Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
We first begin to trace a sensible effect of Cartier’s voyage in
a manuscript in the British Museum[315] indorsed, _This Boke of
Idrography is made by me, Johne Rotz, Sarvant to the Kinges Mooste
Excellent Majestie_. The author was a Frenchman of Flemish name, and
his treatise is dated 1542. Harrisse[316] thinks that he used the
Portuguese-Dieppe authorities; and Kohl thinks that he must have had
access to the maps, now lost, which Cartier brought home from his first
voyage, while along the Gulf of Maine he depended upon the Spanish
accounts.[317] Both of the sketches from Rotz here given follow copies
in the Kohl Collection; one is a section from his map of the east coast
of North America, and the other is from his Western Hemisphere,—which
seems to indicate that he had in the interim between making the two
maps got tidings of Cartier’s later voyage.[318]
[Illustration: FROM THE ULPIUS GLOBE, 1542.
The key is as follows: 1. Groestlandia. 2. Islandia. 3. Grovelat.
4. Terra Corterealis. 5. Baccalos. 6. Terra laboratoris. 7. Cavo de
Brettoni. Cf. the fac-simile on an earlier page.]
Baptista Agnese at Venice seems not to have been as fortunate in
getting knowledge of Cartier’s voyages as Rotz in London was; and
two or three of his charts, dated 1543, showing this region, are
preserved. They give a pretty clear notion of the eastern coast of
Newfoundland, with “C. Raso” and “Terra de los Bretones” to the west of
it.[319] These Agnese maps are in London,[320] Paris, Florence,[321]
and Coburg.[322] Other maps by Agnese of a year or two later date, but
preserving much the same characteristics, are in the Royal Library at
Dresden,[323] dated 1544, and in the Marciana Collection at Venice,
dated 1545.[324]
We get at last, as has been said in the previous chapter, the first
recognition in a printed map of the Cartier voyages in the great
Cabot map of 1544, of which a section is here reproduced,[325] and a
similar section is given by Harrisse in his _Cabots_, preserving the
colors of the original. Harrisse, by collating the references and
early descriptions, reaches the conclusion that there may have been
three, and perhaps four, editions of this map, of which a single copy
of one edition is now known. Of the maps accompanying the manuscript
_Cosmographie_ of Allefonsce, in the Paris Library, sufficient has been
said in the preceding text.[326]
None of these explorations prevented Münster, however, from neglecting,
if he was aware of, the newer views which the Cabot map had made
public; and his eagerness for the western passage dictated easily
a way to the Moluccas in the “Typus universalis” of his edition of
Ptolemy in 1545.
[Illustration: ROTZ, 1542 (_East Coast_).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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