Beautiful Vintage Map of Rivers and Mountains

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Map nerds: prepare to be seduced. This beauty hails from The General Atlas of the World — an 1854 volume printed by A & C Black Publishing Company, the same folks who issued early editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The tome contained steel engravings from well-known cartographers like William Hughes and featured close to 70 maps. The Victorian map featured above charts the rivers and mountains of its time — something that becomes more apparent when you note that Dhawalagiri is listed as the tallest peak, not Mount Everest. The color-coding and drawing (those root-like rivers and bloody volcano clouds are amazing) make this a particularly stunning little map. You can zoom in on its legend over here.