of the Conquest from the Aztec side is that given by the Franciscan,
Sahagun, in connection with his great work on the condition of the
Mexican peoples prior to the coming of the Spaniards. Sahagun came to
Mexico in 1529. He lived in the new land for over sixty years, and
acquired a proficiency in the native tongue hardly surpassed by any
other of the Spaniards. He brought to the new field something besides
the iconoclastic frenzy that led so many of his countrymen to destroy
what they could of the literature and arts of the Aztecs,—so necessary
in illustration of their pagan life and rites. This zealous and pious
monk turned aside from seeking the preferments of his class to study
the motives, lives, and thoughts of the Aztec peoples. He got from them
their hieroglyphics; these in turn were translated into the language
of their speech, but expressed in the Roman character; and the whole
subjected more than once to the revising of such of the natives as
had, in his day, been educated in the Spanish schools.[1164] Thirty
years were given to this kind of preparation; and when he had got his
work written out in Mexican, the General of his Order seized it, and
some years elapsed before a restitution of it was made. Sahagun had
got to be eighty years old when, with his manuscript restored to him,
he set about re-writing it, with the Mexican text in one column and
the Spanish in another. The two huge volumes of his script found their
way to Spain, and were lost sight of till Muñoz discovered them in the
convent of Tolosa in Navarre, not wholly unimpaired by the vicissitudes
to which they had been subjected. The Nahuatl text, which made part of
it, is still missing.[1165]
[Illustration]
It was not long afterward (1829-1830) printed by Cárlos María
Bustamante in three volumes as _Historia general de las cosas de Nueva
España_,[1166] to which was added, as a fourth volume, also published
separately, _Historia de la conquista de México_, containing what is
usually cited as the twelfth book of Sahagun. In this, as in the other
parts, he used a copy which Muñoz had made, and which is the earlier
draft of the text as Sahagun formed it. It begins with a recital of
the omens which preceded the coming of Grijalva, and ends with the
fall of the city; and it is written, as he says, from the evidence,
in large part, of the eye-witnesses, particularly on the Aztec side,
though mixed, somewhat confusedly, with recollections from old Spanish
soldiers. Harrisse[1167] speaks of this edition as “castrated in such
a way as to require, for a perfect understanding of this dry but
important book, the reading of the parts published in vols. v. and
vi. of Kingsborough.” The text, as given in Kingsborough’s _Mexico_,
began to appear about a year later, that edition only giving, in the
first instance, book vi., which relates to the customs of the Aztecs
before the Conquest; but in a later volume he reproduced the whole of
the work without comment. Kingsborough had also used the Muñoz text,
and has made, according to Simeon, fewer errors in transcribing the
Nahuatl words than Bustamante, and has also given a purer Spanish
text. Bustamante again printed, in 1840, another text of this twelfth
book, after a manuscript belonging to the Conde de Cortina, appending
notes by Clavigero and others, with an additional chapter.[1168] The
Mexican editor claimed that this was the earlier text; but Prescott
denies it. Torquemada is thought to have used, but without due
acknowledgment, still another text, which is less modified than the
others in expressions regarding the Conquerors. The peculiar value of
Sahagun’s narrative hardly lies in its completeness, proportions, or
even trustworthiness as an historical record. “His accuracy as regards
any historical fact is not to be relied on,” says Helps.[1169] Brevoort
calls the work of interest mainly for its records of persons and places
not found elsewhere.[1170] Prescott thinks that this twelfth book is
the most honest record which the natives have left us, as Sahagun
embodies the stories and views prevalent among the descendants of the
victims of the Conquest. “This portion of the work,” he says, “was
rewritten by Sahagun at a later period of his life, and considerable
changes were made in it; yet it may be doubted if the reformed version
reflects the traditions of the country as faithfully as the original
draft.”[1171] This new draft was made by Sahagun in 1585, thirty years
after the original writing, for the purpose, as he says, of adding
some things which had been omitted, and leaving out others. Prescott
could not find, in comparing this later draft with the earlier, that
