We get at last, as has been said in the previous chapter, the first recognition in a printed map of the Cartier voyages in the great Cabot map of 1544, of which a section is here reproduced,[325] and a similar section is given by Harrisse in his Cabots, preserving the colors of the original. Harrisse, by collating the references and early descriptions, reaches the conclusion that there may have been three, and perhaps four, editions of this map, of which a single copy of one edition is now known. Of the maps accompanying the manuscript Cosmographie of Allefonsce, in the Paris Library, sufficient has been said in the preceding text.[326]
None of these explorations prevented Münster, however, from neglecting, if he was aware of, the newer views which the Cabot map had made public; and his eagerness for the western passage dictated easily a way to the Moluccas in the “Typus universalis” of his edition of Ptolemy in 1545.
ROTZ, 1542 (East Coast).
In the same year (1545) a map of America appeared in the well-known nautical handbook of the Spaniards, the Arte de navegar of Pedro de Medina, which was repeated in his Libro de grandezas y cosas memorables de España of 1549. A sketch of this part of the coast is annexed, and it will be seen that it betrays no adequate conception of what Cartier had accomplished.
ROTZ, 1542 (Western Hemisphere).
To 1546 we may now assign the French map sometimes cited as that of the Dauphin, and sometimes as of Henri II. It is but a few years since Mr. Major first deciphered the legend: “Faictes a Arques par Pierre Desceliers, presbr, 1546.” Jomard, who gives a fac-simile of it, places it about the middle of the century;[327] D’Avezac put it under 1542;[328] Kohl thought it was finished in 1543.[329]
