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This map of the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was made in 1622 by the Dutch cartographer Hessel Gerritsz, who was the official cartographer to the Dutch East India Company and a prominent engraver and publisher. It was not intended as a navigational map, but as a luxurious work for the directors of the company. Regions represented include the Asian coast (named Sina and Tartaria) from Canton to the north of Korea; Insulindia to the east of Borneo; the Philippines, Japan, and the Solomon Islands; the Pacific coast of the Americas from Cape Mendocino in present-day California to the southern tip ...

Presented here is an early translation into Russian of Description d'Ukranie, an influential work first published in French in 1651. The author, Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, was a French engineer who worked in Poland between 1630 and 1647. He built fortifications in Ukraine, most of which was then under Polish control, took part in battles with the Cossacks and Tatars, and in 1639 traveled by boat down the Dnieper River. Beauplan produced two important early maps of Ukraine that were based on his own observations and his own careful astronomical and topographic measurements. The book ...

Robert Burns (1759-96) is best known for his poems and songs that reflect Scotland's cultural heritage. He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, the first of seven children belonging to William Burnes, a tenant farmer, and his wife Agnes Broun. Burns had little formal education, but he read English literature and absorbed the traditional, largely oral Scots-language folk songs and tales of his rural environment. He began to compose songs in 1774, and published his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, in 1786. The work was a critical success, and its poems in both Scots an...

This watercolor by Manuel María Paz (1820--1902) shows Laguna de Siecha, in the province of Bogotá (present-day Cundinamarca Department) in west-central Colombia. The lake was of religious significance to the indigenous local Chibcha Muisca people, who were believed to have made gold offerings to their deities at the lake. Settlers in search of gold drained the lake in colonial times, but it has since refilled. The watercolor is typical of Paz's work, which captured the diversity of the population of Colombia and depicted the daily activities and traditional customs of the country'...

This watercolor by Manuel María Paz (1820-1902) shows the view from the highlands above the city of Popayán in the Cordillera Central of the Andes, in present-day Cauca Department, southwest Colombia. The view looks across to the little village of Puracé and the Puracé Volcano, barely visible in the distance, which is one of the most active in Colombia. The watercolor is typical of Paz's work, which captured the diversity of the population of Colombia and depicted the daily activities and traditional customs of the country's different ethnic, racial, and social groups. Paz was ...