydrographie Francaise. These gained fame, distinction, and respect all over Europe and were republished throughout the 18th and even in the succeeding century.
Bellin also came out with smaller format maps such as the 1764 Petit Atlas Maritime, containing 580 finely detailed charts. He also contributed many of the maps for Bellin and contributed a number of maps to the 15-volume Histoire Generale des Voyages of Antoine François Prévost or simply known l'Abbe Prevost.
Bellin set a very high standard of workmanship and accuracy, thus gaining for France a leading role in European cartography and geography. Many of his maps were copied by other mapmakers of Europe.