Chapter I: Cortereal, Verrazano, Gomez, Thevet (3)

The question of the duration of the belief in the Asiatic connection of North America naturally falls into connection with the volume[138] of this work devoted to the Spanish discoveries. We may refer briefly to a type of map represented by the Lenox globe[139] (1510-1512), the Stobnicza map[140] (1512), the so-called Da Vinci sketch[141] (1512-1515), the Sylvanus map in the Ptolemy of 1511, the Ptolemy of 1513, the Schöner, or Frankfort, globe of 1515,[142] the Schöner globe of 1520,[143] the Münster map of 1532,[144] and even so late a representation as the Honter mappamundi of 1542, reproduced in 1552 and 1560. This type represents a solitary island, or a strip of an unknown shore, sometimes joined with the island, lying in the North Atlantic. The name given to this land is Baccalaos, or Corterealis, or some equivalent form of those words, and their coasts represent the views which the voyages of the Cabots and Cortereals had established. West and southwest of this the ocean flowed uninterruptedly, till you came to the region of Florida and its northern extension. The Portuguese seem to have been the first to surmise a continental connection to this region, in a portolano which is variously dated from 1514 to 1520, and whose legends have been quoted in the preceding text.[145]

The Portuguese claim of explorations in this region by Alvarez Fagundes in 1521, or later, is open to question. If a map which is brought forward by C. A. de Bettencourt, in his _Descobrimentos dos Portuguezes em terras do ultramar nos seculos xv e xvi_, published at Lisbon in 1881-1882, represents the knowledge of a time anterior to Cartier, it implies an acquaintance with this region more exact than we have other evidence of. The annexed sketch of that map follows a colored fac-simile entitled, “Fac-simile de uma das cartas do atlas de Lazaro Luiz,” which is given by Bettencourt. The atlas in which it occurs was made in 1563, though the map is supposed to record the explorations of João Alvarez Fagundes, under an authority from King Manoel, which was given in 1521. Harrisse in his _Cabots_ (p. 277) indicates the very doubtful character of this Portuguese claim.

The information concerning the Baccalaos region, which was the basis of these Portuguese charts, seems also to have been known, in part at least, a few years later to Hieronymus Verrazano, and Ribero, though the former contracted and the latter closed up the passages by the north and south of Newfoundland. The chart usually ascribed to Fernando Columbus[146] closely resembles that of Ribero. Of the Verrazano map sufficient has been said in the preceding text; but it may not be amiss to trace more fully the indications there given of its effect upon subsequent cartography, so far as it established a prototype for a great western sea only separated at one point from the Atlantic by a slender isthmus. Mr. Brevoort (_Verrazano_, p. 5) is of the opinion that the idea of the Western Sea originated with Oviedo’s _Sumario_ of 1526.

The key is as follows:—

1. Esta tierra descubrierô los Ingleses, Tiera del Labrador.

2. Tiera de los Bacallaos, la qual descubrieron los corte reales.

3. Tiera de Esteva Gomez la qual descubrio por mandado de su. mag. el año de 1525, etc.

There are several early copies of this map. Harrisse describes the Weimar copy as having on “Tiera del Labrador” the words, “Esta tierra descubrieron los Ingleses no ay en ella cosa de pronecho.” Thomassy says the Propagande copy indicates the discovery of Labrador by the English of Bristol. See Vol. III. pp. 16, 24, and a note in chap. ix. of the present volume. The Ribero contour of the eastern coast long prevailed as a type. We find it in the Venice map of 1534, of which there is a fac-simile in Stevens’s _Notes_, and in the popular Bellero map of 1554 (in use for many years), and, with little modification, in so late a chart as Hood’s in 1592. It was held to for the coast between Florida and Nova Scotia long after better knowledge prevailed of the more northern regions. It was evidently the model of the map published by the Spanish Government in 1877 in the _Cartas de Indias_.]

