Exploration Map of the River Corentyne
Sanders, Salomon Herman
Title Leupe: "Schetskaartje van de Corantijnrivier. Met beschrijving der reis in 1720 door Sallomon Herman Sanders aldaar gedaan, alsmede een verklaring der kaart, en een relaas betreffende het bergwerk onder den Parnasberg genaamd "Trouw op God”."
This map pertains to the report of the exploratory expedition to the Upper Corentyne by Salomon Herman Sanders in 1720. On the basis of his self-proclaimed mining expertise, Sanders, a German who had entered the service of the Society as a soldier, was appointed director of the mining works begun at the Parnassusberg in 1718. This was situated on the upper Surinam River, near the later plantation of Bergendal (see VEL2087). Gold was sought there in vain until 1723.
In 1720 Sanders was sent to the Corentyne in a follow-up to Gerrit Jacobsz’s exploration a year earlier (see VELH576A) to conduct a more thorough investigation into whether gold or other commercial ores occurred there. During the expedition he recorded the course of the river and several tributaries on this map with remarkable skill. For instance, the arm of the river along the numbers 26-29-34-37 is recognizable as the main stream of the Corentyne, which was only officially discovered in 1871 by the British geologist Charles Barrington Brown.
Sanders only presented the report of his journey in 1722. He could not offer any concrete result of his expedition to the Corentyne, and as gold was also not forthcoming from the Parnassusberg, the governor soon developed doubts about his mining experise. In May 1723 he was charged with defrauding the government in Paramaribo and sentenced to three years’ hard labour on the mill in Fort Zeelandia, preceded by exposure at the public whipping post with a sign on his chest reading 'bedrieger' (fraud).
North is below.
Scale-bars of 4 geometric miles / 5 Holland Miles of an hour walking = [approximately 1 : 345,000].
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