[353] Owing to the compass error varying in the course of the voyage, the courses sailed will be more nearly parts of a great circle.
[354] According to the scale of the Cantino map this distance is about 2250 miglia, but according to Pasqualigo’s letters it should be 1800 or 2000, and according to Cantino’s letter 2800 miglia.
[355] This is not the place to discuss what is represented by the coast of the mainland to the west of Cuba on the Cantino map, whether the east coast of Asia, taken from Toscanelli’s mappamundi (or a source like Behaim’s globe), or real discoveries on the coast of North America made by unknown expeditions (?). In any case this coast has nothing to do with Gaspar Corte-Real, and Sir Clements Markham [1893, pp. xlix, ff.] is evidently wrong in thinking that this discoverer on his last voyage (in 1501) may have sailed along this coast.
[356] Yet a third type of representation of Greenland may be said to be found on the so-called Pilestrina map ([p. 377]), perhaps of 1511 [cf. Björnbo, 1910, p. 210], where Greenland forms a peninsula (from a mass of land on the north) as on the Cantino map, but much broader still. On the south-eastern promontory of Greenland is here written: “C[auo] de mirame et lexame” (i.e., Cape “look at me but don’t touch me”), which may be connected with the Portuguese voyage of 1500, when the explorers saw the coast but could not approach it on account of ice. Finally, I may mention the type of the Reinel map (see [p. 321]), where Greenland in the form of a broad land has been transferred to the coast of America. On all these maps with their changing representation of Greenland, Newfoundland has approximately the same form and position.
[357] Cf. Harrisse, 1900, pp. 54, f.
[358] That Miguel Corte-Real really reached Newfoundland seems also to result from the legend quoted above from the chart of about 1520, since he would hardly be named on this coast unless there were grounds for supposing that he arrived there; but this again must point to some of the expedition having returned.
[359] If Miguel Corte-Real set out in 1503, and not in 1502 (cf. [p. 353, note 1]), it must have been in 1504 that the King despatched these fresh ships.
[360] It is reported that in 1574 Vasqueanes Corte-Real IV., father of this Manuel, undertook an expedition to Labrador to find the North-West Passage.
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