Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; Its Literary History, Indian Tribes and AntiquitiesBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
History
Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; Its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Florida -- Antiquities; Florida -- History; Florida -- History -- Bibliography; Indians of North America -- Florida
The first outline of the coast drawn from known observation is the
_Traza de las Costas de Tierra Firme y de las Tierras Nuevas_,
accompanying the royal grant of those parts to Francisco de Garay in the
year 1521. It has been published by Navarrete, and by Buckingham Smith.
Contrary to the usual opinion of the day, which was not proved incorrect
till the voyages of Francesco Fernandez de Cordova (1517), and more
conclusively by that of Estevan Gomez (1525), the peninsula is attached
to the mainland. This and other reasons render it probable that it was
drawn up under the supervision of Anton de Alaminos, pilot of Leon on
his first voyage, who ever denied the existence of an intervening
strait.[123] I cannot agree with Mr. Smith that it points to any prior
discoveries unknown to us.
On some early maps, as one in the quarto geography of Ptolemy of 1525,
the region of Florida is marked Parias. This name, originally given by
Columbus to an island of the West Indian archipelago, and so laid down
on the “figura ò pintura de la tierra,” which he forwarded to Ferdinand
the Catholic in 1499,[124] was quite wildly applied by subsequent
geographers to Peru, to the region on the shore of the Caribbean Sea, to
the whole of South America, to the southern extremity of North America
where Nicaragua now is, and finally to the peninsula of Florida.
We have seen that early maps prove De Leon was not, as is commonly
supposed, the first to see and name the Land of Flowers (Terra Florida);
neither did his discoveries first expand a knowledge of it in Europe.
Probably all that was known by professed geographers regarding it for a
long time after was the product of later explorations, for not till
forty years from the date of his first voyage was there a chart
published containing the name he applied to the peninsula. This is the
one called _Novae Insulae_, in the Geographia Claudii Ptolemaei,
Basileae, 1552.[125]
The only other delineation of the country dating from the sixteenth
century that deserves notice--for those of Herrera are quite
worthless--is that by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, published in the
second volume of De Bry, which is curious as the only one left by the
French colonists, though geographically not more correct than others of
the day. Indeed, all of them portray the country very imperfectly.
Generally it is represented as a triangular piece of land more or less
irregular, indented by bays, divided into provinces Cautio, Calos,
Tegeste, and others, names which are often applied to the whole
peninsula. The southern extremity is sometimes divided into numerous
islands by arms of the sea, and the St. Johns, when down at all, rises
from mountains to the north, and runs in a southeasterly direction,
nearly parallel with the rivers supposed to have been discovered by
Ribaut, (La Somme, La Loire, &c.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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