Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century Papyras Classics

← Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

Chapter 13

The Early Cartography

OF THE

GULF OF MEXICO AND ADJACENT PARTS.

BY THE EDITOR.

IN a previous section on the early maps of the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries the Editor has traced the development of the geography of the Gulf of Mexico with the group of the Antilles and the neighboring coasts, beginning with the delineation of La Cosa in 1500. He has indicated in the same section the influence of the explorations of Columbus and his companions in shaping the geographical ideas of the early years of the sixteenth century. Balbóa’s discovery in 1513 was followed by the failure to find any passage to the west in the latitude of the Antilles; but the disappointment was not sufficient to remove the idea of such a passage from the minds of certain geographers for some years to come. The less visionary among them hesitated to embrace the notion, however, and we observe a willingness to be confined by something like definite knowledge in the maker of a map of the Pacific which is preserved in the Military Library at Weimar. This map shows Cordova’s discoveries about Yucatan (1517), but has no indication of the islands which Magellan discovered (1520) in the Pacific; accordingly, Kohl places it in 1518. Balbóa’s discovery is noted in the sea which was seen by the Castilians.

A sketch of a map found by Navarrete in the Spanish archives, and given by him in his Coleccion, vol. iii., as “Las Costas de Tierra-Firme y las tierras nuevas,” probably embodies the results of Pineda’s expedition to the northern shores of the Gulf in 1519. This was the map sent to Spain by Garay, the governor of Jamaica. What seems to be the mouth of the Mississippi will be noted as the “Rio del Espiritu Santo.” The surprisingly accurate draft of the shores of the Gulf which Cortés sent to Europe was published in 1524, and is given to the reader on another page.

There is a sketch of the northern shore of South America and the “Insule Canibalorum sive Antiglie” which was made by Lorenz Friess (Laurentius Frisius) in 1522. The outline, which is given herewith, represents one of the sheets of twelve woodcut maps which were not published till 1530—under the title Carta marina navigatoria Portugalensium. Friess does not mention whence he got his material, which seems to be of an earlier date than the time of using it; and Kohl suspects it came from Waldseemüller. South America is marked “Das nüw Erfunde land.”

In the Maiollo map of 1527 we find two distinct features,—the strait, connecting with the Pacific, which Cortés had been so anxious to find; and the insular Yucatan pushed farther than usual into the Gulf. The notion that Yucatan was an island is said to have arisen from a misconception of the meaning of the designation which the Indians applied to the country. The Portuguese Portulano of 1514-1518 had made Yucatan a peninsula; but four years later Grijalva had been instructed to sail round it, and Cortés in his map of 1520 had left an intervening channel. We see the uncertainty which prevailed among cartographers regarding this question in the peninsular character which Yucatan has in the map of 1520, as resulting from Pineda’s search; in the seeming hesitancy of the Toreno map, and in the unmistakable insularity of the Friess, Verrazano, and Ribero charts. The decision of the latter royal hydrographer governed a school of map-makers for some years, and a similar strait of greater or less width separates it from the main in the Finæus map of 1531, the Lenox woodcut of 1534, the Ulpius globe of 1542, not to name others; though the peninsular notion still prevailed with some of the cartographers.

THE WEIMAR MAP OF 1527.

A map which shows the extent of the explorations on the Pacific from Balbóa’s time till Gonzales and others reached the country about the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is that of 1527, which was formerly ascribed to Ferdinand Columbus, but has been shown (?) by Harrisse to be more likely the work of Nuño Garcia de Toreno. The map, which is of the world, and of which but a small section is given herewith, is called Carta universal en que se contiene todo lo que del mundo se a descubierto hasta aora; hizola un cosmographo de su magestad anno M. D. XXVII en Sevilla. Its outline of the two Americas is shown in a sketch given on an earlier page. The original is preserved in the Grand-Ducal Library at Weimar.

