Ortelius.—Ortelius was born in 1527, and died in 1598, aged seventy-one years. He was a rich man, and had visited England in his researches. Stevens says in his Bibliotheca historica p. 133: “A thorough study of Ortelius is of the last importance.... He was a bibliographer, a cartographer, and an antiquary, as well as a good mathematician and geographer; and what is of infinite importance to us now, he gave his authorities.” Cf. also “La Généalogie du Géographe Abraham Ortelius,” by Génard in the Bulletin de la Société Géographique d’Anvers, v. 315; and Felix Van Hulst’s Life of Ortelius, second edition, Liege, 1846, with a portrait, which can also be found in the 1580, 1584, and perhaps other editions of his own Theatrum. There is also a brief notice, by M. de Macedo, of his geographical works in Annales des Voyages, vol. ii. pp. 184-192. Thomassy (Les Papes géographes, p. 65) has pointed out how Ortelius fell into some errors, from ignorance of Ruscelli’s maps, in the 1561 edition of Ptolemy. The engraver of his early editions was Francis Hagenberg, and of his later ones, Ferdinand Orsenius and Ambroise Orsenius. He prefixed to his book a list of the authorities, from whose labors he had constructed his own maps. It is a most useful list for the students of the map-making of the sixteenth century. It has not a single Spanish title, which indicates how closely the Council for the Indies had kept their archives from the unofficial cartographers. The titles given are wholly of the sixteenth century, not many anterior to 1528, and mostly of the latter half of the century, indeed after 1560; and they are about one hundred and fifty in all. The list includes some maps which Ortelius had not seen; and some, to which in his text he refers, are not included in the list. There are some maps among them of which modern inquiry has found no trace. Stevens, in unearthing Walter Lud, turned to the list and found him there as Gualterus Ludovicus. (See ante, p. 162).
Ortelius supplied some titles which he had omitted,—including some earlier than 1528,—as well as added others produced in the interval, when, in 1592, he republished the list in its revised state. Lelewel has arranged the names in a classified way in his Géographie du moyen âge, vol. ii. pp. 185, 210, and on p. 217 has given us an account of the work of Ortelius. Cf. also Lelewel, vol. v. p. 214; Sabin, vol. xiv. p. 61.
The original edition of the Theatrum was issued at Antwerp, in Latin, and had fifty-three maps; it was again published the same year with some changes. There are copies in Mr. Brevoort’s, Jules Marcou’s collections, and in the Carter-Brown, Harvard College, and Astor libraries. Stevens, in his illustrated Bibliotheca geographica, no. 2,077, gives a fac-simile of the title. Cf. also Huth Catalogue, vol. iii. p. 1068; Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. i. no. 278; and Muller, Books on America (1877), no. 2,380.
The third Latin edition appeared the next year (1571) at Antwerp, with the same maps, as did the first edition with Dutch text, likewise with the same maps. Stevens, Bibliotheca historica, no. 1,473, thinks the Dutch is the original text.
To these several editions a supplement or additamentum, with eighteen new maps (none, however, relating to America), was added in 1573. Sabin’s Dictionary; Brockhaus, Americana (1861), no. 28. Muller, Books on America (1877), no. 2,381.
The same year (1573, though the colophon reads “Antorff, 1572”) the first German edition appeared, but in Roman type, and with a somewhat rough linguistic flavor. It had sixty-nine maps, and included the map of America. Koehler, of Leipsic, priced a copy in 1883 at 100 marks. The Latin (Antwerp) edition of this year (1573), “nova editio aliquot iconibus aucta,” seems also to have the same peculiarity of an earlier year (1572) in the colophon Huth Catalogue (vol. iii. p. 1068). Copies of all these editions seem to vary in the number of the maps. (Library of Congress Catalogue; Carter-Brown Catalogue, and the catalogues of Quaritch, Weigel, and others.) In 1574 some of the Antwerp issues have a French text, with maps corresponding to the German edition.
There are copies of the 1575 edition in the libraries of Congress, Harvard College, and the Boston Athenæum; and the four maps of interest in American cartography may be described from the Harvard College copy. They are reproductions of the maps of the 1570 edition.
a. Mappemonde. North America has a perfected outline much as in the Mercator map, with “Anian regnum” at the northwest. North America is marked, as by Wytfliet, “America sive India nova;” but the geography of the Arctic and northeastern parts is quite different from Wytfliet. Groclant and Groenland have another relative position, and take a general trend east and west; while in Wytfliet it is north and south. Northern Labrador is called Estotilant; while Frisland and Drogeo, islands to the south and east of it, are other reminders of the Zeni chart. This same map was reissued in the 1584 edition; and again, new cut, with a few changes, and dated 1587, it reappeared in the 1597 edition.
b. The two Americas. Anian and Quivira are on the northwest coast of North America. Tolm and Tototeac are northeast of the Gulf of California, and mark the region where the St. Lawrence rises, flowing, without lakes, to the gulf, with Terra Corterealis on the north and Norumbega on the south. Estotilant is apparently north of Hudson’s Straits, and off its point is Icaria (another Zeni locality), with Frislant south of it. Newfoundland is cut into two large islands, with Baccalaos, a small island off its eastern coast. South America has the false projection (from Mercator) on its southwestern coast in place of Ruscelli’s uncertain limits at that point. This projecting coast continued for some time to disfigure the outline of that continent in the maps. This map also reappeared in the 1584 edition.
c. Scandia, or the Scandinavian regions, and the North Atlantic show Greenland, Groclant, Island, Frisland, Drogeo, and Estotilant on a large scale, but in much the same relation to one another as in the map a. East of Greenland, and separated from it by a strait, is a circumpolar land which has these words: “Pygmei hic habitant.” The general disposition of the parts of this map resembles Mercator’s, and it was several times repeated, as in the editions of Ortelius of 1584 and 1592; and it was re-engraved in Münster’s Cosmographia of 1595, and in the Cologne-Arnheim Ptolemy of 1597.