The earliest map extant representing the territory discovered in the western hemisphere is a map of the world drafted by the Spanish cartographer, Juan de la Cosa.[223] It was found by Baron de Walckenaër in the possession of a dealer in old books and wares, from whom he bought it for a small sum of money. Baron von Humboldt shortly afterward made its discovery known in his notable work on the geography of the new continent.[224] When the library of Baron de Walckenaër was sold, in Paris, in 1853, La Cosa’s map was purchased for the queen of Spain for four thousand and twenty francs. It is now in the Naval museum, in Madrid.[225] The famous map-maker drafted the whole world, as then known, on an ox-hide, five feet nine inches long by three feet wide, on a scale of fifteen Spanish leagues to a degree. The map is attractively colored and brightened with gold. It may rightly be called the geographical frontispiece of the history of the discovery of America.[226] The map bears the inscription “_Juan de la cosa la fizo enel puerto de S: mjᵃ en año de. 1500._”—Juan de la Cosa made it in the port of Santa Maria in the year 1500. A picture of St. Christopher bearing the Christ-child across the water ornaments the space above the inscription.[227] Most prominent of the islands of the “Mar Oceanus” delineated on the map are Cuba, Habacoa,[228] and La Española. The coast of South America, as far as it had been explored, is well represented by the painstaking map-maker.[229] La Cosa, having seen a copy of the map made by Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), to display the fields of the English discoveries of 1497 and 1498, attempted to show in what part of the New World they were. As outlined by him, the land explored by Cabot trends eastwardly from the sea discovered for the English (_mar descubierta por inglese_), to the Cape of England (Cavo de Inglaterra). As La Cosa had nothing else than his imagination to guide him in delineating the coast of North America between the field of the English discoveries and South America, his extension of the main-land from the one to the other has no geographical significance. Unable to determine definitely the position and extent of the territory of the New World, La Cosa projected it as accurately as his information respecting the explored parts of its sinuous coast gave him knowledge. Ignorant of the limits of the New Land he honorably darkens that part which might be deemed its cartographic development with several shades of meaningless colors.[230] CHAPTER VI. 1496-1498.