A manuscript map of part of the fictional country of Poyaisia, signed and dated by Gregor MacGregor, self-proclaimed “Cazique of Poyais”, and author of “the Most Audacious Fraud in History” (Sinclair).

The Poyaisian Scheme

The Poyaisian Scheme (or Fraud) was the brainchild of the Scottish soldier Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845). He began his life of adventuring in Venezuela and Colombia as a mercenary fighting alongside Simone de Bolivar. In 1820 he visited what is today Honduras, and claimed that, while there, he obtained a grant of eight million acres (12,500 square miles) of fertile land from George Frederick Augustus, King of the Mosquito Indians. Returning to London, Macgregor styled himself as Gregor I, Cacique (highest authority or prince) of the independent state of Poyais. He set about publicising his fictitious state, setting up a land office in London and selling bonds to investors. The scheme began to unravel when, echoing the Darien scheme of the late seventeenth century, a group of around 200 settlers, mostly Scots, sailed to Poyais. Discovering only a barren and inhospitable swampland, they were saved by a British rescue mission. MacGregor fled to Paris in late 1823 only to continue his activities there. After acquittal in a French fraud trial he returned to London in 1827. He would continue to perpetuate the fraud until 1836, when he issued a constitution for the county. He would later emigrate to Venezuela, where he lived out the rest of his life in relative comfort on a military pension from the Venezuelan state. MacGregor’s eventful life, and the story of Poyaisia, is eloquently chronicled by David Sinclair in ‘Sir Gregor Macgregor and the Land That Never Was: The Extraordinary Story of the Most Audacious Fraud in History’.

The Map
As described on the title cartouche, the map is an enlarged copy, including numerous new toponyms and grants of land, from a portion of the printed map of the region engraved as map 10 from Thomas Jefferys’s ‘Complete Pilot for the West Indies’, published by Robert Sayer in 1792.

The map covers the approximate area between 15 and 16 degrees north, and 67 and 68 degrees west, and extends from the “Sacrelyion River” (Rio Chamelecon) in the West, to “Plantain River” in the East, and from the town of “Poyais [sic]” on the “Rio Tinto” in the south to “Cape Camaron” (Barra Ullua) on the Caribbean coast in the north. Numerous rivers are shown, including those named above, and (west to east) the “Pyanow River”, “Rio Secco” (Rio Ulua), “Cape River’, “Vincents Creek”, “Mustee Creek”, “Walkers Creek”, “Black River”, “Skilling River”, and “Black River Lagoon”.

Several land grants are marked on the map, including three long grants on the banks of the Rio Tinto named for “William Pinkston O’Reilley”, “James Reid Esq”, and “John MacGregor Esq of Glengyle”. Dr William Pinkston O’Reilley was the husband of MacGregor’s sister Anne Sempill. John of Glengyle (b1795), 11th Chief of the Glengyle MacGregors, married Gregor’s sister Jane Isabella in 1816. Three pencil amendments note three smaller land grants adjacent to the Black River.

Further land ownership is noted in the names of “J. Toose”, “W.N. Skilling”, and “General Robinson” – a huge swathe on either side of the Plantain River. General Robinson is likely George Augustus Robinson:

“George Augustus Robinson (1791-1866), protector of Aboriginals, was born on 22 March 1791 probably in London… Early in 1822 Robinson was considering emigration. His first choice was America, and he seems to have booked his passage to the Poyais settlement… News reached England about June 1823 of the fraudulent nature of that enterprise, and Robinson decided to emigrate to the Australian colonies instead” (Australian Dictionary of National Biography).

It would, therefore, appear plausible that the large amount of land allocated to General Robinson was more a statement of persuasion than fact and perhaps reason for the manuscript’s creation?