THE NEW EL DORADO

“Before gold, geographical knowledge of British Columbia was sparse and spotty; after it, roads were built, population levels surged, and suddenly the world knew of British Columbia’s existence,” writes Derek Hayes in the paperback edition of British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas (Douglas & McIntyre, 368 pages, $44.95). This remarkable illustration of West Coast “gold country” — one of more than nine hundred maps in the geographer’s award-winning atlas — was printed in Britain in September 1858 by Read and Company to highlight the Fraser River gold rush. While recognizing that this map “is woefully inaccurate in many details,” Hayes nonetheless calls it “one of the finest maps ever to depict British Columbia.”