Henricus Hondius' beautifully engraved map of North America had more significant influence than any other in perpetuating the theory of California as an island. This was because it was disseminated through the medium of his powerful Dutch publishing house. All of the earlier California as an island maps had yet to reach such a broad audience. The 1630s were a decade of constant development in the houses of Blaeu and Hondius. Interestingly, Blaeu never produced a single sheet map of North America; both Willem and Joan relied upon that of the whole continent, first made in 1617, throughout their publishing history. During this decade, Joannes Janssonius became an active partner of Hondius. Although this map bears no imprint, it is assigned to the latter because a map of South America appeared, displaying his name simultaneously.
Cartographically, this map carefully composes many different sources and illustrates the current state of knowledge well. The depiction and nomenclature of the West, along with that of the insular California, derive directly from Henry Briggs's The North Part of America, 1625. A legend strategically over the northwest coastline offers the opportunity to discontinue a least understood coastline. An unnamed lake still feeds a Rio del Norto flowing incorrectly southwest into what should be the headwaters of the Gulf of California.  Real de Nueua, Mexico, or Santa Fe, is on the east bank of this river. The Gulf of Mexico and the Florida peninsula originate from the Hessel Gerritsz chart of c.1631.
However, the East Coast is harder to define; the Southeast appears generic. The area north of here does not appear to be from a particular source. The Chesapeake Bay area is described in about as much detail as the scale and style of the map will allow, Iames Towne being identified. NOVUM BELGIUM is unlike any other before, the area between the Zuitt Reuier (Delaware River) and the Noort R (Hudson River) being considerably elongated on a north-east to south-west axis. New Amsterdam is curiously not designated, although Fort Orange is present. For New England, just a few names have been chosen from John Smith's map of the area, 1616. The Gulf of St. Lawrence appears to follow de Laet more than Champlain. The latter is used to depict a single great Lake; however, its name, Lac des Iroquois, is borrowed from one nearby. Interestingly, the author chose not to use Champlain's more recent 1632 map but the earlier 1612 CARTE GEOGRAPHIQUE DE LA NOUVELLE FRANSE. He does not venture the river system further west to avoid unknown territory, unlike Champlain. Along the Atlantic coast of Labrador, we find for the first time much Dutch Nomenclature, reflecting their increased whaling activities in these waters. Hudson Bay is derived from Briggs, 1625, except for the west coast, where he introduces the cartography of Thomas James, 1633. The addition of a fox here could be seen as a veiled reference to Luke Foxe, whose map of the previous year bears just such an animal.

The map was one of many introduced in the late 1630s to be included in the rapidly developing Atlas Novus. After the death of Janssonius in 1664, the business was left to several different parties, and it could not be divided in such a way that ensured the continued production of the various atlases. During this period, some maps were often sold to order, such as for the atlases of Nicolaas Visscher and Carol Allard. This map appears in such atlases unchanged until c. 1694. That year, Petrus Schenk acquired all of the Atlas Major plates at public auction from the heirs of Jansson van Waesberge and began issuing the map with his imprint. (Burden)

The Janssonius Family

Joannes Janssonius (Arnhem, 1588-1664), son of the Arnhem publisher Jan Janssen, married Elisabeth Hondius, daughter of Jodocus Hondius, in Amsterdam in 1612. After his marriage, he settled down in this town as a bookseller and publisher of cartographic material. In 1618, he established himself in Amsterdam next door to Blaeu’s bookshop. He entered into serious competition with Willem Jansz. Blaeu when copying Blaeu’s Licht der Zeevaert after the expiration of the privilege in 1620. His activities concerned the publication of atlases, books, single maps, and an extensive book trade with branches in Frankfurt, Danzig, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Koningsbergen, Geneva, and Lyon. In 1631, he began publishing atlases together with Henricus Hondius.

In the early 1640s, Henricus Hondius left the atlas publishing business to Janssonius. Competition with Joan Blaeu, Willem’s son and successor, in atlas production, prompted Janssonius to enlarge his Atlas Novus finally into a work of six volumes, into which a sea atlas and an atlas of the Old World were inserted. Other atlases published by Janssonius are Mercator’s Atlas Minor, Hornius’s historical atlas (1652), the townbooks in eight volumes (1657), Cellarius’s Atlas Coelestis and several sea atlases and pilot guides.

After the death of Joannes Janssonius, the shop and publishing firm were continued by the heirs under the direction of Johannes van Waesbergen (c. 1616-1681), son-in-law of Joannes Janssonius. Van Waesbergen added Janssonius's name to his own.

In 1676, Joannes Janssonius’s heirs sold by auction “all the remaining Atlases in Latin, French, High and Low German, as well as the Stedeboecken in Latin, in 8 volumes, bound and unbound, maps, plates belonging to the Atlas and Stedeboecken.” The copperplates from Janssonius’s atlases were afterwards sold to Schenk and Valck.