This impressive large-scale and richly detailed map shows Spanish holdings in North America from New Orleans to the California coast as far north as San Francisco. The map is one of three of Spanish dominions in the New World published by John Pinkerton in A Modern Atlas (London, 1815). "Spanish Dominions, Northern Part" is based on the Humboldt map of 1811, but it is enlarged in size and narrowed in focus.

Pinkerton's popular atlas was reissued by his English contemporary John Thomson in 1817. The map offered here is from the uncommon first American edition of Pinkerton's atlas, published in 1818 by T. Dobson & Son in Philadelphia. It contains some information not included in the earlier, Thomson edition, as for example El Paso, which appears on the present map as a garrison, the “Presidio del Paso del Norte.” Pinkerton also includes a variety of information about the Spanish Intendancies, as well as highly specific facts about Native American tribes and nations that seem to have come directly from Humboldt.

Although the map features Spanish Territory, it is important to note that the Louisiana Purchase region is drastically expanded from Humboldt's original. In fact, the most specific detail regarding settlements and topography occurs in the region directly west of the Mississippi.

A superb example of this beautiful and highly detailed map highlighting the Spanish Colonial boundaries of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico and the settlement history of the Louisiana Territory and the Gulf of Mexico.