its author had mitigated any of the statements which, as he first wrote
them, bore so hard on his countrymen. The same historian thinks there
is but little difference in the intrinsic value of the two drafts.[1172]
The best annotated edition of Sahagun is a French translation,
published in Paris in 1880 as _Histoire générale des choses de la
Nouvelle Espagne_, seemingly from the Kingsborough text, which is more
friendly to the Spaniards than the first of Bustamante. The joint
editors are Denis Jourdanet and Remi Siméon, the latter, as a Nahuatl
scholar, taking charge of those portions of the text which fell within
his linguistic range, and each affording a valuable introduction in
their respective studies.[1173]
=C.= OTHER EARLY ACCOUNTS.—The _Voyages, Relations, et Mémoires_ of
Ternaux-Compans (Paris, 1837-1840) offer the readiest source of some
of the most significant of the documents and monographs pertaining to
early Mexican history. Two of the volumes[1174] gather some of the
minor documents. Another volume[1175] is given to Zurita’s “Rapport
sur les différentes classes des chefs de la Nouvelle Espagne.” Three
others[1176] contain an account of the cruelties practised by the
Spaniards at the Conquest, and the history of the ancient kings of
Tezcuco,—both the work of Ferdinando d’Alva Ixtlilxochitl.[1177] The
former work, not correctly printed, and called, somewhat arbitrarily,
_Horribles crueldades de los Conquistadores de México_, was first
published by Bustamante, in 1829, as a supplement to Sahagun. The
manuscript (which was no. 13 of a number of _Noticias_, or _Relaciones
históricas_, by this native writer) had been for a while after the
writer’s death (about 1648) preserved in the library of the Jesuit
College in Mexico, and had thence passed to the archive general of the
State. It bears the certificate of a notary, in 1608, that it had been
compared with the Aztec records and found to be correct. The original
work contained several _Relaciones_, but only the one (no. 13) relating
to the Conquest was published by Bustamante and Ternaux.[1178]
The other work of Ixtlilxochitl was first printed (after Veytia’s copy)
in Spanish by Kingsborough, in his ninth volume, before Ternaux, who
used another copy, included it in his collection under the title of
_Histoire des Chichimeque ou des anciens Rois de Tezcuco_. This is the
only work of Ixtlilxochitl which has been printed entire. According to
Clavigero, these treatises were written at the instance of the Spanish
viceroy; and as a descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco (the great
great-grandson, it is said, of the king of like name) their author had
great advantages, with perhaps great predispositions to laudation,
though he is credited with extreme carefulness in his statements;[1179]
and Prescott affirms that he has been followed with confidence by such
as have had access to his writings. Ixtlilxochitl informs us that he
has derived his material from such remains of his ancestral documents
as were left to him. He seems also to have used Gomara and other
accessible authorities. He lived in the early part of the seventeenth
century, and as interpreter of the viceroy maintained a respectable
social position when many of his royal line were in the humblest
service. His _Relaciones_ are hardly regular historical compositions,
since they lack independent and compact form; but his _Historia
Chichimeca_ is the best of them, and is more depended upon by Prescott
than the others are. There is a certain charm in his simplicity, his
picturesqueness, and honesty; and readers accept these qualities often
in full recompense for his credulity and want of discrimination,—and
perhaps for a certain servility to the Spanish masters, for whose
bounty he could press the claims of a line of vassals of his own
blood.[1180]
=D.= NATIVE WRITERS.—The pious vandalism of the bishops of Mexico and
Yucatan, which doomed to destruction so much of the native records
of days antecedent to the Conquest,[1181] fortunately was not so
ruthlessly exercised later, when native writers gathered up what they
could, and told the story of their people’s downfall, either in the
language of the country or in an acquired Spanish.[1182] Brasseur de
Bourbourg, in the introduction to his _Nations civilisées du Mexique_
(Paris, 1857-1859), enumerates the manuscript sources to which he
had access,[1183] largely pertaining to the period anterior to the
Spaniards, but also in part covering the history of the Conquest, which
in his fourth volume[1184] he narrates mainly from the native point of
view, while he illustrates the Indian life under its contact with the
Spanish rule.
