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The scale looks a teeny bit suspect in places, the spelling is atrocious, the ships are rather wobbly around the edges and the locals alarming in all their tribal finery, arms in the air brandishing arrows.
But such petty details aside, these 17th-century maps are startlingly accurate - right down to the carefully charted coastline, topography, water depth, local wildlife, weapon-wielding 'natives' and faded Union Jacks fluttering in the wind exactly where British naval pioneer Sir John Narbrough and his intrepid crew left them, thrust deep into the loamy soil of Patagonia in 1670.
The maps and the rest of Sir John's handwritten journal provide an extraordinary insight into life on board his ship and The Sweepstakes.
They detail everything from wind speed to gold deposits ('Here is much gold in this land'), encounters with pirates, local flora and fauna ('We saw several sea fowls and ducks, both white and pied'), the diet of his crew (oranges and lemons, mostly) and the living conditions of the natives.
More than 300 years after Sir John finally put his quill pen down, the journal - a tattylooking brown book held together with white tape - was discovered languishing with the family papers of the Earls of Romney at the Centre for Kentish Studies.
Its discovery earlier this year caused quite a stir. 'It was fantastically exciting - this is an historical icon of the future and it was unknown, visually so good, scientifically excellent and of such high research value,' says Peter Barber, head of map collections at the British Library.
'For decades it had been sitting in a box in the wrong place - no historian would have thought to look for it there, and the Centre for Kentish Studies were only interested in documents related to Kent.
'It is arguably the first English nautical journal ever written and hugely important to the history of English exploration.'
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