?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(PICTORIAL MAPS -- MANUSCRIPT.) Peter Reynolds Furse. The Southerly Part of the Province of Quebec. Pen and ink map of Quebec from Hudson's Bay to Prince Edward Island drawn on an untrimmed deckle-edged sheet of "JWhatman/1959" watermarked wove paper; 27 3/4x40 1/2 inches overall; minimal margin soiling with one small closure at left edge. Hampton, New Brunswick, 1963
Peter Furse was a British Navy officer who began his service in World War I at age 17, during which time he received his first exposure to map drafting. After the war he continued his education at the University of Cambridge and when World War II came, he again served with the Royal Navy, ultimately elevating to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. After spending several years in Africa, Furse and his wife Barbara settled down in the village of Hampton, New Brunswick, Canada. There he spent his retirement years creating and publishing well-studied whimsical pictorial cartography in the mid-1960s.
The present manuscript is so well-accomplished it begs to assume there was a publication, though we have been unable to trace any printed examples. Here Furse has rendered an incredibly detailed manuscript map that richly describes the regional history of southern Quebec from the age of discovery to the mid-twentieth century. A small sampling of the illustrated anecdotes includes:
1611 Henry Hudson, who had wintered near Rupert House, & wished to continue his voyage, was abandoned by his crew who could not put up with more hardship & privation; 1652 Governor Duplessis killed by Iroquois; 1535 Jacques Cartier, first European to climb Mount Royal; 1806 First timber raft down Ottawa River from Gatineau; 1613 Champlain to Alumette Island because Nicholas Vigaud reported having seen the Western Ocean 10 days from Quebec; 1851 Y.M.C.A., the first in America, at Montreal; 1912 "Grand Trunk Pacific" reached Ontario; 1809 First steamer on Canadian waters, U.S.-owned "Vermont" on Lake Richelieu; 1663 Earthquake in Montreal; 1505 Thomas Aubert first European in [St. Lawrence] River; 1860 Test-drilling for oil. Bears roll in natural oil-pool to deter insects and then rub against trees leaving a patch for which prospectors to look; 1606 Lescarbo charted the Gulf; 1764 First Quebec newspaper - "Quebec Gazette"; 1842 Webster Ashburton treaty settled boundary [with Maine]; 1703 Madame de Repigny made first Maple Syrup.
