[THE GENERAL ATLASES AND CHARTS]
OF THE
SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
BY THE EDITOR.
THE general atlases at this time becoming familiar to Europe were unfortunately made up on a thrifty principle, little conducive to keeping the public mind abreast of current discovery,—so far as America, at least, was concerned,—and very perplexing now to any one studying the course of the cartographical development of American geography. Dates were sedulously erased with a deceitful purpose (which is not yet gone into disuse) from plates thus made to do service for many years, and united with other dated maps, to convey an impression of a like period of production.
Bestelli e Forlani’s Tavole moderne di Geografia de la maggior parte del mondo, Roma, 1558-80, with seventy-one large maps, including three maps of the world, and three of America, is reputed the best atlas which had been constructed up to that date. Sets vary much in their make-up.[726]
Perhaps the prototype of the modern atlas can be best found in the Theatrum orbis terrarum of Ortelius, issued in the first edition at Antwerp in 1570, of which an account has been given elsewhere.[727] His portrait is on a later page.
In 1597 appeared the earliest special atlas of America in the Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum of Cornelius Wytfliet, which was reissued the same year with its errata corrected.[728] It had nineteen maps, which were also used in the second edition, issued in 1598. A fac-simile of the title of 1597 is given on the next page.[729]