Reference has already been made to the map of Maggiollo, or Maiollo (1527), which Desimoni has brought forward, and of which a fac-simile of his sketch is reproduced on page 39. The sea will be here observed with the designation, “Mare Indicum.” Dr. De Costa showed a large photograph of it at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, May, 1883, pointing out that the name “Francesca” gave Verrazano the credit of first bestowing that name in some form upon what was afterward known as New France.[147]

In 1870 there was published in the _Jahrbuch des Vereins für Erdkunde in Dresden_ (tabula vii.) a fac-simile of a map of America from a manuscript atlas preserved in Turin which gives conjecturally this western sea, closely after the type shown below in a map of Baptista Agnese (1536); its date is put somewhere between 1530 and 1540.

An Italian mappamundi of the middle of the sixteenth century is described by Peschel in the _Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde in Leipzig_, 1871, where the map is given in colored fac-simile. Peschel places it between 1534 and 1550; and it also bears a close resemblance to the Agnese map, as does also a manuscript map of about 1536, preserved in the Bodleian, of which Kohl, in his manuscript collection, has a copy. This Agnese map is a part of a portolano in the Royal Library at Dresden; and similar ones by him are said to be in the Royal Library at Munich, in the British Museum, and in the Bodleian, dated a few months apart. Kohl, in his _Discovery of Maine_ (pl. xiv.), sketches it from the Dresden copy, and his sketch is followed in the accompanying cut. An account of Agnese’s cartographical labors is given in another volume.[148]

Perhaps the most popular map of America issued in the sixteenth century was Münster’s of 1540, of which a fac-simile is annexed. Kohl, in his _Discovery of Maine_ (pl. xvª), erring, as has been pointed out by Murphy,[149] in giving a date (1530) ten years too early to this map, and in ignorance of the Maiollo map, was led into the mistake of considering it the earliest which has been found showing this western sea. The map was frequently repeated, with changes of names, during that century, and is found in use in books as late as 1572.[150]

The two legends, with date, are explained on p. 28.]

In the same year (1540) a similarly conjectural western sea was given in a map of the Portuguese Diego Homem, which is preserved in the British Museum. Kohl, in his _Discovery of Maine_ (pl. xv.), gives this and other maps which support in his judgment the belief in the Verrazano Sea; but Murphy (_Verrazzano_, p. 106) denies that they contribute any evidence to that end. Of the Ulpius globe, mention has already been made.[151] A fac-simile of Dr. De Costa’s representation of the American portion is given herewith.

The key is as follows: 1. Terra de bacalaos. 2. (_dotted line_) El viage de france. 3. (_dotted line_) El viage de peru. 4. (_dotted line_) El viago a maluche. 5. Temistitan. 6. Iucatan. 7. Nombre de dios. 8. Panama. 9. La provintia de peru. 10. La provintia de chinagua. 11. S. paulo. 12. Mundus novus. 13. Brazil. 14. Rio de la plata. 15. El Streto de ferdinando de Magallanas.

Harrisse (_Cabots_, p. 191), referring to the dotted line of a route to India, which Agnese lays down on this map, crossing the Verrazano isthmus, thinks it is rather a reminiscence of Verrazano than of Cartier. Harrisse gives the legend, “el viazo de franza.”]

There are two maps which connect this western sea, extending southerly from the north, with the idea that a belt of land surrounded the earth, there being a connection between Europe and Greenland, and between Greenland and Labrador, making America and Eastern Asia identical. This theory was represented in a map of 1544,—preserved in the British Museum and figured[152] by Kohl in his _Discovery of Maine_ (pl. xv.), who assigns it to Ruscelli, the Italian geographer. Another support of the same theory is found in the “Carta Marina” of the 1548 edition of Ptolemy (map no. 60).