Brasseur was fortunate in having access to the Aubin Collection of
manuscripts,[1185] which had originally been formed between 1736 and
1745 by the Chevalier Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci; and that collector
in 1746 gave a catalogue of them at the end of his _Idea de una nueva
historia general de la America septentrional_, published at Madrid in
that year.[1186] Unfortunately, the labors of this devoted archæologist
incurred the jealousy of the Spanish Government, and his library was
more or less scattered; but to him we owe a large part of what we find
in the collections of Bustamante, Kingsborough, and Ternaux. Mariano
Veytia[1187] was his executor, and had the advantages of Boturini’s
collections in his own _Historia Antigua de Mejico_.[1188] Boturini’s
catalogue, however, shows us that much has disappeared, which we may
regret. Such is the _Cronica_ of Tlaxcala, by Juan Ventura Zapata y
Mendoza, which brought the story down to 1689, which Brinton hopes may
yet be discovered in Spain.[1189] One important work is saved,—that of
Camargo.
Muñoz Camargo was born in Mexico just after the Conquest, and was
connected by marriage with leading native families, and attained high
official position in Tlaxcala, whose history he wrote, beginning its
composition in 1576, and finishing it in 1585. He had collected much
material. Ternaux[1190] printed a French translation of a mutilated
text; but it has never been printed in the condition, fragmentary
though it be, in which it was recovered by Boturini. Prescott says the
original manuscript was long preserved in a convent in Mexico, where
Torquemada used it. It was later taken to Spain, when it found its
way into the Muñoz Collection in the Academy of History at Madrid,
whence Prescott got his copy. This last historian speaks of the work as
supplying much curious and authentic information respecting the social
and religious condition of the Aztecs. Camargo tells fully the story
of the Conquest, but he deals out his applause and sympathy to the
conquerors and the conquered with equal readiness.[1191]
Other manuscripts have not yet been edited. Chimalpain’s _Cronica
Mexicana_, in the Nahuatl tongue, which covers the interval from A. D.
1068 to 1597, is one of these. Another Nahuatl manuscript in Boturini’s
list is an anonymous history of Culhuacan and Mexico. An imperfect
translation of this into Spanish, by Galicia, has been made in Mexico.
Brasseur copied it, and called it the _Codex Chimalpopoca_.[1192] In
1879 the Museo Nacional at Mexico began to print it in their _Anales_
(vol. ii.), adding a new version by Mendoza and Solis, under the title
of _Anales de Cuauhtitlan_.[1193]
Bancroft’s list, prefixed to his _Mexico_, makes mention of most
of these native Mexican sources. Of principal use among them may
be mentioned Fernando de Alvaro Tezozomoc’s _Cronica Mexicana_, or
_Histoire du Mexique_, written in 1598, and published in 1853, in
Paris, by Ternaux-Compans.[1194]
Brinton has published in the first volume of his library of _Aboriginal
American Literature_ (1882, p. 189) the chronicle of Chac-xulub-chen,
written in the Maya in 1562, which throws light on the methods of the
Spanish Conquest.
There was a native account, by Don Gabriel Castañeda, of the conquest
of the Chichimecs by the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in 1541; but
Brinton[1195] says all trace of it is lost since it was reported to be
in the Convent of Ildefonso in Mexico.
