i. 29, the atlas of 1578 is mentioned as containing the following

numbers relating to America: 1. The world. 2. The two hemispheres. 3. The world in gores. 10. West coast of America. 11. Coast of Mexico. 12-13. South America. 14. Gulf of Mexico. 15. Part of the east coast of North America.

In the Museum manuscripts, no. 22,018, is a _portolano_ by Martines, dated 1579; and another, of date 1582, is entered in the 1844 edition of the _Catalogue of Manuscript Maps_, i. 31. Kohl’s Washington Collection includes two Martines maps of 1578.]

The manuscript map of Diegus (Homem) of 1568, in the Royal Library in Dresden, gives the peninsula, but turns the more northerly coast abruptly to the east, connecting it with the archipelago, which stands for the St. Lawrence in his map of 1558.[1319]

The great Mappemonde of Mercator, published at Duisburg in 1569, in which he introduced his new projection,[1320] as will be seen by the annexed sketch,[1321] keeps to the Martines type; and while it depicts the Straits of Anian, it renders uncertain, by interposing a vignette, the passage by the north from the Atlantic to the Pacific.[1322] The next year Ortelius followed the same type in his _Theatrum orbis terrarum_,—the prototype of the modern atlas.[1323]

A similar western coast[1324] is defined by Porcacchi, in his _L’ isole piu famose del mondo_, issued at Venice in 1572.[1325]

The peninsula of California, but nothing north of it, is again delineated in a Spanish mappemonde of 1573, shown in Lelewel.[1326] The Mercator type is followed in the maps which are dated 1574, but which appeared in the _Theatri orbis terrarum enchiridion_ of Philippus Gallæus, published at Antwerp in 1585.[1327]

In the same year the Italian cartographer Furlani, or Forlani, showed how he had advanced from the views which he held in 1560, in a map of the northern Pacific, which is annexed.[1328] It is the earliest map in which Japan has been noted as having its greatest length east and west; for Ortelius and others always give it an extension on the line of the meridian.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s map in 1576 gives the straits, but he puts “Anian” on the Asiatic side, and does not indicate the Gulf of California, unless a forked bay in 35° stands for it.[1329] The map in Best’s Frobisher makes the Straits of Anian connect with “Frobisher’s straightes” to give a through passage from ocean to ocean, and depicts a distorted California peninsula.[1330]

Mention has already been made on a previous page of a Martines map of 1578. It has a similar configuration to that already shown as probably the earliest instance of its type.

Of the explorations of Francis Drake in 1579 we have no cartographical record, except as it may be embodied in the globe of Molineaux, preserved in the Middle Temple, London, which is dated 1592, and in the map of the same cartographer, dated 1600.[1331] Molineaux seemingly made use of the results of Cabrillo’s voyage, as indicated by the Spanish names placed along the coast. It was one of the results of Drake’s voyage that the coast line of upper California took a more northerly trend. The map of Dr. Dee (1580) evidently embodied the views of the Spanish hydrographers.[1332]

In 1582 Popellinière[1333] repeated the views of Mercator and Ortelius; but in England Michael Lok in this same year began to indicate the incoming of more erroneous views.[1334] The California gulf is carried north to 45°, where a narrow strip separates it from a vague northern sea, the western extension of the sea of Verrazano.

After the Spaniards had succeeded, in opposition to the Portuguese, in establishing a regular commerce between Acapulco and Manilla (Philippine Islands), the trade-winds conduced to bring upper California into better knowledge. The easterly trades carried their outward-bound vessels directly west; but they compelled them to make a détour northward on their return, by which they also utilized the same Japanese current which brought the Chinese to Fusang[1335] many centuries before. An expedition which Don Luis de Velasco had sent in 1564, by direction of Philip II., accompanied by Andres de Urdaneta, who had been in those seas before with Loaysa in 1525, had succeeded in making a permanent occupation of the Philippines for Spain in 1564. It became now important to find a practicable return route, and under Urdaneta’s counsel it was determined to try to find it by the north. One of the galleons deserted, and bearing northerly struck the California coast near Cape Mendocino, and arrived safe at Acapulco three months before Urdaneta himself had proved the value of his theory. The latter’s course was to skirt the coast of Japan till under 38°, when he steered southerly; and after a hard voyage, in which he saw no land and most of his crew died, he reached Acapulco in October.[1336] Other voyages were made in succeeding years, but the next of which we have particular account was that of Francisco Gali, who, returning from Macao in 1584, struck the California coast in 37° 30´, and marked a track which other navigators later followed.[1337]

