“In 1601 Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas published the first four parts of his ‘Historia General’. It is usually bound in two volumes; at the end of the second is often found the ‘Descripción de las Indias Occidentalis’ containing fourteen maps of Spanish possessions, largely in America … Herrera was the official historian of Castile and the Indies to Philip II of Spain. Considering the dearth of Spanish publications on the New World, particularly cartographic, it is noteworthy that this book had official backing. It details the early exploration of the New World by the Spanish and assembles many documents lost to us today. The geography of the maps is largely derived from the manuscript charts of Juan López de Velasco, c.1575-80. At least four of these have survived, one resides in the John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island … Of interest to us on this map is the distinctive narrow Florida peninsula … some internal detail and nomenclature is given. It contains a relatively accurate delineation of the ‘R. de S. matheo’, St. Johns River, with a large upstream lake. Along with the appearance of ‘Santagustin’, it illustrates the presence of the Spanish in Florida since 1565. This is one of the more detailed of Herrera’s maps. The map shows the whole of the West Indies and those parts of South America of Spanish interest” (Burden). A rare map. Borba de Moraes (1958) vol. 1, p. 336; John Carter Brown Library Annual Report, 1944-45 pp. 12 & 24-5; Burden (1996-2007) 142; World Encompassed (1952) no. 231.