WESTERN AFRICA:Kong , 1851 map
Artist/engraver/cartographer: Map drawn and engraved by J. Rapkin; vignette illustrations drawn by H Winkles & engraved by E Radclyffe. Published by John Tallis & Co. Provenance: "Tallis's Illustrated Atlas and Modern History of the World, Geographical, Political, Commercial and Statistical", edited by R Montgomery Martin Esq., published by John Tallis and Company, London & New York. Type: Antique engraved map by J Rapkin, published by John Tallis. Original outline hand colour, decorative border, and attractive inset vignette views. The map shows sub-saharan west Africa prior to the later "Scramble for Africa" colonisation. Senegambia is shown, as is the state of Liberia. Ashantee (roughly present day Ghana) is indicated. The coasts are evocatively named in turn as the "Grain coast", "Windy coast", "Ivory Coast", "Gold Coast" & "Slave coast". Saharan camel caravan routes are indicated. Vignettes: Christiansborg; Cape Coast Castle; Bakel; Sierra Leone. Marked on the map are the Mountains of Kong, a non-existent mountain range charted on English maps of Africa from 1798 through the late 1880s. An early map resulting from exploration of the area and showing this west to east mountain range in 1798 was produced by English cartographer James Rennell. The mountains were thought to begin in West Africa near the highland source of the Niger River near Tembakounda in Guinea, then continue east to the also fictitious Central African Mountains of the Moon, thought to be where the White Nile rose. Cartographers stopped including the mountains on maps after French explorer Louis Gustave Binger established that the mountains were fictitious in his 1887-1889 expedition to chart the Niger River from its mouth in the Gulf of Guinea and through Côte d'Ivoire.
Size: 4237px × 3061px
Location: West Africa
Photo credit: © Antiqua Print Gallery / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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