SKETCH FROM THE MOLINEAUX MAP.

The Legends are as follows:—

1. This land was discovered by John and Sebastian Cabot for Kinge Henry ye 7, 1497.
2. Bacalaos.
3. C. Bonavista.
4. C. Raso.
5. C. Britton.
6. I. Sables.
7. I. S. John.
8. Claudia.
9. Comokee.
10. C. Chesepick.
11. Hotorast.
12. La Bermudas.
13. Bahama.
14. La Florida.
15. The Gulfe of Mexico.
16. Virginia.
17. The lacke of Tadenac, the bounds whereof are unknowne.
18. Canada.
19. Hochelague.

F. Molineaux Map, 1600.—Emeric Molineaux, the alleged maker of this map, belonged to Lambeth, “a rare gentleman in his profession, being therein for divers years greatly supported by the purse and liberality of the worshipful merchant, Mr. William Sanderson.” Captain Markham (Davis’s Voyages, Hakluyt Society, London, 1880, pp. xxxiii, lxi, also p. lxxxviii) is of the opinion that the true author is Edward Wright, the mathematician, who perfected and rendered practicable what we know to-day as Mercator’s projection,—first demonstrating it in his Certain Errors in Navigation Detected, 1599, and first introducing its formulæ accurately in the 1600 map. Hakluyt had spoken of the globe by Molineaux in his 1589 edition, but it was not got ready in time for his use. The map followed the globe, but was not issued till about 1600, the discoveries of Barentz in 1596 being the last indicated on it. It measures 16½ × 25 inches. Quaritch in 1875 advanced the theory that the globe of Molineaux was referred to in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (act iii. sc. 2), as the “new map.” (Quaritch’s 1879 Catalogue, no. 321, book no. 11919),—a theory made applicable to the map and sustained by C. H. Coote in 1878, in Shakespeare’s “new map” in Twelfth Night (also in Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1877-79, i. 88-100), and reasserted in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Davis’s Voyages, p. lxxxv. Henry Stevens (Hist. Coll. i. 200), however, is inclined to refer Shakespeare’s reference (“the new map with the augmentation of the Indies”) to the “curious little round-face shaped map” in Wytfliet’s Ptolemæum Augmentum, 1597.

The Molineaux-Wright map has gained reputation from Hallam’s reference to it in his Literature of Europe as “the best map of the sixteenth century.” It is now accessible in the autotype reproduction which was made by Mr. Quaritch from the Grenville copy of Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations in the British Museum, and which accompanies the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Davis’s Voyages. There are nine copies of the map known, as follows: 1. King’s Library. 2. Grenville Library. 3. Cracherode Copy. (These three are in the British Museum.) 4. Admiralty Office. 5. Lenox Library, New York. 6. University of Cambridge. 7. Christie Miller’s Collection. 8. Middle Temple. 9. A copy in Quaritch’s Catalogue, 1881, no. 340, title-number, 6235, which had previously appeared in the Stevens sale, Hist. Collections, i. 199. Quaritch held the Hakluyt (3 vols.) with this genuine map at £156, and it is said no other copy had been sold since the Bright sale.

It may be noted that Blundeville, who in his Exercises, pp. 204-42, describes the Mercator and Molineaux globes, also, pp. 245-78, gives a long account of a mappamundi by Peter Plancius, dated 1592, of which Linschoten, in 1594, gives a reduction.

G. Modern Collections of Early Maps.—The collections of reproductions of the older maps, showing portions of the American coast, and representing what may be termed the beginnings of modern cartography, are the following:—

Jomard, E. F. Les Monuments de la Géographie. Paris, 1866. The death of Jomard in 1862 (see Memoir by M. de la Roquette, in Bulletin de la Soc. Géog. February, 1863, or 5th ser. v. 81, with a portrait; Cortambert’s Vie et Œuvres de Jomard, Paris, 1868, 20 pages; and Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., iv. 232, vi. 334) prevented the completion by him of the text which he intended should accompany the plates. M. D’Avezac’s intention to supply it was likewise stayed by his death, in 1875. It proved, however, that Jomard had left behind what he had meant for an introduction to the text; and this was printed in a pamphlet at Paris in 1879, as Introduction à l’Atlas des Monuments de la Géographie, edited by E. Cortambert. It is a succinct account of the progress of cartography before the times of Mercator and Ortelius. The atlas contains five maps, of great interest in connection with American discovery:—

The Frankfort Globe, circa 1520.
Juan de la Cosa’s map, 1500.
The Cabot map of 1544.
A French map, made for Henri II.
Behaim’s Globe, 1492.

These reproductions are of the size of the original. Good copies are worth £10 10s.