A map of similar character, dated two years later, is one which is the work of Diego Ribero, a Portuguese in the service of Spain, who had been the royal cosmographer since 1523,—an office which he was to hold till his death, ten years later, in 1533. There are two early copies of this map, of which a small section is herewith given; both are on parchment, and are preserved respectively at Weimar and Rome, though Thomassy says there is a third copy. The Roman copy is in the Archivio del Collegio di Propaganda, and is said to have belonged to Cardinal Borgia. The North American sections of the map have been several times reproduced in connection with discussions of the voyages of Gomez and Verrazano. The entire American continent was first engraved by M. C. Sprengel in 1795, after a copy then in Büttner’s library at Jena, when it was appended to a German translation of Muñoz, with a memoir upon it which was also printed separately as Ueber Ribero’s älteste Weltkarte. The map is entitled Carta universal en que se contiene todo lo que del mundo se ha descubierto fasta agora: Hizola Diego Ribero cosmographo de su magestad: año de 1529. La Qual se divide en dos partes conforme á la capitulaçion que hizieron los catholicos Reyes de España, y el Rey don Juan de portugal en la Villa [citta] de Tordesillas: Año de 1494,—thus recording the Spanish understanding, as the map of 1527 did, of the line of demarcation. The Propaganda copy has “en Sevilla” after the date. The most serviceable of the modern reproductions of the American parts is that given by Kohl in his Die beiden ältesten General-Karten von Amerika, though other drafts of parts are open to the student in Santarem’s Atlas (pl. xxv.), Lelewel’s Moyen-âge (pl. xli.), Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, and Bancroft’s Central America (i. 146).

These two maps of 1527 and 1529 established a type of the American coasts which prevailed for some time. One such map is that of which a fac-simile is given in the Cartas de Indias, called “Carta de las Antillas, seno Mejicano y costas de tierra-firme, y de la America setentrional,” which seems, however, to have been made later than 1541. Another is preserved in the Ducal Library at Wolfenbüttel, of which Harrisse makes mention in his Cabots, p. 185. A significant map of this type, commonly cited as the Atlas de Philippe II., dédié à Charles Quint, is more correctly defined in the title given to a photographic reproduction, Portulano de Charles Quint donné à Philippe II., accompagné d’une notice par MM. F. Spitzer et Ch. Wiener, Paris, 1875. The map is not dated; but the development of the coasts of Florida, California, Peru, and of Magellan’s Straits, with the absence of the coast-line of Chili, which had been tracked in 1536, has led to the belief that it represents investigations of a period not long before 1540. The original draft first attracted attention when exhibited in 1875 at the Geographical Congress in Paris, and shortly after it was the subject of several printed papers. Major is inclined to think it the work of Baptista Agnese, and Wieser is of the same opinion; while for the American parts it is contended that the Italian geographer—for the language of the map is Italian—followed the maps of 1527 and 1529.

What would seem to be the earliest engraved map of this type exists, so far as is known, in but a single copy, now in the Lenox Library. It is a woodcut, measuring 21 × 17 inches, and is entitled La carta uniuersale della terra firma & Isole delle Indie occidētali, cio è del mondo nuouo fatta per dichiaratione delli libri delle Indie, cauata da due carte da nauicare fatte in Sibilia da li piloti della Maiesta Cesarea,—the maps referred to being those of 1527 and 1529, as is supposed. Harrisse, however, claims that this Venice cut preceded the map of 1527, and was probably the work of the same chartmaker. Stevens holds that it followed both of these maps, and should be dated 1534; while Harrisse would place it before Peter Martyr’s death in September, 1526. According to Brevoort and Harrisse, the map was issued to accompany the conglomerate work of Martyr and Oviedo, Summario de la generale historia de l’Indie occidentali, which was printed in three parts at Venice in 1534. Murphy, in his Verrazzano (p. 125), quotes the colophon of the Oviedo part of the book as evidence of the origin of the map, which translated stands thus: “Printed at Venice in the month of December, 1534.”

