The present copy shows the plate in its first state, the only copperplate that Goos actually engraved himself. Around 1660 Pieter Goos engraved four large navigation charts on new copperplates, including the plate for his present West-Indische Paskaert. Being one of the first practical uses of the Mercator projection, Blaeu's small-scale nautical chart was the first useful chart for crossing the Atlantic Ocean, making it easier to plot a straight line course for long distances on one map. Blaeu (1571-1638) published the first West-Indische Paskaert around 1630 using manuscript charts and other documents of the Atlantic and its coasts, including information provided by the Dutch WIC navigators who sailed these routes. For more than a century Dutch and foreign sea farers profited from their use on transatlantic journeys. Many West-Indische Paskaerten, as these navigational charts were called, were reprinted over and over from new states of the copperplates.
It shows parts of the east coast of North America, both coasts of South America, Mediterranean Europe and the west coast of Africa. The West-Indische Paskaert engraved by Pieter Goos, in its rare first state, a nautical chart prepared for the Dutch West India Company (WIC) as an aid to crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the trading regions of the Americas and visiting trading posts in Africa.
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