HOMEM, ABOUT 1540.
This follows Kohl’s drawing, of which a portion is also given in his Discovery of Maine, p. 298. It is evidently of a later date than another of his in which the west coast is left indefinite, and which is assigned to about 1530. In the present map he apparently embodied Cabot’s discoveries in the La Plata, but had not heard of Orellana’s exploration of the Amazon in 1542; though he had got news of it when he made his map of 1558. A marked peculiarity of the map is the prolongation of northwestern Europe as “Terra Nova,” which probably means Greenland,—a view entertained before Columbus.
There seems to have been a general agreement among cartographers for some years yet to consider the newly discovered California as a peninsula, growing out of the concurrent testimony of those who, subsequent to Cortés’ own expedition, had tracked both the gulf and the outer coast. The Portuguese map given by Kunstmann[1303] shows it as such, though the map cannot be so early as that geographer places its anterior limit (1530), since the development of the gulf could not have been made earlier than 1535; unless by chance there were explorations from the Moluccas, of which we have no record. The map in this part bears a close resemblance to a manuscript chart in the British Museum, placed about 1536, and it seems probable that this is the approximate date of that in Kunstmann. The California peninsula is shown in much the same way in a map which Major ascribes to Baptista Agnese, and places under 1539.[1304] It belongs (pl. iv.) to what has been sometimes spoken of as an atlas of Philip II. inscribed to Charles V., but in fact it was given to Philip by Charles.[1305] Its essential features were almost exactly reproduced in a draft of the New World (preserved in the British Museum) assigned to about 1540, and held to be the work of the Portuguese hydrographer Homem.
Apian[1306] and Münster[1307] in 1540, and Mercator in 1541,[1308] while boldly delineating a coast which extends farther north than Cabrillo had reached in 1542, wholly ignore this important feature. Not so, however, Sebastian Cabot in his famous Mappemonde of 1544, as will be seen by the annexed sketch. The idea of Münster, as embodied in his edition of Ptolemy in 1540,[1309] already referred to, was continued without essential change in the Basle edition of Ptolemy in 1545.[1310] In 1548 the “carta marina” of Gastaldi as shown on a previous page,[1311] clearly defined the peninsula, while merging the coast line above into that of Asia. The peninsula was also definitely marked in several of the maps preserved in the Riccardi palace at Florence, which are supposed to be of about the middle of the sixteenth century.[1312]
CABOT, 1544.
Sketched from a photograph of the original mappemonde in the great library at Paris.
In the map of Juan Freire, 1546, we have a development of the coast northward from the peninsula, for which it is not easy to account; and the map is peculiar in other respects. The annexed sketch of it follows Kohl’s drawing of an old portolano, which he took from the original while it was in the possession of Santarem. Freire, who was a Portuguese hydrographer, calls it a map of the Antipodes, a country discovered by Columbus, the Genoese. It will be observed that about the upper lake we have the name “Bimini regio,” applied to Florida after the discovery of Ponce de Leon, because of the supposition that the fountain of youth existed thereabout. The coasts on both sides of the gulf are described as the discovery of Cortés. There seems to be internal evidence that Freire was acquainted with the reports of Ulloa and Alarcon, and the chart of Castillo; but it is not so clear whence he got the material for his draft of the more westerly portions of the coast, which, it will be observed, are given much too great a westerly trend. The names upon it do not indicate any use of Cabrillo’s reports; though from an inscription upon this upper coast Freire credits its discovery to the Spaniards, under orders from the emperor, conducted by one Villalobos. Kohl could not find any mention of such an explorer, but conjectured he was perhaps the one who before Cabrillo, as Herrera mentions, had named a river somewhere near 30° north latitude “Rio de Nuestra Señora,” and which Cabrillo sought. Kohl also observes that though the coast line is continuous, there are places upon it marked “land not seen,” with notes of its being again seen west of such places; and from this he argues that the expedition went up and not down the coast. It not unlikely had some connection with the fleet which Ruy Lopez de Villalobos conducted under Mendoza’s orders, in November, 1542, across the Pacific to the islands on the Asiatic coast.[1313]