For the explanation of these books there has been made a universal map of the countries of all the West Indies, together with a special map [Hispaniola] taken from two marine charts of the Spaniards, one of which belonged to Don Pietro Martire, councillor of the Royal Council of said Indies, and was made by the pilot and master of marine charts, Niño Garzia de Loreno [sic] in Seville; the other was made also by a pilot of his Majesty, the Emperor, in Seville. Quaritch says that an advertisement at the end of the secundo libro of Xeres, Conquista del Peru (Venice, 1534), shows that the map in the first edition of Peter Martyr’s Decades was made by Nuño Garcia de Toreno in Seville; but the statement is questionable. Harrisse refers to a map of Toreno preserved in the Royal Library at Turin, dated 1522, in which he is called “piloto y maestro de cartas de nauegar de su Magestad.” The American part of this last chart is unfortunately missing.

Harrisse calls this Lenox woodcut the earliest known chart of Spanish origin which is crossed by lines of latitude and longitude, and thinks it marks a type adopted by the Spanish cosmographers a little after the return of Del Cano from his voyage of circumnavigation and the coming of Andagoya from Panama in 1522, with additions based on the tidings which Gomez brought to Seville in December, 1525, from his voyage farther north.

It is not worth while to reproduce here various maps of this time, all showing more or less resemblance to the common type of this central portion of the New World. Such are the maps of Verrazano and of Thorne, the draft of the Sloane manuscript, the cordiform map of Orontius Finæus, one given by Kunstmann, and the whole series of the Agnese type.

There is a French map, which was found by Jomard in the possession of a noble family in France, which Kohl supposes to be drawn in part from Ribero. A sketch is annexed as of “An Early French Map.” The absence of the Gulf of California and of all traces of De Soto’s expedition leads Kohl to date it before 1533. Jomard placed the date later; but as the map has no record of the expeditions of Ribault and Laudonnière, it would appear to be earlier than 1554.

There is a large manuscript map in the British Museum which seems to have been made by a Frenchman from Spanish sources, judging from the mixture and corruption of the languages used in it. In one inscription there is mention of “the disembarkation of the Governor;” and this, together with the details of the harbors on the west coast of Florida, where Narvaez went, leads Kohl to suppose the map to have been drawn from that commander’s reports. The sketch, which is annexed and marked “Gulf of Mexico, 1536,” follows Kohl’s delineation in his Washington collection.

We can further trace the geographical history of the Antilles in the Münster map of 1540, in the Mercator gores of 1541, and in the Ulpius globe of 1542. In this last year (1542) we find in the Rotz Idrography, preserved in the British Museum, a map which records the latitudes about three degrees too high for the larger islands, and about two degrees too low for the more southern ones, making the distance between Florida and Trinidad too great by five degrees. The map is marked “The Indis of Occident quhas the Spaniards doeth occupy.” The sketch here given follows Kohl’s copy. Rotz seems to have worked from antecedent Portuguese charts; and in the well-known Cabot map of 1544, of which a section is annexed, as well as in the Medina map of 1545, we doubtless have the results reached by the Spanish hydrographers. The “Carta marina” of the Italian Ptolemy of 1548, as well as the manuscript atlas of Nicholas Vallard (1547), now in the Sir Thomas Phillipps Collection, may be traced ultimately to the same source; and the story goes respecting the latter that a Spanish bishop, Don Miguel de Silva, brought out of Spain and into France the originals upon which it was founded. These originals, it would appear, also served Homem in 1558 in the elaborate manuscript map, now preserved in the British Museum, of which a sketch (in part) is annexed (p. 229).

The maps of the middle of the century which did most to fix popularly the geography of the New World were probably the Bellero map of 1554, which was so current in Antwerp publications of about that time, and the hemisphere of Ramusio (1556) which accompanied the third volume of his Viaggi, and of which a fac-simile is annexed. There is a variety of delineations to be traced out for the Antilles through the sequence of the better-known maps of the next following years, which the curious student may find in the maps of the Riccardi Palace, the Nancy globe, the Martines map of 155-, that of Forlani in 1560, the map of Ruscelli in the Ptolemy of 1561, besides those by Zalterius (1566), Des Liens (1566), Diegus (1568), Mercator (1569), Ortelius (1570), and Porcacchi (1572).

Of the map of Martines, in 1578, which is in a manuscript atlas preserved in the British Museum, Kohl says its parallels of latitude are more nearly correct than on any earlier map, while its meridians of longitude are expanded far too much.