New Zealand & Tasmania Map 1893 Regional Print - Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Hobart

Hunt and Eaton of New York published this atlas map of New Zealand in 1893, and the New York wax-engraving firm Fisk and Company produced it. Wax engraving was a cheaper method than copper or steel, which let commercial atlas publishers like Hunt and Eaton turn out many maps at a modest price. The sheet's character is its practical detail: it divides both main islands into counties using numbered keys, adds early regional rail lines, coastal features and mountain ranges, and carries a detailed inset of Tasmania. It is a regional map of two Pacific lands, drawn in 1893, the year New Zealand became the first self-governing country to give women the vote, and some seventeen years after the provinces were abolished in 1876.

The North and South Islands are drawn with their county divisions, a system that replaced the old provinces after 1876 and that the numbered keys explain. Auckland, the northern port, had been the colony's first capital, and Wellington, on Cook Strait, had held that role since 1865. Christchurch was the main town of Canterbury, and Dunedin, in Otago, had grown wealthy on the gold rush of the 1860s. The Southern Alps run down the length of the South Island, with rail lines clinging to the coastal plains beneath them. The Tasmania inset adds Hobart, on the Derwent River, and Launceston, at the head of the Tamar.

A New Zealand émigré, a descendant of the colonists who came for the Otago gold, or a collector of the American commercial atlases will find a lasting gift here. TheMapVault's Stanford map of 1896 shows the colony meticulously colored by counties in a London style, while Tallis's 1851 and Black's 1849 sheets are decorative views from the settler era; this Hunt and Eaton map is the American commercial version, with the added bonus of a Tasmania inset. Cook's 1774 chart, in French, is of course the much earlier survey of the coastline itself. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.