The map (1587) in Hakluyt’s Paris edition of Peter Martyr conformed more nearly to the Mercator type;[1338] and Hakluyt, as well as Lok, records Drake’s discovery, both of them putting it, however, in 1580.

With the year 1588 is associated a controversy over what purports to be a memoir setting forth the passage of the ship of a Spanish navigator, Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through a strait a quarter of a league wide. The passage took him as high as 75°; but he reached the Pacific under the sixtieth parallel. The opening was identified by him with the long-sought Straits of Anian. The belief in this story had at one time some strong advocates, but later geographical discoveries have of course pushed it into the limbo of forgotten things; for it seems hardly possible to identify, as was done by Amoretti, the narrow passage of Maldonado, under 60°, with that which Behring discovered, sixteen leagues wide, under 65°.[1339]

In 1592 we have the alleged voyage of De Fuca, of which he spoke in 1596, in Venice, to Michael Lok, who told Purchas; and he in turn included it in his _Pilgrims_.[1340] He told Lok that he had been captured and plundered on the California coast by Cavendish,[1341]—a statement which some have thought confirmed by Cavendish’s own avowal of his taking a pilot on that coast,—and that at the north he had entered a strait a hundred miles wide, under 47° and 48°, which had a pinnacle rock at the entrance; and that within the strait he had found the coast trending northeast, bordering a sea upon which he had sailed for twenty days. This story, despite its exaggerations, and though discarded formerly, has gained some credence with later investigators; and the application of his name to the passage which leads to Puget Sound seems to have been the result of a vague and general concurrence, in the belief of some at least, that this passage must be identified with the strait which De Fuca claimed to have passed.[1342]

With the close of the sixteenth century, the maps became numerous, and are mostly of the Mercator type. Such are those of Cornelius de Judæis in 1589 and in 1593,[1343] the draughts of 1587 and 1589 included in the Ortelius of 1592,[1344] the map of 1593 in the _Historiarum indicarum libri XVI._ of Maffeius,[1345] and those of Plancius[1346] and De Bry.[1347] The type is varied a little in the 1592 globe of Molineaux, as already shown, and in the 1587 map of Myritius we have the Asiatic connection of the upper coast as before mentioned; but in the Ptolemy of 1597 the contour of Mercator is still essentially followed.[1348] In this same year (1597) the earliest distinctively American atlas was published in the _Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum_ of Cornelius Wytfliet, of which an account is given in another place.[1349] Fac-similes of the maps of the Gulf of California and of the New World are annexed, to indicate the full extent of geographical knowledge then current with the best cartographers. The Mercator type for the two Americas and the great Antarctic Continent common to most maps of this period are the distinguishing features of the new hemisphere. The same characteristics pertain also to the mappemondes in the original Dutch edition of Linschoten’s _Itinerario_, published in two editions at Amsterdam in 1596,[1350] in Münster’s _Cosmographia_, 1598, and in the Brescia edition (1598) of Ortelius.

In 1600 Metullus in his America _sive novus orbis_, published at Cologne, simply followed Wytfliet.[1351] From the map of Molineaux, likewise of 1600, a sketch of the California peninsula is given elsewhere.[1352] A contour of the coast more like that of the Molineaux globe figured on a preceding page belongs to the map given in the Herrera of 1601, but it also introduces views which held to a much wider separation of the shores of the north Pacific than had been maintained by the school of Mercator.[1353].

