Under authority of Ferdinand II., he assumed the title of Duke of Northumberland, which was recognized throughout the empire. He died in 1639.[1375] The Arcano has thirty-three American maps; but the Munich manuscript shows thirteen more. One of the Pacific coast, which records Drake’s explorations, is annexed; but with Dudley’s text[1376] there is another showing the coast from Cape Mendocino south, which puts under thirty degrees north a “golfo profondo” of undefined inland limits, with “I di Cedros” off its mouth. The bay with the anchor and soundings just north of thirty degrees, called in the fac-simile “Pto di Nouova Albion,” corresponding, it would seem, to San Francisco, is still seen in this other chart, with a more explicit inscription,—“Po: dell nuovo Albion scoperto dal Drago Cno Inglese.”
In 1649, in Texeira’s chart, there is laid down for the first time a sketch of the coast near the Straits of Anian, which is marked as seen by João da Gama, and extends easterly from Jesso, in the latitude of 50°. Gama’s land lived for some time in the charts.[1377]
We have another of Speed’s maps, five years later (1651), which appears in the 1676 edition of his Prospect, in which that geographer is somewhat confused. He makes California an island, with a break in the coast line of the main opposite its northern extremity, and its northwest point he calls “C. Mendocino,” while “Pt. Sir Francisco Draco” is placed south of it; but rather confusedly another Cape Mendocino projects from the main coast considerably further to the north.[1378] A map of Visscher in 1652[1379] reverts, however, to the anterior notions of Mercator; but when in 1655 Wright, an Englishman, adopted Mercator’s projection, and first made it really serviceable for navigation, in his Certain Errors in Navigation, he gave an insular shape to California.
The French geographer Nicolas Sanson[1380] introduced a new notion in 1656. California was made an island with “Pto de Francisco Draco” on the west side, somewhat south of the northern cape of it. On the main the coast in the same latitude is made to form a projection to the north called “Agubela de Cato,” without any extension of the shore farther northward. The map in Petavius’s (Petau’s) History of the World (London, 1659) carries the coast up, but leaves a gap opposite the northern end of the insular California. The atlas of Van Loon (1661) converts the gap into the Straits of Anian, and puts a “terra incognita” north of it. Danckerts of Amsterdam in the same year (1661), and Du Val in various maps of about this time make it an island. The map of 1663, which appeared in Heylin’s Cosmographie,[1381] gives the insular California, and a dotted line for the main coast northward, with three alternative directions. A map of the Sanson type is given in Blome’s Description of the World, 1670. Ogilby’s map in 1671 makes it an island,[1382] following Montanus’s Nieuwe Weereld.
Hennepin had in his 1683 map made California a peninsula, and in that of 1697 he still preserved the gulf-like character of the waters east of it; but the same plate in the 1698 edition is altered to make an island, as it still is in the edition of 1704. The French geographer Jaillot, in 1694, also conformed to the insular theory, as did Corolus Allard in his well-known Dutch atlas. Campanius, copying Hennepin, speaks of California as the largest island “which the Spaniards possess in America. From California the land extends itself [he says] to that part of Asia which is called Terra de Jesso, or Terra Esonis. The passage is only through the Straits of Anian, which hitherto has remained unknown, and therefore is not to be found in any map or chart,”—all of which shows something of Campanius’s unacquaintance with what had been surmised, at least, in cartography. All this while Blaeu in his maps was illustrating the dissolving geographical opinions of his time. In 1659 he had drawn California as an island; in 1662 as a peninsula; and once more, in 1670, as an island. Coronelli in 1680, and Franquelin in his great manuscript map of 1684 had both represented it as an island.[1383]
In 1698 the English geographer Edward Wells, in his New Sett of Maps, showed a little commendable doubt in marking the inlet just north of the island as “the supposed Straits of Anian,”—a caution which Delisle in 1700, with a hesitancy worthy of the careful hydrographer that he was destined to become, still further exemplified. While restoring California to its peninsular character, he indicated the possibility of its being otherwise by the unfinished limitations of the surrounding waters.[1384] Dampier in 1699, in chronicling the incidents of the voyage with which he was connected, made it an island.[1385]
In 1701 one would have supposed the question of the insularity of California would have been helped at least by the explorations overland of Father Kino the Jesuit which were begun in 1698. His map, based rather upon shrewd conjecture than upon geographical discovery, and showing the peninsular form of the land, was published in the Lettres Edifiantes, vol. v., in 1705.[1386] In 1705 the map in Harris’s Collection of Voyages preserves the insular character of California.[1387] In 1715 Delisle[1388] expressed himself as undecided between the two theories respecting California,[1389] but in 1717 he gave the weight of his great name[1390] to an imagined but indefinite great gulf north of the California peninsula, which held for a while a place in the geography of his time as the “Mer de l’ouest.” Homann, of Nuremberg, in 1719 marked the entrance of it, while he kept to the insular character of the land to the south; as did Seutter in his Atlas Geographicus published at Augsburg in 1720. Daniel Coxe in his Carolana had a sufficient stock of credulity—if he was not a “liar,” as Bancroft calls him[1391]—in working up some wondrous stories of interior lakes emptying into the South Sea.[1392] In 1727 the English cartographer Moll converted the same inlet into the inevitable Straits of Anian. The maps in such popular books as Shelvocke’s Voyages (1726)[1393] and Anson’s Voyages (1748), as did sundry maps issued by Vander Aa of Amsterdam, still told the mass of readers of the island of California; as had Bruzen la Martinière in his Introduction à l’histoire (1735), and Salmon (using Moll’s map of 1736) in his History of America.
Meanwhile, without knowing it because of the fogs, Behring, in 1728, had pushed through the straits now known by his name into the Arctic Seas, and had returned along the Asiatic shore in continued ignorance of his accomplishment. It was not till 1732 that another Russian expedition was driven over to the Alaskan shore; and in 1738 and 1741 Behring proved the close proximity of the two continents, and made demonstration of their severance.
At this time also the English were making renewed efforts from the side of Hudson’s Bay to reach the Pacific; and Arthur Dobbs, in his Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (1744), gives a variety of reasons for supposing a passage in that direction, showing possible solutions of the problem in an accompanying map.[1394]