'Chart of New Zealand from original surveys', 1851

This is a very detailed 1851 map of New Zealand that was very well known at the time. The numbers on the maps are based on the census and indicate how many adult men per district were allowed to carry weapons. Insets include access to Port Manoukao, the Hokianga River and Victoria.

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This is not a missionary map but a map presented to the English minister for colonies. It is an early version of the so-called McDonnell-Wyld map of New Zealand, first published in 1834. The development of New Zealand is clearly visible in later versions. The map is based on the findings of Thomas McDonnell, a New Zealand merchant employed by the East India Company. It was his original map on which this one, published by James Wyld's father, is based. The map also uses information from the New Zealand Land Company, and the work and data of the English Church Missionary Society, which is explicitly mentioned in the map's assignment to the upper left. It shows that missionaries also provided geographic information.

The Church Missionary Society is one of the oldest missionary societies and became active in New Zealand in 1814. James Wyld (1812-1887) was a geographer and mapmaker who was ‘Geographer to the Queen’. He was famous for Wyld’s Great Globe, a 20-meter-high globe exhibited in London's Leicester Square in the 1850s that people could climb into.