In 1602 (May 5) he was again despatched from Acapulco with three vessels, for the same purpose of discovering some harbor up the coast which returning vessels from the Philippines could enter for safety or repairs, and of finding the mysterious strait which led to the Atlantic. He was absent ten months.[1357] He himself went up to 42°, but one of his vessels under Martin Aguilar proceeded to 43°, where he reported that he found the entrance of a river or strait, not far from Cape Blanco;[1358] and for a long period afterwards the entrance and Aguilar’s name stood together on the maps.[1359] Buache, in his _Considérations géographiques et physiques_, says that it was the reports brought back from this expedition, describing an easterly trend of the coast above the 43°, which gave rise to the notion that the waters of the Gulf of California found a passage to the ocean in two ways, making an island of the peninsula. The official recorder of the expedition (Ascension) is known to have held this view. We shall see how fixed this impression later became.

Meanwhile the peninsular shape was still maintained in the map in Botero’s _Relaciones Universales del mundo_, published at Valladolid in 1603; in the Spanish map of 1604, made at Florence by Mathieu Neron Pecciolen (engraved for Buache in 1754); in that of Cespedes’ _Regimiento de Navigacion_ (1606), and in that published in connection with Ferdinand de Quir’s narrative in the _Detectionis Freti_ (1613) of Hudson’s voyage.[1360]

A map of Jodocus Hondius of about this time first gave indication of the growing uncertainty which led finally to a prevailing error regarding the head of the gulf. The map was inscribed “Vera totius expeditionis nauticæ Descriptio D. Franc. Draci,” etc., and illustrated Hondius’s edition of Drake and Cavendish’s voyages, and has been reproduced in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of _The World Encompassed_. The gulf is made to divide about an island at its northern end, producing two arms whose prolongation is left undecided. The circumpolar map of Hondius which appeared in Pontanus’s _Amsterdam_ in 1611, and is given in fac-simile in Asher’s _Henry Hudson_, shows the Straits of Anian, but nothing more. Another Hondius map in the Mercator of 1613 turns the coast easterly, where the Straits of Anian separate it from Asia. The same atlas of 1613 contains also the America of Michael Mercator, which is of the usual Gerard Mercator type, with the enclosed northern sea contracted to narrow limits and called “Mare dulce.” A similar western coast is drawn in the America of Johannes Oliva of Marseilles, preserved in the British Museum.[1361]

In Kasper van Baerle’s edition of Herrera, published at Amsterdam in 1622, we get—as far as has been observed—the earliest[1362] insularizing of the California peninsula, and this only by a narrow thread of water connecting a large gulf below and a smaller one above. And even this attempt was neutralized by a second map in the same book, in which these two gulfs were not made to mingle their waters. A bolder and less equivocal severing of the peninsula followed in the maps of two English geographers. The first of these is the map of Master Briggs.[1363] In this the island stretches from 23° to 44°, showing Cape Blanco, with Cape Mendocino and “Po. S^r. Francisco Draco” south of it, the latter in about 38°. The map bears the following legend: “California, sometymes supposed to be part of y^e Westerne continent; but since by a Spanish charte taken by y^e Hollanders it is found to be a goodly Ilande, the length of the west shoare beeing about 500 leagues from Cape Mendocino to the south cape thereof called Cape St. Lucas, as appeareth both by that Spanish Chart, and by the relation of Francis Gaule [Gali], whereas in the ordinarie charts it is sett downe to be 1700 leagues.”[1364] The other was that given in John Speed’s _Prospect_, which contains one of the maps of Abraham Goos of Amsterdam, “described and enlarged by I. S. Ano. 1626.” This carries up the outer coast of the island beyond the “Po[rto] Sir Francisco Dr[ake]” and Cape Mendocino. The coast of the main opposite the northern end of the island ceases to be defined, and is continued northerly with a dotted line, while the western shore of Hudson’s Bay is also left undetermined.[1365] De Laet, however, in 1630 still kept to the peninsula, placing “Nova Albion” above it.[1366] In 1636 W. Saltonstall’s English translation of Hondius’s Mercator presents an island, with the now somewhat common break in the main coast opposite its northern end. This gap is closed up, however, in another map in the same volume.[1367]

The map in Pierre D’Avity’s _Le Monde_[1368] makes California a peninsula, with the river St. Lawrence rising close to it, and flowing very near also to Hudson’s Bay in its easterly passage.

