Part 61 (1/2)

[Sidenote: 1507-8. The Ruysch map.]

This Ruysch map shows the African coast discoveries of the Portuguese, with the discoveries of Marco Polo towards the east. In connection with the latter, the same material which Behaim had used in his globe seems to have been equally accessible to Ruysch. The latter's map has a legend on the sea between Iceland and Greenland, saying that an island situated there was burnt up in 1456. This statement has been connected by some with another contained in the Sagas, that from an island in this channel both Greenland and Iceland could be seen.

We also learn from another legend that Portuguese vessels had pushed down the South American coast to 50 south lat.i.tude, and the historians of these early voyages have been unable to say who the pioneers were who have left us so early a description of Brazil.

[Sidenote: Columbus and the Ruysch map.]

It is inferred from a reference of Beneventa.n.u.s, in his Ptolemy, respecting this map, that some aid had been derived from a map made by one of the Columbuses, and a statement that Bartholomew Columbus, in Rome in 1505, gave a map of the new discoveries to a canon of San Giovanni di Laterano has been thought to refer to such a map, which would, if it could be established, closely connect the Ruysch map with Columbus. It is also supposed to have some relation to Cabot, since a voyage which Ruysch made to the new regions westward from England may have been, and probably was, with that navigator. In this case, the reference to that part of the coast of Asia which the English discovered may record Ruysch's personal experiences. If these things can be considered as reasonably established, it gives great interest to this map of Ruysch, and connects Columbus not only with the earliest ma.n.u.script map, La Cosa of 1500, but also with the earliest engraved map of the New World, as Ruysch's map was.

[Sidenote: Sources of the Ruysch map.]

In speaking of the Ruysch map, Henry Stevens thinks that the cartographer laid down the central archipelago of America from the printed letter of Columbus, because it was the only account in print in 1507; but why restrict the sources of information to those in print, when La Cosa's map might have been copied, or the material which La Cosa employed might have been used by others, and when the Cantino map is a familiar copy of Portuguese originals, all of which might well have been known in the varied circles with which Ruysch is seen by his map to have been familiar?

[Sidenote: Portuguese geography and maps.]

While it is a fact that central and northern Europe got its cartographical knowledge of the New World almost wholly from Portugal, owing, perhaps, to the exertions of Spain to preserve their explorers'

secrets, we do not, at the same time, find a single engraved Portuguese map of the early years of this period of discovery.

[Sidenote: Portuguese portolano.]

[Sidenote: Pedro Reinel.]

A large map, to show the Portuguese discoveries during years then recent, was probably made for King Emanuel, and it has come down to us, being preserved now at Munich. This chart wholly omits the Spanish work of exploration, and records only the coasts coursed by Cabral in the south, and by the Cortereals in the north. We have a further and similar record in the chart of Pedro Reinel, which could not have been made far from the same time, and which introduces to us the same prominent cape which in La Cosa's map had been called the English cape as ”Cavo Razo,”

a name preserved to us to-day in the Cape Race of Newfoundland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SO-CALLED ADMIRAL'S MAP.]

[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal conceal their geographical secrets.]

There is abundant evidence of the non-communicative policy of Spain.

This secretiveness was understood at the time Robert Thorne, in 1527, complained, as well as Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his _Discoverie_, that a similar injunction was later laid by Portugal. In Veitia Linage's _Norte_ we read of the cabinets in which these maps were preserved, and how the Spanish pilot major and royal cosmographer alone kept the keys.

There exists a doc.u.ment by which one of the companions of Magellan was put under a penalty of two thousand ducats not to disclose the route he traversed in that famous voyage. We know how Columbus endeavored to conceal the route of his final voyage, in which he reached the coast of Veragua.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MuNSTER, 1532.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GLOBUS MUNDI.]

[Sidenote: A strait to India.]

In the two maps of nearly equal date, being the earliest engraved charts which we have, the Ruysch map of 1508 and the so-called Admiral's map of 1507 (1513), the question of a strait leading to the Asiatic seas, which Columbus had spent so much energy in trying to find during his last voyage, is treated differently. We have seen that La Cosa confessed his uncertain knowledge by covering the place with a vignette. In the Ruysch map there is left the possibility of such a pa.s.sage; in the other there is none, for the main sh.o.r.e is that of Asia itself, whose coast line uninterruptedly connects with that of South America. The belief in such a strait in due time was fixed, and lingered even beyond the time when Cortes showed there was no ground for it. We find it in Schoner's globes, in the Tross gores, and even so late as 1532, in the belated map of Munster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDEN.]

[Sidenote: Earliest map to show America made north of the Alps.]

The map of the _Globus Mundi_ (Stra.s.sburg, 1509) has some significance as being the earliest issued north of the Alps, recording both the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries; though it merely gives the projecting angle of the South American coast as representing the developments of the west.

[Sidenote: English references to America.]