MAIOLLO, 1527.
Sketch of the map in the Ambrosian Library, of which the part north of Florida is given on a larger scale, after Desimoni’s sketch, with coast names, in the present History, Vol. IV. pp. 28, 39. The present sketch follows a fac-simile given in Weise’s Discoveries of America.
There is a sketch of the northern shore of South America and the “Insule Canibalorum sive Antiglie” which was made by Lorenz Friess (Laurentius Frisius) in 1522. The outline, which is given herewith, represents one of the sheets of twelve woodcut maps which were not published till 1530—under the title Carta marina navigatoria Portugalensium. Friess does not mention whence he got his material, which seems to be of an earlier date than the time of using it; and Kohl suspects it came from Waldseemüller. South America is marked “Das nüw Erfunde land.”
In the Maiollo map of 1527 we find two distinct features,—the strait, connecting with the Pacific, which Cortés had been so anxious to find; and the insular Yucatan pushed farther than usual into the Gulf. The notion that Yucatan was an island is said to have arisen from a misconception of the meaning of the designation which the Indians applied to the country.[743] The Portuguese Portulano of 1514-1518[744] had made Yucatan a peninsula; but four years later Grijalva had been instructed to sail round it, and Cortés in his map of 1520 had left an intervening channel.[745] We see the uncertainty which prevailed among cartographers regarding this question in the peninsular character which Yucatan has in the map of 1520,[746] as resulting from Pineda’s search; in the seeming hesitancy of the Toreno map,[747] and in the unmistakable insularity of the Friess,[748] Verrazano,[749] and Ribero[750] charts. The decision of the latter royal hydrographer governed a school of map-makers for some years, and a similar strait of greater or less width separates it from the main in the Finæus map of 1531,[751] the Lenox woodcut of 1534,[752] the Ulpius globe of 1542,[753] not to name others; though the peninsular notion still prevailed with some of the cartographers.[754]
THE WEIMAR MAP OF 1527.
A map which shows the extent of the explorations on the Pacific from Balbóa’s time till Gonzales and others reached the country about the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is that of 1527, which was formerly ascribed to Ferdinand Columbus, but has been shown (?) by Harrisse to be more likely the work of Nuño Garcia de Toreno. The map, which is of the world, and of which but a small section is given herewith, is called Carta universal en que se contiene todo lo que del mundo se a descubierto hasta aora; hizola un cosmographo de su magestad anno M. D. XXVII en Sevilla. Its outline of the two Americas is shown in a sketch given on an earlier page.[755] The original is preserved in the Grand-Ducal Library at Weimar.
RIBERO, 1529.