The circumstantial story of Bartolemé de Fonte, whose exploits are placed in 1640, at one time commanded a certain degree of confidence, and made strange work with the cartographical ideas of the upper part of the Pacific coast. It is now believed that the story was coined by James Petiver, one of the contributors to the _Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious_, published in London in April and June, 1708, in which first appeared what purported to be a translation of a letter of a certain Admiral De Fonte.[1369] In this a Spanish navigator—whose name was possibly suggested by a veritable De Fonta who was exploring Tierra del Fuego in 1649—was made to depart from Callao, April 3, 1640, and proceed up the coast to 53°, above which he navigated a net-work of interior waters, and encountered a ship from Boston which had entered these regions from the Atlantic side.[1370] To this archipelago, as it seemed, he gave the name of St. Lazarus; and to a river, leading from a lake with an island in it, he applied that of Velasco; and these names, curiously, appear in the fanciful maps which were made by Delisle and Buache in elucidation of the voyage in which they expressed not a little faith, though the Spanish antiquaries early declared that their archives contained no record of the voyage.[1371]

The Dutch, under De Vries, in 1643 had pushed up from Japan, and discovered, as they thought, an island, “Jesso,” separated from land on the west by a water which they called the “Detroit de Vries,” and on the American side by a channel which had an uncertain extension to the north, and might after all be the long-sought Straits of Anian.[1372] The idea of an interjacent land in the north Pacific between America and Asia is also said to have grown out of the report of a Portuguese navigator, Don João da Gama, who claimed to have seen such a land in sailing from China to New Spain. It long maintained a fleeting existence on the maps.[1373]

Two maps of Petrus Koerius, dated 1646, in Speed’s _Prospect_ (1668), indicate what variable moods geographers could assume in the same year. In one we have an island and a determinate coast line running north to the straits; in the other we have a peninsula with two different trends of the coast north of it in half-shading. We owe to an expatriated Englishman a more precise nomenclature for the western coast than we had had previous to the appearance of his maps in 1646; and the original manuscript drawings preserved at Munich are said by Dr. Hale to be richer still in names.[1374] This is the _Arcano del mare_ of Robert Dudley. He was born in Surrey in 1573, and whether the natural or legitimate son of the Earl of Leicester depends on the proof of the secret marriage of that nobleman with Lady Sheffield. An adventurous spirit kept him away from the enjoyment of Kenilworth, which he inherited, and he was drawn nearer to the associations of the sea by marrying a sister of Cavendish. He was among the many Englishmen who tried their daring on the Spanish main. He married a second wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, whom he abandoned, partly to be rid of a stepmother; and out of chagrin at his failure to secure the dukedom of Northumberland, which had been in abeyance since the execution of his grandfather, Lady Jane Grey’s adherent, he sold Kenilworth to young Prince Henry, and left England in company with a daughter of Sir Robert Southwell. He now gave himself up to practical seamanship and the study of hydrography. The grand-duke of Tuscany gave him employment, and he drained a morass to enable Leghorn to become a beautiful city.

Under authority of Ferdinand II., he assumed the title of Duke of Northumberland, which was recognized throughout the empire. He died in 1639.[1375] The _Arcano_ has thirty-three American maps; but the Munich manuscript shows thirteen more. One of the Pacific coast, which records Drake’s explorations, is annexed; but with Dudley’s text[1376] there is another showing the coast from Cape Mendocino south, which puts under thirty degrees north a “golfo profondo” of undefined inland limits, with “I di Cedros” off its mouth. The bay with the anchor and soundings just north of thirty degrees, called in the fac-simile “P^{to} di Nouova Albion,” corresponding, it would seem, to San Francisco, is still seen in this other chart, with a more explicit inscription,—“Po: dell nuovo Albion scoperto dal Drago C^{no} Inglese.”

