The Catalan Map of about 1480
More important in every way is a Catalan map ([Fig. 7]) preserved in Milan and reproduced by Nordenskiöld in 1892,[111] but since copied partly by Nansen, by Westropp, and by others. It belongs to the fifteenth century—perhaps about 1480—and deserves clearly to rank as the only map before Columbus, thus far reported, which shows a part of North America other than Greenland. The latter had long before appeared in the well-known map of Claudius Clavus, 1427[112] ([Fig. 16]), no doubt on the faith of the early Norse narratives and subsequent commercial intercourse, for the Norse Greenland colony is known to have existed in 1410 and probably did not die out entirely until much later. The Catalan map of about 1480 shows Greenland also as a great northwestern land mass beyond Iceland, identifying it by name as Illa Verde (Green Island). But just south, or west of south, of this Greenland at a slight interval and southwest of Iceland is drawn and named a large Brazil of the conventional circular disc form. Its position is that of Labrador, or perhaps Newfoundland, as it would naturally have been understood and reported by the Norse explorers. It can be nothing but one or both of these regions of America with perhaps neighboring lands.
Fig. 6—Section of the Nicolay map of 1560 showing, on the American Side of the Atlantic, Brazil, Man, and Insula Verde, the first two transferred from the European side. (After Nordenskiöld’s photographic facsimile.)
It is true that this map shows also another Brazil of the divided kind (in this instance with a channel crossing it from east to west) located in mid-Atlantic about where Prunes and others show their bisected Brazil. But this seems only an instance of conservation and deference for authority, such as has often been manifested in cartography. Of such deference for authority perhaps there is no more striking instance than Bianco’s map of 1448, which places the rediscovered Azores where they should be but also preserves them, on the faith of older maps, where they should not be—making a double series. The lesser bisected mid-Atlantic Brazil of the Catalan map may well be set aside as a survival without significance.
But the duplication by Bianco in 1448 raises a question of distance, which must be considered, for his Azores retained from the maps antedating the Portuguese rediscoveries are far nearer the coast of Europe than the truth at all warrants; and, so far as we can judge, the same cautious underestimating was applied to all oceanic islands as reported. Corvo, for example, is actually nearly half-way across the Atlantic, yet on all the maps for a long time is brought eastward to a position much nearer Portugal. We must suppose that the region about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, if visited, would be similarly treated, and we cannot tell how far the minimization of distance might be carried by some map-makers.
Fig. 7—Section of the Catalan map of about 1480 showing Brazil Island and Green Island (Illa Verde). (After Nordenskiöld’s photographic facsimile.)