It is not worth while to reproduce here various maps of this time, all showing more or less resemblance to the common type of this central portion of the New World. Such are the maps of Verrazano[766] and of Thorne,[767] the draft of the Sloane manuscript,[768] the cordiform map of Orontius Finæus,[769] one given by Kunstmann,[770] and the whole series of the Agnese type.[771]
GULF OF MEXICO, 1536.
There is a French map, which was found by Jomard in the possession of a noble family in France, which Kohl supposes to be drawn in part from Ribero. A sketch is annexed as of “An Early French Map.” The absence of the Gulf of California and of all traces of De Soto’s expedition leads Kohl to date it before 1533. Jomard placed the date later; but as the map has no record of the expeditions of Ribault and Laudonnière, it would appear to be earlier than 1554.[772]
There is a large manuscript map in the British Museum which seems to have been made by a Frenchman from Spanish sources, judging from the mixture and corruption of the languages used in it. In one inscription there is mention of “the disembarkation of the Governor;” and this, together with the details of the harbors on the west coast of Florida, where Narvaez went, leads Kohl to suppose the map to have been drawn from that commander’s reports. The sketch, which is annexed and marked “Gulf of Mexico, 1536,” follows Kohl’s delineation in his Washington collection.[773]
ROTZ, 1542.
We can further trace the geographical history of the Antilles in the Münster map of 1540,[774] in the Mercator gores of 1541,[775] and in the Ulpius globe of 1542.[776] In this last year (1542) we find in the Rotz Idrography, preserved in the British Museum, a map which records the latitudes about three degrees too high for the larger islands, and about two degrees too low for the more southern ones, making the distance between Florida and Trinidad too great by five degrees. The map is marked “The Indis of Occident quhas the Spaniards doeth occupy.” The sketch here given follows Kohl’s copy.[777] Rotz seems to have worked from antecedent Portuguese charts; and in the well-known Cabot map of 1544, of which a section is annexed, as well as in the Medina map of 1545,[778] we doubtless have the results reached by the Spanish hydrographers. The “Carta marina” of the Italian Ptolemy of 1548,[779] as well as the manuscript atlas of Nicholas Vallard (1547), now in the Sir Thomas Phillipps Collection, may be traced ultimately to the same source; and the story goes respecting the latter that a Spanish bishop, Don Miguel de Silva, brought out of Spain and into France the originals upon which it was founded. These originals, it would appear, also served Homem in 1558 in the elaborate manuscript map, now preserved in the British Museum, of which a sketch (in part) is annexed (p. 229).
