A Map of the Countries situated about the North Pole

This unusual map of the Arctic Circle highlights the extent of Western exploration near the end of the 18th century. A large Frozen Ocean is ringed by real and speculative coastlines, with the frigid island outposts of Nova Zemla and Spitzbergen as the few known bodies of land. The route of Samuel Hearne’s third expedition, in which he was the first European to travel overland to the Arctic Ocean, is noted in Canada. The map was engraved by William Barker and published in the 1795 or 1796 edition of Matthew Carey’s American Edition of Guthrie’s Geography Improved. The work, published in Philadelphia, was the first general atlas published in the newly independent United States of America.