The early record is also corroborated, in a manner hardly credible in regions of more rapid social and physiographic development, by local tradition and by the survival of the well excavated by the party and still bearing Escalante’s name. On the whole it may be considered established that Sergeant Escalante crossed El Infiernillo and visited Tiburon in 1700; and, although it may be possible that pearl fishers or others preceded him, he must be credited with the first recorded exploration of strait and island by white men. The specific references to the Seri and their insular habitat by Ribas, by Kino and his chronicler, and by the various recorders of Escalante’s expeditions, establish the extent of the lore concerning people and place, even before the end of the seventeenth century. This lore found measurable expression in maps prepared in Europe, even by those cartographers who purposely or otherwise ignored the surveys of Ulloa and Alarcon. In his “newest and most accurate” map of America, 1662, Fredericus de Witt depicted the Gulf of California (“Mare Ver mio olim Mare Rvbrvm”) as extending northward to connect with the mythic Strait of Anian (“Fretum Aniani”), yet he located Rio Colorado (“R. de Tecon”) and Rio Gila (“R. de Coral”) approximately, placing the largest island in the gulf, named “I. Gigante”, just off their (common) embouchure;[55] and an anonymous map of the Pacific ocean, apparently by the same author and of closely corresponding date, is essentially similar.[56] The map of the northern part of America by Peter van der Aa, about 1690, is also similar, though on smaller scale;[57] and the same may be said of that cartographer’s new map of America, issued about the same time, in which the island is designated “I. de Gigante”.[58] A somewhat later map by Van der Aa (although supposed to have been issued in 1690) is greatly improved; the “Mer de Californie” is brought to rather indefinite end a little above the mouth of Rio Colorado (“R. de bona guia”); the “Pimases” are placed in proper position with respect to the Gila (“R. de Coral”), and the “Herises” are located a third of the way and the “Ahomeses” halfway down the gulf; while a greatly elongated island stretches from the one to the other off the province of “Sonora”.[59] The origin of the name “Gigante” is uncertain; it may be borrowed from a land feature. As used in some cases it apparently connotes the size of the island, while the use in other cases evidently connotes gigantic inhabitants. [55] Novissima et Accuratissima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis Americæ, Amsterdam. (In American Maps, 1579-1796, Library U. S. Geological Survey, 135.) [56] Mar del Zvr, Hispanis, Mare Pacificum. (Ibid., 129.) [57] ’T Noorder Deel van Amerika, Leyden. (Ibid., 178.) [58] Nouvelle Carte de l’Amerique, Leyden. (Ibid., 156.)