GUIANA sive Amazonum Regio.

This very rare map shows northwest Latin America with Surinam and French Guiana and was engraved by Johann Philipp Thelott. The map comes from the work of Johann Joachim Becher entitled "Gründlicher Bericht von Beschaffenheit und Eigenschafft, Cultivirung und Bewohnung, Privilegien and Beneficien dess in America zwischen dem Rio Orinoque and Rio de las Amazones an der vesten Küst in der Landschafft Guiana gelegenen".

The map is dedicated to Count Friedrich-Casimir of Hanau-Lichtenberg, whose imposing coat of arms adorns the upper right corner. At the bottom of these coats of arms appears the words "Insignia Indiæ Occidentalis Hanovicæ" and the arms of the Hanauvian West Indies. Around 1669, Count Hanau-Lichtenberg intended to establish a colonial empire in the Guianas by seeking to be assigned a fief by the West Indies Company or Dutch West India Company, vast territories between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, to found its own colony of the Hanauisch-Indian or the Hanauvian Indies.  The project, probably inspired by Johann Joachim Becher, was disproportionate and never saw daylight due to a lack of funding.

The map covers the northwestern part of Latin America, from Venezuela to the Itapecuru River in northeastern Brazil. In the centerfeatures the mythical lake of Parime. Until the 19th century, cartographers reported in the unexplored space between the Orinoco and the Amazon this immense lake on the banks of which rises Manoa, also called El Dorado, a fabulous city with walls of gold. 

The city appears here under the name of Manoa. In French Guiana, we distinguish the island of Cayenne, today a peninsula, the Cayenne River, named R. Cajani, and the Kaw River named R. Cauwo. The Kourou River, near the town of the same name, is called R. Caurora. 

Off the coast of Venezuela, we can see the Margarita Islands, Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. The Atlantic, called Mar del Nort, is decorated with a beautiful compass rose, a ship, and a sea monster. For his map, Becher took information from that of Janssonius, Hondius and Blaeu, while modifying it by replacing the main title with the coat of arms of the Count Hanau-Lichtenberg, and the two ships in the Atlantic by the  title.

References : Tross, Thesaurus bibliothecalis, pars altera. Catalogue de bons et beaux livres imprimés et manuscrits en vente aux prix marqués chez M. Edwin Tross (Maison Silvestre), 1856, p. 3, 20 ("très rare") ; Librairie A. Franck, Bibliotheca Americana. Collection d'ouvrages inédits ou rares sur l'Amérique, Catalogue de livres, manuscrits et cartes relatifs à l'Amérique, 1864, p. 14, 185 ("curieux et rare") ; Phillips, Guiana and Venezuela Cartography, 1898, p. 703.