Castillo's Map, 1541.
CALIFORNIA AND ARIZONA DISCOVERED.
A similar chart is mentioned by Señor Navarrete as existing in the hydrographic archives in Madrid. The second, from the Munich Atlas, no. vi., is of uncertain date. Peschel places it between 1532 and 1540; and it was certainly made about that time, as Yucatan is represented as an island, and California as a peninsula, although later it came again to be considered an island, as at its first discovery.
Manuscript Map, Author Unknown, Supposed to have been Drawn between 1532 And 1510.
This, then, was Discovery. And in the progress of discovery we may trace the progress of mind. We can but wonder now, when we see our little earth belted with steam and lightning, how reluctantly the infant intellect left its cradle to examine its surroundings. Wrapped in its Mediterranean swaddlings, it crept forth timidly, tremblingly, slowly gaining courage with experience, until, throwing off impediments, it trod the earth in the fearless pride of manhood. Like all science, philosophy, and religion, cosmography was at first a superstition. Walled within narrow limits, as we have seen, by imaginary frost and fire, shaken from fear of heaven above and hell beneath, there is little wonder that the ancients dared not venture far from home; nor that, when men began to explore parts unknown, there should appear that romance of geography so fascinating to the Greek mind, that halo thrown by the dimness of time and distance over strange seas and lands. From this time to that of the adaptation of the magnet to purposes of navigation, about a score of centuries, there was little progress in discovery.