In 1649, in Texeira’s chart, there is laid down for the first time a sketch of the coast near the Straits of Anian, which is marked as seen by João da Gama, and extends easterly from Jesso, in the latitude of 50°. Gama’s land lived for some time in the charts.[1377]

We have another of Speed’s maps, five years later (1651), which appears in the 1676 edition of his _Prospect_, in which that geographer is somewhat confused. He makes California an island, with a break in the coast line of the main opposite its northern extremity, and its northwest point he calls “C. Mendocino,” while “Pt. Sir Francisco Draco” is placed south of it; but rather confusedly another Cape Mendocino projects from the main coast considerably further to the north.[1378] A map of Visscher in 1652[1379] reverts, however, to the anterior notions of Mercator; but when in 1655 Wright, an Englishman, adopted Mercator’s projection, and first made it really serviceable for navigation, in his _Certain Errors in Navigation_, he gave an insular shape to California.

The French geographer Nicolas Sanson[1380] introduced a new notion in 1656. California was made an island with “P^{to} de Francisco Draco” on the west side, somewhat south of the northern cape of it. On the main the coast in the same latitude is made to form a projection to the north called “Agubela de Cato,” without any extension of the shore farther northward. The map in Petavius’s (Petau’s) _History of the World_ (London, 1659) carries the coast up, but leaves a gap opposite the northern end of the insular California. The atlas of Van Loon (1661) converts the gap into the Straits of Anian, and puts a “terra incognita” north of it. Danckerts of Amsterdam in the same year (1661), and Du Val in various maps of about this time make it an island. The map of 1663, which appeared in Heylin’s _Cosmographie_,[1381] gives the insular California, and a dotted line for the main coast northward, with three alternative directions. A map of the Sanson type is given in Blome’s _Description of the World_, 1670. Ogilby’s map in 1671 makes it an island,[1382] following Montanus’s _Nieuwe Weereld_.

Hennepin had in his 1683 map made California a peninsula, and in that of 1697 he still preserved the gulf-like character of the waters east of it; but the same plate in the 1698 edition is altered to make an island, as it still is in the edition of 1704. The French geographer Jaillot, in 1694, also conformed to the insular theory, as did Corolus Allard in his well-known Dutch atlas. Campanius, copying Hennepin, speaks of California as the largest island “which the Spaniards possess in America. From California the land extends itself [he says] to that part of Asia which is called Terra de Jesso, or Terra Esonis. The passage is only through the Straits of Anian, which hitherto has remained unknown, and therefore is not to be found in any map or chart,”—all of which shows something of Campanius’s unacquaintance with what had been surmised, at least, in cartography. All this while Blaeu in his maps was illustrating the dissolving geographical opinions of his time. In 1659 he had drawn California as an island; in 1662 as a peninsula; and once more, in 1670, as an island. Coronelli in 1680, and Franquelin in his great manuscript map of 1684 had both represented it as an island.[1383]

In 1698 the English geographer Edward Wells, in his _New Sett of Maps_, showed a little commendable doubt in marking the inlet just north of the island as “the supposed Straits of Anian,”—a caution which Delisle in 1700, with a hesitancy worthy of the careful hydrographer that he was destined to become, still further exemplified. While restoring California to its peninsular character, he indicated the possibility of its being otherwise by the unfinished limitations of the surrounding waters.[1384] Dampier in 1699, in chronicling the incidents of the voyage with which he was connected, made it an island.[1385]

