The Texas coast remained for a long time one of the least-known stretches of the American Atlantic littoral, and Galveston Bay, the coast's most prominent feature, was not even shown by commercial mapmakers until 1799. The extensive cartographic collection of the Rosenberg Library in Galveston documents the development of cartography for this region. The Rosenberg holds maps that show Galveston Bay from 1725 on, as well as the rest of Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and adjacent coasts. Its maps illustrate European exploration of the New World during the sixteenth and...