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.)
Now this did not at all keep pace with the geographical knowledge common to both French and Spanish towards the close of this period. The colonists under Laudonniére and afterwards Aviles himself, ascended the St. Johns certainly as far as Lake George, and knew of a great interior lake to the south; Pedro Menendez Marquez, the nephew and successor of the latter, made a methodical survey of the coast from Pensacola to near the Savannah river (from Santa Maria de Galve to Santa Helena;) and English navigators were acquainted with its general outline and the principal points along the shore.
Yet during the whole of the next century I am not aware of a single map that displays any signs of improvement, or any marks of increased information. That inserted by De Laet in his description of the New World, called Florida et Regiones Vicinæ, (1633,) is noteworthy only because it is one of the first, if not the first, to locate along his supposed route the native towns and provinces met with by De Soto. Their average excellence may be judged from those inserted in the elephantine work of Ogilby on America, (1671,) and still better in its Dutch and German paraphrases. The Totius Americæ Descriptio, by Gerhard a Schagen in the latter, is a meritorious production for that age.
No sooner, however, had the English obtained a firm footing in Carolina and Georgia, and the French in Louisiana, than a more accurate knowledge of their Spanish neighbors was demanded and acquired. The “New Map of ye North Parts of America claimed by France under ye name of Louisiana, Mississippi, Canada, and New France, with ye adjoining Territories of England and Spain,” (London, 1720,) indicates considerable progress, and is memorable as the first on which the St. Johns is given its true course, information about which its designer Herman Moll, obtained from the “Journals and Original Draughts” of Captain Nairn. His map of the West Indies contains a “Draught of St. Augustine and its Harbour,” with the localities of the castle, town, monastery, Indian church, &c., carefully pointed out; previous to it, two plans of this city had appeared, one, the earliest extant, engraved to accompany the narrative of Drake’s Voyage and Descent in 1586, and another, I know not by whose hand, representing its appearance in 1665.[126]
On the former of these maps, “The South Bounds of Carolina,” are placed nearly a degree south of St. Augustine, thus usurping all the best portion of the Spanish territory. This is but an example of the great confusion that prevailed for a long time as to the extent of the region called Florida. The early writers frequently embraced under this name the whole of North America above Mexico, distinguishing, as Herrera and Torquemada, between Florida explored and unexplored, (Florida conocida, Florida ignorada,) or as Christian Le Clerq, between Spanish and French and English Florida. Taking it in this extended sense, Barcia includes in his Chronology (Ensayo Cronologico de la Florida) not only the operations of the Spanish and English on the east coast of the United States, but also those of the French in Canada and the expeditions of Vasquez Coronado and others in New Mexico. Nicolas le Fer, on the other hand, ignoring the name altogether, styled the whole region Louisiana, (1718,) while the English, not to be outdone in national rapacity, laid claim to an equal amount as Carolina. De Laet[127] was the first geographer who confined the name to the peninsula. In 1651 Spain relinquished her claims to all land north of 36° 30´ north lat., but it was not till the Definitive Treaty of Peace of 1763, that any political attempt was made to define its exact boundaries, and then, not with such entire success, but room was left for subsequent disputes between our government and Spain, only finally settled by the surveys of Ellicott at the close of the century.
Neither Guillaume de l’Isle nor M. Bellin, both of whom etched maps of Florida many years after the publication of that of Moll, seems to have been aware of his previous labors, or to have taken advantage of his more extensive information. In the gigantic Atlas Nouveau of the former, (Amsterdam, 1739,) are two maps of Florida, evidently by different hands. The one, Tabula Geographica Mexico et Floridæ, gives tolerably well the general contour of the peninsula, and situates the six provinces of Apalacha mentioned by Bristock; the other, Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi, is an enlarged copy with additions of that published five years previous in the fifth volume of the Voyages au Nord, on which is given the route of De Soto. Bellin’s Carte des Costes de la Nouvelle France suivant les premiéres Decouvertes is found in Charlevoix’s Nouvelle France and is of little worth.
The map of “Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands,” that accompanies Catesby’s Natural History of those regions, is not so accurate as we might expect from the opportunities he enjoyed. The peninsula is conceived as a nearly equilateral triangle projecting about two hundred and sixty miles towards the south. Like other maps of this period, it derives its chief value from locating Indian and Spanish towns.