Chapter II: Jacques Cartier and His Successors (3)

The maps in De la Popellinière’s _Les trois mondes_ (1582), that of Cornelius Judæus (1589), those in Maffeius’s _Historiarum Indicarum libri xvi._ (1593), in Magninus’s _Geographia_ (1597), and in Münster’s _Cosmographia_ (1598),—all follow this type. Reference may also be made to a Spanish mappemonde of 1573 which is figured in Lelewel,[357] an engraved Spanish map in the British Museum, evidently based on Ortelius, and assigned by the Museum authorities to 1600; but Kohl, who has a copy in his Washington Collection, thinks it is probably earlier. A similar westward prolongation of the St. Lawrence River is found in a “Typus orbis terrarum,” dated 1574, which, with a smaller map of similar character, appeared in the _Enchiridion Philippi Gallæi, per Hugonem Favolium_, Antwerp, 1585. Quite another view prevailed at the same time with other geographers, and also became a type, as seen in the map given by Porcacchi as “Mondo nuovo” in his _L’ isole piu famose del mondo_, published at Venice in 1572, in which he mixes geographical traits and names in a curious manner. It is not easy to trace the origin of some of this cartographer’s points.

A theory of connecting the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence on the line of what is apparently the Hudson River, which had been advanced by Ruscelli in the general map of the world in the 1561 edition of Ptolemy, was developed in 1578 by Martines in his map of the world in the British Museum, from a copy of which in the Kohl Collection the accompanied sketch is taken.[358]

What is known as Dr. Dee’s map was presented by him to Queen Elizabeth in 1580, and was made for him, if not by him. It is preserved in the British Museum, and the sketch here given follows Dr. Kohl’s copy in his Washington Collection. Dee used mainly Spanish authorities, as many of his names signify; and though he was a little too early to recognize Drake’s New Albion, he was able to depict Frobisher’s Straits.[359]

This is sketched from the copy in the Harvard College Library. The book has a somewhat similar delineation in an elliptical mappemonde, of which a fac-simile is given in Stevens’s _Historical and Geographical Notes_. The bibliography of Porcacchi is examined in another volume.]

The peculiarities of three engraved English maps of about this time are not easy to trace. The first map is that in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s _Discourse_;[360] the second is the rude drawing which accompanied Beste’s _True Discourse_ relating to Frobisher;[361] the third, that of Michael Lok,[362] in Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_. Hakluyt, in the map which he added to the edition of Peter Martyr published in Paris in 1587, conformed much more nearly to the latest knowledge.[363]

We find what is perhaps the latest instance of New France being made to constitute the eastern part of Asia, in the map (1587) given in Myritius’s _Opusculum geographicum rarum_, published at Ingoldstadt in 1590.[364] A group of small islands stands in a depression of the coast, and they are marked “Insulæ Corterealis.” It carries back the geographical views more than half a century.

In the Molineaux globe of 1592,[365] preserved in London, we find a small rudimentary lake, which seems to be the beginning of the cartographical history of the great inland seas,—a germ expanded in his map of 1600[366] into his large “Lacke of Tadenac.” Meanwhile Peter Plancius embodied current knowledge in his well-known map of the world. So far as the St. Lawrence Valley goes, it was not much different from the type which Ortelius had established in 1570. Blundeville, in his _Exercises_ (1622, p. 523), describing Plancius’ map, speaks of it as “lately put forth in the yeere of our Lord 1592;” but in the Dutch edition of Linschoten in 1596 it is inscribed: _Orbis terrarum ... auctore Petro Plancio_, 1594.

It appeared re-engraved in the Latin Linschoten of 1599; but in this plate it is not credited to Plancius. The map which took its place in the English Linschoten, edited by Wolfe, in 1598, was the same recut Ortelius map which Hakluyt had used in his 1589 edition. This was the work of Arnoldus Florentius à Langren, though Wolfe omits the author’s name.[367]

In the map, “Americæ pars borealis, Florida, Baccalaos, Canada, Corterealis, a Cornelio de Judæis in lucem edita, 1593,” which appeared in that year in his _Speculum orbis terrarum_, Mercator and Ortelius seem to be the source of much of its Arctic geography; but its Lake Conibas, with its fresh water, records very likely some Indian story of the Great Lakes lying away up the Ottawa,—which is presumably the river rising in the Saguenay country. A legend on the map says that its fresh water is of an extent unknown to the Canadians, who are, as another legend says, the nations filling up the country from Baccalaos to Florida.

It will be observed that to the northwest the Zeno map[368] has been made tributary, while one name, “Golfo quarré,” is not in the place usually given to it, since it is generally the alternative name of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The nomenclature of the coast from Cape Breton south follows the Spanish names; and though Virginia is recognized by name, there is no indication of the new geography of that region.[369]

De Bry in 1596 added little that was new; and much the same may be said of the maps in the edition of Ptolemy published at Cologne in 1597, and numbered 2, 29, 34, and 35.[370]

New France is also shown in the “Nova Francia et Canada, 1597,” which is no. 18 of the series of maps in Wytfliet’s Continuation of Ptolemy. Others in the same work show contiguous regions:—

No. 15. “Conibas regio cum vicinis gentibus,”—Hudson’s Bay and the region south of it.

No. 17. “Norumbega et Virginia,”—from 37° to 47° north latitude.

No. 19. “Estotilandia et Laboratoris,”—Labrador and Greenland, mixed with the Zeni geography.

The map by Mathias Quaden, or Quadus, in the _Geographisches Handbuch_, was published at Cologne in 1600, bearing the title, “Novi orbis pars borealis.” The northeastern parts seem to be based on Mercator and Ortelius. A marginal note at “Corterealis” defines that navigator’s explorations as extending north to the point of what is called Estotilant. In its Lake Conibas it follows the 1593 map of Judæis.

* * * * *

In this enumeration of the maps showing the Gulf and River St. Lawrence down to the close of the seventeenth century, by no means all of the reduplications have been mentioned; but enough has been indicated to trace the somewhat unstable development of hydrographical knowledge in this part of North America. Most interesting, among the maps of the latter part of the century which have been omitted, are, perhaps, the _Erdglobus_ of Philip Apian (1576), given in Wieser, _Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 72; the mappemonde in Cellarius’ _Speculum orbis terrarum_ (Antwerp, 1578); the map of the world in Apian’s _Cosmographie augmentée, par Gemma Frison_ (Antwerp, 1581, 1584, and the Dutch edition of 1598); the map of the world by A. Millo (1582), as noted in the _British Museum Manuscripts_, no. 27,470; that in the _Relationi universali di Giovanni Botero_, Venice (1595, 1597, 1598, 1603); the earliest English copperplate map in Broughton’s _Concent of Scripture_ (1596); the _Caert-Thresoor_ of Langennes, Amsterdam, 1598; and, in addition, the early editions of the atlases of Mercator, Hondius, Jannsen, and Conrad Loew, with the globes of Blaeuw.

The maps in Langenes were engraved by Kærius, and they were repeated in the French editions of 1602 and 1610 (?). They were also reproduced in the _Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri_ of Bertius, Amsterdam, 1606, whose text was used, with the same maps, in Langenes’ _Handboek van alle landen_, edited by Viverius, published at Amsterdam in 1609. In 1618 a French edition of Bertius was issued by Hondius at Amsterdam with an entirely new set of maps, including a general map of America and one of “Nova Francia et Virginia.”