In 1563 the area
of the Viceroyalty of Peru known today as Ecuador was made an
Audienceia, a judicial administrative district, with its
headquarters in Quito. The title of the map reads, in translation, A
map which comprehends all the district of the Audienceia of Quito, in
which is shown with the greatest clearness the barbarous villages and
tribes that exist by the River Maranon and other streams that flow
into it, to accompany a delineation of the new bishopric which is
projected in Maynas. Drawn to the word of Senor Don Jeosephus Garcia
de Leon y Pizarro, president, regent, commandant and surveyor general
of the said Audiencia, by Don Francisco Requena, engineer, judge,
govenor of Maynas and former commissary of boundaries, in the year
1779.
Requena recognized the contributions made by various
surveyors and mathematicians, including Charles M. de la Condamine and
his associates. They were in the Audiencia in 1736 to determine the
length of a degree of latitude, and so settle the question of the
shape of the earth, flattened or budging at the poles. The engineer
Louis Godin, who was a part of the la Condamine expedition assisted in
the rebuilding of Callao after the earthquake of 1746.
The
stamps were issued in 1964 in observance of the fourth centenary of
the establishment of the Audiencia in Quito.