Jacobo Gastaldo, or Gastaldi, was the cartographer of this edition, and Lelewel[153] calls him “le coryphée des géographes de la peninsula italique.” Ruscelli, if he did not make this map for Gastaldo, included it in his own edition of Ptolemy in 1561, the maps of which have been pointed out by Thomassy as bearing “la plus grande analogie avec celles de la galerie géographique de Pie IV.,” while the same authority[154] refers to a planisphere of Ruscelli (1561) as “inédit, conservé au Musée de la Propagande.”[155]

This union of North America and Asia was a favorite theory of the Italians long after other nations had given it up.[156] Furlani in 1560 held to it in a map, and Ruscelli, in another map of the 1561 edition of Ptolemy, leaves the question unsettled by a “littus incognitum.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile Münster in the 1540 Ptolemy had given his idea of the western sea by making it a southern extension of the northwest passage. This is shown in a sketch of Münster’s 1540 map given above.

The key is as follows:—

1. Norvegia. 11. Ganges.
2. Laponia. 12. Samatra.
3. Gronlandia. 13. Java.
4. Tierra del Labrador. 14. Panama.
5. Tierra del Bacalaos. 15. Mar del Sur.
6. La Florida. 16. El Brasil.
7. Nueva Hispania. 17. El Peru.
8. Mexico. 18. Strecho de Fernande Magalhaes.
9. India Superior. 19. Tierra del Fuego.
10. La China.]

One of the most conspicuous instances of a belief in this sea was the Lok map of 1582, which Hakluyt published, as has been already stated, in his _Divers Voyages_ of that year, which, being made “according to Verarzanus’s plot,” is reproduced here from the cut already given in the preceding volume.[157]

With Lok we may consider that the western sea vanishes, unless there be thought a curious relic of it in the map which John White, of the Roanoke Colony, made in 1585 of the coast from the Chesapeake to Florida, which is preserved among the De Bry drawings in the British Museum. The history of these drawings has been already told.[158] There is a copy of this map in the Kohl Collection; but the annexed sketch is taken from a fac-simile engraving given by Dr. Edward Eggleston in _The Century Magazine_, November, 1882. It will be observed that at Port Royal there seems to be a passage to western water of uncertain extent,[159] which was interpreted later as an inland lake.

Other maps of this period have no trace of such western sea, like the protuberant “Terra del laboradore” of Bordone in 1521 and 1528;[160] the “Terra Francesca” of the Premontré globe, now in the National Library at Paris;[161] the northeasterly trend of the map of the monk Franciscus;[162] the “Nova Terra laboratorum dicta” of Robert Thorne’s map (1527);[163] Piero Coppo’s _Portolano_ of 1528, in which America appears as a group of islands; and in the British Museum among the Sloane Manuscripts a treatise, _De principiis astronomie_, which has a map in which the eastern coast of America is made to consist of two huge peninsulas, one of them being marked “Terra Franciscana nuper lustrata,”[164] and the other, “Baccalear regio,” ending towards the east with a cape, “Rasu.”[165]

Kunstmann in his _Atlas_ (pl. vi.) gives a map which he places between 1532 and 1540; it is of unknown authorship.

Wieser, in his _Magalhâes-Strasse_ (p. 77), points to a globe of Schöner, the author of the _Opusculum geographicum_, in which he claimed that “Bachalaos—called from a new kind of fish there—had been discovered to be continuous with Upper India.”

There is a chart of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence dated 1534, and of which Kohl gives a sketch in his _Discovery of Maine_ (pl. xviiiª). It is signed by Gaspar Viegas, of whom nothing is known. A map, in what Harrisse[166] calls the Wolfenbüttel Manuscript, has the legend upon Labrador: “This land was discovered by the English from Bristol, and named Labrador because the one who saw it first was a laborer from the Azores.” Biddle, in his _Sebastian Cabot_, p. 246, had conjectured from a passage in a letter of Pasqualigo in the _Paesi novamente retrovati_ of 1507 (lib. vi. cap. cxxvi.), that the name had come from Cortereal’s selling its natives in Lisbon as slaves.