EARLY MAPS ILLUSTRATING VASCO DA GAMA’S FIRST VOYAGE.
It must ever be matter for regret that none of the sailing charts prepared by Vasco da Gama’s pilots should have reached us. In tracing the progress of his expedition with the aid of charts we are consequently dependent upon compilations which, although contemporary, embody also materials brought home by other navigators.
One great drawback of all the charts available for our purpose is their small scale.[457] This compelled their compilers to make a selection from the names which they found inserted upon the larger charts at their disposal, and this selection may not always have been a judicious one. The compilation of a map from discordant materials presents difficulties even in the present day, and these difficulties were much greater at a time when the compiler had not at his command trustworthy observations for latitude which would have enabled him to check the positions of intermediate places, and bring into agreement the records brought home by successive explorers. As an instance, we may mention that in the five maps which we shall bring more fully under notice, the latitude assigned to the Cape of Good Hope varies between 29° and 34° S., its true position being 34° 22´ S. As to longitudes, they had to be determined by dead reckoning, and it need not therefore surprise us if, on the maps referred to, the Cape is placed from 3° 50´ to 10° 20´ too far to the eastward. Nay, this near approach to the truth, in at least one instance, compels our recognition of the skill of the men who piloted the first ships around that long-sought Cabo desejado.
Another difficulty arises from the crabbed characters employed by the map draughtsmen of the early part of the sixteenth century: a difficulty all the more serious when these illegible characters had to be reproduced by Italians having no knowledge of the language of the documents they used, or the meaning of the uncouth names which they were called upon to copy. It is one of the great merits of Mercator to have caused these characters to be banished from the maps of his countrymen; but a second Mercator is still wanted to do the same good work for their printed books.
I now proceed to a consideration of the charts which illustrate more especially Vasco da Gama’s first voyage.
The first of these charts is by Henricus Martellus Germanus. It is one of many in a MS., Insularium illustratum, now in the British Museum (Add. MS. 15760). It is a map of the world, very roughly drawn and without a scale, and is dated 1489, that is almost immediately after the return of Dias in the December of the preceding year. The author, no doubt, was an Italian, and other maps by his skilful hand are known to exist.[458] Unfortunately for our purpose, the coast beyond the Cape is very incorrectly drawn, and there are but six names, viz., Golfo dentro delle serre (False Bay), Rio della vacche (Gouritz), Cavo dalhado (talhado, Seal Point), Golfo de Pastori (St. Francis Bay), Padrom de S. George (instead of Gregorio), and Ilha de fonte (instead of infante).[459]
The first map illustrating, or rather attempting to illustrate, Vasco da Gama’s voyage is that compiled by Juan de la Cosa, the famous pilot of Columbus, in 1500. The author was fairly well informed of the discoveries made by his own countrymen, but knew apparently but little about those of the Portuguese. Thus, although Vicente Yanez Pinzon only returned to Spain on September 30th, 1500, the coast explored by him to the westward of the Rostro hermoso (the Cabo de Agostinho of the Portuguese) is laid down properly; whilst Santa Cruz, discovered by Cabral in April 1500, is incorrectly indicated,[460] although Gaspar de Lemos, whom Cabral sent back with the news of his discovery, arrived in Portugal three months before the Spanish navigator. As to two groups of islands in the southern Atlantic, namely, “thebas, yslas tibras etiopicas yn mare oceanum austral” (lat 1° 40´ S.), and “Y. tausens, ylas tausens montises etiopicus oceanas” (lat. 15° S.), they seem to be quite imaginary, and I only refer to them here because they kept their place on later maps, and might be mistaken for the islands discovered by João da Nova in 1501-2. Of the results of Vasco da Gama’s expedition Juan de la Cosa must have been very ill-informed; among the many uncouth and incomprehensible names inserted by him along the Eastern coast of Africa there is not one which can be traced to Gama. Not even such places as Sofala, Quiloa, Moçambique and Mombaça can be identified, whilst Zanzibar and Madagascar lie far out in the Indian Ocean.[461]
The coastline of the Indian Ocean is Ptolemaic; there is no hint at the peninsular shape of India, the map being in that respect inferior to that of the Catalan, more than a hundred years older, and the only indication of Vasco da Gama’s visit to these seas is the name “Calicut”, placed on the south coast of Caramania (Kerman), with a legend to the east of it: “tierra descubierto por el rey dom Manuel rey de Portugal.”[462]
Our next chart shows a great advance upon the preceding. It was purchased at a sale in London, and is now the property of Dr. Hamy, who published a description of it, with facsimiles, in his Études historiques et géographiques, Paris, 1896. The author is not known. His chart places on record the discoveries made by Vicente Yanez Pinzon, Cabral, Sancho de Toar, and Cortereal, and by the expedition which King Manuel sent to Brazil in 1501, and which returned at the beginning of September, 1502.[463] This expedition, which was accompanied by Vespucci, explored the American coast as far as the Rio de Cananea, in lat. 25° 45´ S. The author knows nothing of the discoveries of João da Nova, who returned to Lisbon on September 11th, 1502. We may therefore safely date his map “1502”, as is done by Dr. Hamy.
One curious feature of this map is its double equator: that for the western half of the map being the ‘new’ equator, to which the recent discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese are to be referred, whilst that for the east lies four degrees to the north of the former, and is taken from Ptolemy. Indeed, the outline of the Indian Ocean is Ptolemy’s, and so is the nomenclature, with a few exceptions to be noticed presently. In the south-east, however, the author has broken through Ptolemy’s encircling barrier, and has thus opened a way from the Indicum mare to an outer ocean where room has been found for Seilam, Iava and far Quinsai. The eastern edge of his Oekumene lies 205° to the east of Lisbon (196° E. of Greenwich).[464] The only original features within the Indian Ocean are a peninsular India, which is made to project from Ptolemy’s old coastline to the west of Taprobana, with a town, “Colochuti”, and the islands of Madagascar and Tangibar lying far out at sea in lat. 20° S. The only other modern name within this wide area is “Malacha”, which is placed in the Aurea Chersonesus.