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
With Kunstmann’s _Entdeckung_, the Bavarian Academy published, under
the care of that gentleman, Karl von Spruner, and Georg M. Thomas,
an elegant atlas of thirteen maps in beautifully executed colored
fac-similes. Portions of three of these maps relating to the Cortereals
are given in a greatly reduced form, without the brilliant colors, by
Dr. Kohl, in the Appendage to his chapter on these navigators. The
first of these is a Portuguese chart, made about 1504 by an unknown
hand. The southern part of Greenland is laid down upon it without a
name; and farther to the west appears a considerable extent of country,
answering, perhaps, to parts of our Labrador and Newfoundland, which
bears the name “Terra de cortte Reall.”[36] The second chart, made by
Pedro Reinel at about the same period, shows only Portuguese names
and gives the Portuguese flag on that part of America visited by the
Cortereals. Reinel was a Portuguese pilot of eminence, who afterward
entered the Spanish service. The third map, also of Portuguese origin,
of about the year 1520, although its exact date and its author’s
name are unknown, contains at Labrador these words: “terram istam
portugalenses viderunt atamen non intraverunt” (“The Portuguese saw
this country, but did not enter it”); and again at a place farther west
occurs the legend: “Terram istam gaspar corte Regalis portugalensis
primo invenit, et secum tulit hōīes silvestres et ursos albos. In ea
est maxiā multitudo animalium et avium necnon et pescium. qui anno
sequenti naufragium perpessus nunquam rediit: sic et fratri ejus
micaeli anno sequenti contigit” (“This country was first discovered
by Gaspar Cortereal, a Portuguese, and he brought from there wild and
barbarous men and white bears. There are to be found in it plenty of
animals, birds, and fish. In the following year he was shipwrecked, and
did not return: the same happened to his brother Michael in the next
year”).[37]
* * * * *
The original authorities for the early French expeditions have,
unhappily, not been preserved, or they still lie hidden in some dusky
receptacle, baffling all search for them. The Breton fishermen perhaps
wrote no accounts of their voyages across the Atlantic; but we might
hope for some authentic reports of the voyages of Denys, Aubert, and
others, made under the auspices of the rich and powerful Angos. The
archives of Dieppe, however, were destroyed at the bombardment of that
town in 1694, and those of La Rochelle met a similar fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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