Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
The Schöner globe of 1515, often cited as the Frankfort globe; the
Schöner globe of 1520; the so-called Tross gores of 1514-1519; the
map of Petrus Apianus[437]—or Bienewitz, as he was called in his
vernacular—which appeared in the _Polyhistoria_ of Solinus, edited
by the Italian monk Camers, and also in 1522 in the _De orbis situ_
of Pomponius Mela, published by Vadianus,—all preserve the same
characteristics with the St. Dié map, excepting that they show the
western passage referred to in Columbus’ dream, and so far unite some
of the inferences from the map of Ruysch. There was a curious survival
of this Cantino type, particularly as regards North America for many
years yet to come, as seen in the map which Münster added to the Basle
edition of the _Novus orbis_ in 1532 and 1537, and in the drawing which
Jomard gives[438] as from “une cassette de la Collection Trivulci, dite
Cassettina all’Agemina.” This last drawing is a cordiform mappemonde,
very like another which accompanied Honter’s _Rudimenta cosmographica_
in 1542, and which was repeated in various editions to as late a period
as 1590. Thus it happened that for nearly a century geographical
views which the earliest navigators evolved, continued in popular
books to convey the most inadequate notion of the contour of the new
continent.[439]
[Illustration: SYLVANUS’ MAP, 1511.
The map is given in its original projection in Lelewel, pl. xlv., and
on a greatly reduced scale in Daly’s _Early Cartography_, p. 32. There
are copies of this 1511 Ptolemy in the Lenox, Carter-Brown, Astor,
Brevoort, Barlow, and Kalbfleisch collections. Cf. _Murphy Catalogue_,
no. 2,051, for a copy now in the American Geographical Society’s
Library, and references in Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno
1511.]
In the same year with the publication of the Peter Martyr map of 1511,
an edition of Ptolemy, published at Venice and edited by Bernardus
Sylvanus, contained a mappemonde on a cordiform projection,—which is
said to be the first instance of the use of this method in drafting
maps. What is shown of the new discoveries is brought in a distorted
shape on the extreme western verge of the map; and to make the
contour more intelligible, it is reduced in the sketch annexed to
an ordinary plane projection. It is the earliest engraved map to
give any trace of the Cortereal discoveries[440] and to indicate the
Square, or St. Lawrence, Gulf. It gives a curious Latinized form to
the name of the navigator himself in “Regalis Domus” (Cortereal), and
restores Greenland, or Engronelant, to a peninsular connection with
northwestern Europe as it had appeared in the Ptolemy of 1482.
[Illustration: THE LENOX GLOBE.]
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