In 1701 one would have supposed the question of the insularity of California would have been helped at least by the explorations overland of Father Kino the Jesuit which were begun in 1698. His map, based rather upon shrewd conjecture than upon geographical discovery, and showing the peninsular form of the land, was published in the _Lettres Edifiantes_, vol. v., in 1705.[1386] In 1705 the map in Harris’s _Collection of Voyages_ preserves the insular character of California.[1387] In 1715 Delisle[1388] expressed himself as undecided between the two theories respecting California,[1389] but in 1717 he gave the weight of his great name[1390] to an imagined but indefinite great gulf north of the California peninsula, which held for a while a place in the geography of his time as the “Mer de l’ouest.” Homann, of Nuremberg, in 1719 marked the entrance of it, while he kept to the insular character of the land to the south; as did Seutter in his _Atlas Geographicus_ published at Augsburg in 1720. Daniel Coxe in his _Carolana_ had a sufficient stock of credulity—if he was not a “liar,” as Bancroft calls him[1391]—in working up some wondrous stories of interior lakes emptying into the South Sea.[1392] In 1727 the English cartographer Moll converted the same inlet into the inevitable Straits of Anian. The maps in such popular books as Shelvocke’s _Voyages_ (1726)[1393] and Anson’s _Voyages_ (1748), as did sundry maps issued by Vander Aa of Amsterdam, still told the mass of readers of the island of California; as had Bruzen la Martinière in his _Introduction à l’histoire_ (1735), and Salmon (using Moll’s map of 1736) in his _History of America_.

Meanwhile, without knowing it because of the fogs, Behring, in 1728, had pushed through the straits now known by his name into the Arctic Seas, and had returned along the Asiatic shore in continued ignorance of his accomplishment. It was not till 1732 that another Russian expedition was driven over to the Alaskan shore; and in 1738 and 1741 Behring proved the close proximity of the two continents, and made demonstration of their severance.

At this time also the English were making renewed efforts from the side of Hudson’s Bay to reach the Pacific; and Arthur Dobbs, in his _Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay_ (1744), gives a variety of reasons for supposing a passage in that direction, showing possible solutions of the problem in an accompanying map.[1394]

The Spaniards, who were before long to be spurred on to other efforts by the reports of Russian expeditions, were reviving now, through the 1728 edition of Herrera, more confidence in the peninsular character of California; though Mota Padilla in his _Nueva Galicia_, in 1742, still thought it an island.

The French map-maker Bellin, in his cartographical illustrations for Charlevoix in 1743, also fell into the new belief; as did Consag the Jesuit, in a map which he made in 1746.[1395]

The leading English geographer Bowen in 1747 was advocating the same view, and defining the more northerly parts as “undiscovered.” In 1748 Henry Ellis published his _Voyage to Hudson’s Bay_,—made in 1746-1747, and mentions a story that a high or low tide made California an island or a peninsula, and was inclined to believe in a practicable northwest passage.[1396] In 1750 Robert de Vaugondy, while preserving the peninsula, made a westerly entrance to the north of it, which he marks as the discovery of Martin d’Aguilar. The lingering suspicion of the northerly connection of the California Gulf with the ocean had now nearly vanished; and the peninsula which had been an island under Cortés, then for near a century connected with the main, and then again for more than a century in many minds an island again, was at last defined in its proper geographical relations.[1397]

