The National Magazine, Vol. XV, No. 1, November 1891Various
History
The National Magazine, Vol. XV, No. 1, November 1891
Various
Local history -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- Periodicals; West (U.S.) -- History -- Periodicals
So far as present evidence goes, it is perhaps unnecessary to say
anything more in vindication of the statement of the Dutch Committee of
1644, claiming that representatives of the Greenland Company wintered
here in 1598. Nevertheless, as a matter of interest, and to show how
well the Hudson was known at this time by both Dutch and English, we may
quote from the English translation of the Dutch narrative of Linschoten,
which clearly describes the coast. He says: “There is a countrey under 44
degrees and a halfe, called Baccalaos.” This country of Baccalaos reached
nine hundred miles, that is, from the Cape de Baccalaos [Cape Race] to
Florida.
The distances are given approximately, of course, by Linschoten, being on
the decimal system, but they distinctly mark the principal divisions of
the coast and fix the fact beyond question that the Hudson was perfectly
well known.
On the general subject it may be said, that the record of the “Greenland
Company” is not satisfactory, yet the word “Greenland” at that time had a
very general use, and all that the Committee of Accounts may have meant
by the phrase was, that a company or association engaged in the fur and
fish trade, which for centuries, even, had been prosecuted at the north,
had sent some ships to this region in 1598. There is certainly nothing
unreasonable in this supposition, the coast being so well known. Various
adventurers of whom we know nothing doubtless came and went unobserved,
being in no haste to publish the source from which they derived such a
profitable trade in peltries. The Committee of Accounts either falsified
deliberately or followed some old tradition. Why may not a tradition be
true?
We turn next to examine a map recently brought to notice and which is
of unique value. Formerly the map usually pointed out as the oldest
seventeenth century map of this region was the Dutch “Figurative” Map,
which was found by Mr. Brodhead in the Dutch archives. We have now,
however, an earlier map of 1610, which was prepared from English data
for James I., a copy finding its way to Philip III., by Velasco, March
22, 1611. Sandy Hook, though without name, is delineated about as it
appears in later maps, while Long Island is shown as a part of the main,
with no indication of the Sound, though Cape Cod and the neighboring
islands are well delineated, and Verrazano’s Island of “Luisa” appears as
“Cla[u]dia,” the mother of Francis I. Clearly at this time neither Block
nor any other Dutch navigator had passed through Hell Gate into Long
Island Sound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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