Here we close our brief notice of a few of the representative maps produced prior to the opening of the seventeenth century. A careful examination of these maps would show, that, from the period of the Dauphin Map down to the first voyage of Champlain to Canada, in 1603, no substantial improvement was made by the cartographers of any nation in the geographical delineation of the region opened to France by the enterprise of Cartier and those who followed him. As we have shown (ante, p. 61), the connection with New France was maintained, vast profits being derived from the fisheries and from trade; but scientific exploration appears to have been neglected, while the maps in many cases became hopelessly confused. It was the work of Champlain to bring order out of confusion; and by his well-directed explorations to restore the knowledge which to the world at large had been lost, carrying out at the same time upon a larger scale the arduous enterprises projected by Jacques Cartier.
[THE CARTOGRAPHY]
OF THE
NORTHEAST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA.
1535-1600.
BY THE EDITOR.
ALONZO DE CHAVES, who was made a royal cosmographer April 4, 1528, and still retained that title, at the age of ninety-two, in 1584,[306] is known to have made in 1536 a chart of the coast from Newfoundland south; and though it is no longer extant, Harrisse[307] thinks its essential parts are given in all probability in a chart of Diego Gutierrez, preserved in the French archives.[308] It is known that Oviedo based his description of the coast upon it; his full text was not generally accessible till the Academy of History at Madrid published its edition of the Historia general de las Indias[309] in 1852.