The coast line long remained, however, shadowy in the higher latitudes. Buriel, in his editorial notes to Venegas’s _California_, in 1757, confessed that nothing was known. The French geographers, the younger Delisle and Buache,[1398] published at this time various solutions of the problem of straits and interior seas, associated with the claims of Maldonado, De Fuca, and De Fonte; and others were found to adopt, while others rejected, some of their very fanciful reconciling of conflicting and visionary evidences, in which the “Mer de l’ouest” holds a conspicuous position.[1399] The English map-maker Jefferys at the same epoch (1753) was far less complex in his supposition, and confined himself to a single “river which connects with Lake Winnepeg.” A map of 1760, “par les S^{rs} Sanson, rectifiée par S^r Robert,” also indicates a like westerly entrance; and Jefferys again in 1762, while he grows a little more determinate in coast lines, more explicitly fixes the passage as one that Juan de Fuca had entered in 1592.[1400] The _Atlas Moderne_, which was published at Paris, also in 1762, in more than one map, the work of Janvier, still clung to the varieties presented by Delisle ten years before, and which Delisle himself the next year (1763) again brought forward. In 1768 Jefferys made a map[1401] to illustrate the De Fonte narrative; but after 1775 he made several studies of the coast, and among other services reproduced the map which the Russian Academy had published, and which was a somewhat cautious draught of bits of the coast line here and there, indicating different landfalls, with a dotted connection between them.[1402] One of Jefferys’s own maps (1775) carries the coast north with indications of entrances, but without attempting to connect them with any interior water-sheds. Going north from New Albion we then find on his map the passage of D’Aguilar in 1603; then that of De Fuca, “where in 1592 he pretends he went through to the North Sea;” then the “Fousang” coast, visited by the Spaniards in 1774; then Delisle’s landfall in 1741; Behring’s the same year; while the coast stops at Mount St. Elias. In his 1776 map Jefferys gives another scheme. “Alaschka” is now an island athwart the water, dividing America from Asia, with Behring’s Straits at its western end; while the American main is made up of what was seen by Spangenberg in 1728, with a general northeasterly trend higher up, laid down according to the Japanese reports. The Spaniards were also at this time pushing up among the islands beyond the Oregon coast.[1403] In 1774 Don Juan Perez went to Nootka Sound, as is supposed, and called it San Lorenzo.[1404] In 1775 another Spanish expedition discovered the Columbia River.[1405] Janvier in 1782 published a map[1406] still perpetuating the great sea of the west, which Buache and others had delineated thirty years before. The English in 1776 transferred their endeavors from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific coast, and Captain James Cook was despatched to strike the coast in the latitude of Drake’s New Albion, and proceed north in search of a passage eastward.[1407] Carver the traveller had already, in 1766-1768, got certain notions of the coast from Indian stories, as he heard them in the interior, and embodied them with current beliefs in a map of his own, which made a part of his _Travels through the interior parts of North America_, published in 1778. In this he fixed the name of Oregon for the supposed great river of the west, which remained in the end attached to the region which it was believed to water.[1408] In 1786 the Frenchman La Pérouse was on the coast.[1409] In 1789 the English and Spanish meeting on the coast, the English commander was seized. This action led to a diplomatic fence, the result of which was the surrender of Nootka to the English.

Meanwhile a Boston ship, the “Columbia,” commanded by Captain Kendrick, in company with the “Washington” (Captain Gray), was on a voyage, which was the first American attempt to sail around the globe.[1410] They entered and named the Columbia River; and meeting Vancouver, the intelligence was communicated to him. When the English commander occupied Nootka, the last vestige of uncertainty regarding the salient features of the coast may be said to have disappeared under his surveys. Before they were published, George Foster issued in 1791 his map of the northwest coast, in which the Straits of Juan de Fuca were placed below 40°, by which Captain Gray is supposed to have entered, on his way to an open sea, coming out again in 55°, through what we now know as the Dixon entrance, to the north of Queen Charlotte’s Island; the American navigator having threaded, as was supposed, a great northern archipelago. Vancouver’s own map finally cleared the remaining confusion, and the migratory Straits of Juan de Fuca were at last fixed as the channel south of Vancouver’s Island which led to Puget Sound.[1411]

NOTES.

MERCATOR’S PROJECTION.—It was no new thing to convert the spherical representation of the earth into a plane on the cylindrical principle, for it had been done in the fourteenth century; but no one had devised any method by which it could be used for a sea-chart, since the parallelizing of the meridians altered the direction of point from point. Mercator seems to have reasoned out a plan in this wise: A B and C D are two meridians drawing together as they approach the pole. If they are made parallel, as in E F and G H, the point 2 is moved to 3, which is in a different direction from 1, in the parallel of latitude, I J. If the line of direction from 1 to 2 is prolonged till it strikes the perpendicular meridian G H at 4, the original direction is preserved, and the parallel K L can then be moved to become M N; thus prolonging the distance from 1 to 5, and from 6 to 4, to counteract the effect on direction by perpendicularizing the meridians. To do this accurately involved a law which could be applicable to all parallels and meridians; and that law Mercator seems only to have reached approximately. But the idea once conveyed, it was seized by Edward Wright in England in 1590, who evolved the law, and published it with a map, the first engraved on the new system, in his _Certain Errors of Navigation_, London, 1599. Mead, in his _Construction of Maps_ (1717), examined all previous systems of projections; but contended that Varenius in Latin, and his follower Newton in English, had not done the subject justice. There have been some national controversies over the claims of the German Mercator and the English Wright; but D’Avezac, in his “Coup d’Œil historique sur la projection des cartes de géographie,” printed in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_, 1863 (also separately), defends Mercator’s claims to be considered the originator of the projection; and he (pp. 283-285) gives references to writers on the subject, who are also noted in Van Raemdonck’s _Mercator_, p. 120.

