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.[791] [Illustration: CUBA (_after Wytfliet_, 1597). The earliest map of Cuba is that in the La Cosa Chart, which is reproduced, among other places, in Ramon de la Sagra’s _Histoire physique et politique de l’ile de Cuba_, 1842-1843, which contains also the chart of Guillaure Testu. There are other early maps of Cuba—besides those in maps of the Antilles already mentioned in the present section—in Porcacchi, 1572 (pp. 81, 88), in the Ortelius of 1592, and in the Mercator atlases. The bibliography of Cuba is given in Bachiler’s _Apuntes para la historia de la isla de Cuba_, Havana, 1861. For the cartography, cf. the _Mapoteca Columbiana_ of Uricoechea, London, 1860, p. 53. Of the several maps of the Antilles toward the end of the century, it may be sufficient to name the detailed map of the West Indies in the Ortelius of 1584, the Hakluyt-Martyr map of 1587, the map of Thomas Hood in Kunstmann, the De Bry map of 1596, as well as the maps of the first distinctively American atlas,—that of Wytfliet in 1597.] CHAPTER IV. ANCIENT FLORIDA. BY JOHN GILMARY SHEA, LL.D. THE credit of being the first to explore our Atlantic coast has not yet been positively awarded by critical historians. Ramusio preserves the report of a person whom he does not name, which asserts that Sebastian Cabot claimed for his father and himself, in the summer of 1497, to have run down the whole coast, from Cape Breton to the latitude of Cuba; but the most recent and experienced writer on Cabot treats the claim as unfounded.[792] The somewhat sceptical scholars of our day have shown little inclination to adopt the theory of Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, that Americus Vespucius on his first voyage reached Honduras in 1497, and during the ensuing year ran along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, doubled the Florida cape, and then sailed northward along our Atlantic coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he built a vessel and sailed to Cadiz.[793]