1. Oceano settentrionale.
2. Canada.
3. panaman.
4. Mexico.
5. s. tomas.
6. Nova Ispania.
7. Cipola.
8. Le sete cita.
9. Topira.
10. tontontean.
11. Zangar.
12. Tebet.
13. Quisai.
14. Cimpaga.
15. Golfo de Tonza.
16. Ys. de las ladrones.
17. mangi.
18. mar de la china.
From Kohl’s sketch, preserved in his manuscript in the library of the American Antiquarian Society, the annexed outline is drawn. Furlani is reported to have received it from a Spanish nobleman, Don Diego Hermano, of Toledo.[1273] The connection with Asia is again adhered to in Johannes Myritius’s Opusculum geographicum, where the map is dated 1587, though the book was published at Ingolstadt in 1590.[1274] Just at this time Livio Sanuto, in his Geografia distinta (Venice, 1588), was disputing the Asiatic theory on the ground that the Mexicans would not have shown surprise at horses in Cortés’ time, if they had formerly been inhabitants of a continent like Asia, where horses are common. Perhaps the latest use of the type of map shown in the “Carta Marina” of 1548 was just a half century later, in 1598, in an edition of Ortelius, Il Theatro del mondo, published at Brescia. The belief still lingered for many years yet in some quarters; and Thomas Morton in 1636 showed that in New England it was not yet decided whether the continent of America did not border upon the country of the Tartars.[1275] Indeed, the last trace of the assumption was not blown away till Behring in 1728 passed from the Pacific to the Arctic seas.
Such is in brief the history of the inception and decline of the belief in the prolongation of Asia over against Spain, as Toscanelli had supposed in 1474, and as had been suspected by geographers at intervals since the time of Eratosthenes.[1276] The beginning of the decline of such belief is traced to the movements of Cortés. Balboa in 1513 by his discovery of the South Sea, later to be called the Pacific Ocean,[1277] had established the continental form of South America, whose limits southward were fixed by Magellan in 1520; but it was left for Cortés to begin the exploration to the north which Behring consummated.
After the Congress of Badajos had resolved to effect a search for a passage through the American barrier to the South Sea, the news of such a determination was not long in reaching Cortés in Mexico, and we know from his fourth letter, dated Oct. 15, 1524, that it had already reached him, and that he had decided to take part in the quest himself by despatching an expedition towards the Baccalaos on the hither side; while he strove also to connect with the discoveries of Magellan on the side of the South Sea.[1278] Cortés had already been led in part by the reports of Balboa’s discovery, and in part by the tidings which were constantly reaching him of a great sea in the direction of Tehuantepec, to establish a foothold on its coast, as the base for future maritime operations. So his explorers had found a fit spot in Zacatula, and thither he had sent colonists and shipwrights to establish a town and build a fleet,[1279] the Emperor meanwhile urging him speedily to use the vessels in a search for the coveted strait, which would open a shorter passage than Magellan had found to the Spice Islands.[1280] But Cortés’ attention was soon distracted by his Honduras expedition, and nothing was done till he returned from that march, when he wrote to the Emperor, Sept. 3, 1526, offering to conduct his newly built fleet to the Moluccas.
THE PACIFIC, 1513.
Kohl gives this old Portuguese chart of the Pacific in his Washington Collection, after an original preserved in the military archives at Munich, which was, as he thinks possible, made by some pilot accompanying Antonio da Miranda de Azevedo, who conducted a Portuguese fleet to the Moluccas in 1513 to join the earlier expedition (1511) under D’Abreu and Serraō. A legend at Maluca marks these islands as the place “where the cloves grow,” while the group south of them is indicated as the place “where nutmegs grow.” The coast on the right must stand for the notion then prevailing of the main of America, which was barring the Spanish progress from the east.
Of the early maps of the Moluccas, there is one by Baptista Agnese in his portolano of 1536, preserved in the British Museum; one by Diego. Homem in a similar atlas, dated 1558, likewise in the Museum; and one of 1568, by J. Martines. Copies of these are all included in Kohl’s Washington Collection.