Chili, Paraguay, Brésil, Amazones et Pérou

Coloured map of South America south of the equator, made by Louis Brion de la Tour in Paris in 1766. It shows the South American territories still under Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule, divided into four coloured regions: ‘Perou’ (present-day Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile), ‘Pays des Amazones’ or ‘Bresil’ (Brazil and Amazonia), ‘Paraguay’ (present-day Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and ‘Terre Magellanique’ (Patagonia, present-day Chile and Argentina). The localities include Montevideo and Buenos Aires on the Río de la Plata; La Concepción, Santiago, Lima, Trujillo, Guayaquil and Quito on the Pacific coast; Cusco, La Paz, La Plata, Asunción and Córdoba in the interior; and Rio de Janeiro and ‘S. Salvador’ (Salvador de Bahia) on the Brazilian coast. A French text on both sides deals with the continent, its colonial history, its explorations and its natural resources. The cartouche depicts several children with cartographic instruments studying the globe.