Astonishing find.

Today while cleaning a pile of crap in my office--essentially a mound of manilla folders hiding a pile of maps that I made when first moving into my office--I uncovered a set of 49 plates from a 1745 book.

The title is "A new general collection of voyages and travels: consisting of the most esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language." And we do not have a print copy. One of the map sheets has a corner carefully cut out--in exactly the place one would put, say, a property stamp or call number.

We do have electronic access to the book via Gale's 'Eighteenth Century Collections Online,' but it's a crappy scan from microfilm. I'll be scanning a few of these tomorrow to use in a presentation next week. I'll post some here.