The claim which Van Raemdonck had made in his _Gérard Mercator, sa vie et ses œuvres_,—that the great geographer was a Fleming,—was controverted by Dr. Breusing in his _Gerhard Kremer, gen. Mercator, der Deutsche Geograph_, 1869, and in an article (supposed to be his) in the _Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt_, 1869, vol. xi. p. 438, where the German birth of Mercator is contended for. To this Van Raemdonck replied in his _Gérard de Cremer, ou Mercator, Géographe Flamand_, published at St. Nicholas in 1870. The controversy rose from the project, in 1869, to erect a monument to Mercator at Duisburg. Cf. also Bertrand in the _Journal des Savants_, February, 1870.

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.

_d._ Indiæ orientalis. It shows Japan, an island midway in a sea separating Mangi (Asia) on the west from “Americæ sive Indie occidentalis pars” on the east. This map also reappeared in the 1584 edition, and may be compared with those of the Wytfliet series.

* * * * *

In 1577 an epitome of Ortelius by Heyn, with a Dutch text and seventy-two maps, appeared at Antwerp.

In 1580 the German text, entirely rewritten, appeared at Antorff, with a portrait of Ortelius and twenty-four new maps (constituting the third supplement), with a new general map of America. Among the new maps was one of New Spain, dated 1579, containing, it is reckoned, about a thousand names; another showing Florida, Northern Mexico, and the West India Islands; and a third on one sheet showing Peru, Florida, and Guastecan Regio.

The Latin edition of 1584, with a further increase of maps, is in Harvard College Library. In 1587 there was a French text issued, the mappemonde of which is reproduced in Vivien de St. Martin’s _Histoire de la géographie_. This text in the 1588 edition is called “revue, corrigé et augmentée pour la troisième fois.” This French text is wholly independent of, and not a translation of, the Latin and German. The maps are at this time usually ninety-four in number. In 1589 there was Marchetti’s edition at Brescia and a Latin one at Antwerp. In 1591 there was a fresh supplement of twenty-one maps. In 1592 the Antwerp edition was the last one superintended by Ortelius himself. The map of the New World was re-engraved, and the maps number in full copies two hundred and one, usually colored; there is a copy in Harvard College Library. In 1593 there was an Italian text, and other Latin editions in 1595 and 1596, a copy of the last being in Harvard College Library. This completes the story of the popularity of Ortelius down to the publication of Wytfliet, when American cartography obtained its special exponent.

A few later editions may mark the continued popularity of the work of Ortelius, and of those who followed upon his path:—

_Il theatro del mondo_, Brescia (1598), one hundred maps, of which three are American.

A French text at Antwerp (1598), with one hundred and nineteen maps, including the same American maps as in the 1587 edition, except that of the world and of America at large.

Peeter Heyn’s _Miroir du monde_, Amsterdam (1598), with eighty woodcut maps,—an epitome of Ortelius.

After Ortelius’s death, the first Latin edition in 1601, at Antwerp (111 maps), had his final corrections; other issues followed in 1603, 1609 (115 maps), 1612, 1624, with an epitome by Crignet in 1602 (123 maps); and an epitome in English in 1610. An Italian text by Pigafetta appeared in 1612 and 1697.

Lelewel (_Géographie du moyen âge_; vol. ii. pp. 181, 185, and _Epilogue_, p. 214) has somewhat carefully examined the intricate subject of the make-up of editions of Ortelius; but the truth probably is, that there was much independent grouping of particular copies which obscures the bibliography.