Perhaps the most important native contribution to the history of
Guatemala is Francisco Ernandez Arana Xahila’s _Memorial de Tecpan
Atitlan_, written in 1581 and later in the dialect of Cakchiquel, and
bringing the history of a distinguished branch of the Cakchiquels
down to 1562, from which point it is continued by Francisco Gebuta
Queh. Brasseur de Bourbourg loosely rendered it, and from this
paraphrase a Spanish version has been printed in Guatemala; but the
original has never been printed. Brinton (in his _Aboriginal American
Authors_, p. 32) says he has a copy; and another is in Europe. It is
of great importance as giving the native accounts of the conquest of
Guatemala.[1196] An ardent advocacy of the natives was also shown
in the _Historia de las Indias de Nueva España_ of the Padre Diego
Duran, which was edited by Ramirez, so far as the first volume goes,
in 1867, when it was published in Mexico with an atlas of plates
after the manuscript; but this publication is said not to present all
the drawings of the original manuscript. The overthrow of Maximilian
prevented the completion of the publication. The incoming Republican
government seized what had been printed, so that the fruit of Ramirez’s
labor is now scarce. Quaritch priced the editor’s own copy at £8
10_s._ The editor had polished the style of the original somewhat,
and made other changes, which excited some disgust in the purists;
and this action on his part may have had something to do with the
proceedings of the new Government. Ramirez claimed descent from the
Aztecs, and this may account for much of his stern judgment respecting
Cortés.[1197] The story in this first volume is only brought down
to the reign of Montezuma. The manuscript is preserved in the royal
library at Madrid.[1198] Duran was a half-breed, his mother being of
Tezcuco. He became a Dominican; but a slender constitution kept him
from the missionary field, and he passed a monastic life of literary
labors. He had finished in 1579 the later parts of his work treating of
the Mexican divinities, calendars, and festivals; and then, reverting
to the portions which came first in the manuscript, he tells the story
of Mexican history rather clumsily, but with a certain native force and
insight, down to the period of the Honduras expedition. The manuscript
of Duran passed, after his death in 1588, to Juan Tovar, and from him,
perhaps with the representations that Tovar (or Tobar) was its author,
to José de Acosta, who represents Tovar as the author, and who had then
prepared, while in Peru, his _De Natura Novi Orbis_.
=E.= THE EARLIER HISTORIANS.—José de Acosta was born about 1540 in
Spain; but at fourteen he joined the Jesuits. He grew learned, and
in 1571 he went to Peru, in which country he spent fifteen years,
becoming the provincial of his Order. He tarried two other years in
Mexico—where he saw Tovar—and in the islands. He then returned to Spain
laden with manuscripts and information, became a royal favorite, held
other offices, and died as rector of Salamanca in 1600,[1199] having
published in his books on the New World the most popular and perhaps
most satisfactory account of it up to that time; while his theological
works give evidence, as Markham says, of great learning.
Acosta’s first publication appeared at Salamanca in 1588 and 1589, and
was in effect two essays, though they are usually found under one cover
(they had separate titles, but were continuously paged), _De natura
Novi Orbis libri duo, et de promulgatione evangelii apud barbaros, ...
libri sex_. In the former he describes the physical features of the
country, and in the latter he told the story Of the conversion of the
Indians.[1200] Acosta now translated the two books of the _De natura_
into Spanish, and added five other books. The work was thus made to
form a general cosmographical treatise, with particular reference to
the New World; and included an account of the religion and government
of the Indians of Peru and Mexico. He also gave a brief recital of the
Conquest. In this extended form, and under the title of _Historia
natvral y moral de las Indias, en qve se tratan las cosas notables del
cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas; y los ritos,
y ceremonias, leyes, y gouierno, y guerras de los Indios_, it was
published at Seville in 1590.[1201]
Two other accounts of this period deserve notice. One is by Joan Suarez
de Peralta, who was born in Mexico in 1536, and wrote a _Tratado del
descubrimiento de las Yndias y su conquista_, which is preserved in
manuscript in the library at Toledo in Spain. It is not full, however,
on the Conquest; but is more definite for the period from 1565 to 1589.
It was printed at Madrid in 1878, in the _Noticias históricas de la
Nueva España publicadas con la protection del ministerio de fomento por
Don Justo Zaragoza_. The other is Henrico Martinez’ _Repertorio de los
Tiempos y historia natural de la Nueva España_, published at Mexico in
1606. It covers the Mexican annals from 1520 to 1590.[1202]
One of the earliest to depend largely on the native chroniclers was
Juan de Torquemada, in his _Monarquía Indiana_. This author was born
in Spain, but came young to Mexico; and was a priest of the Franciscan
habit, who finally became (1614-1617) the provincial of that Order. He
had assiduously labored to collect all that he could find regarding
the history of the people among whom he was thrown; and his efforts
were increased when, in 1609, he received orders to prepare his
labors for publication. His book is esteemed for the help it affords
in understanding these people. Ternaux calls it the most complete
narrative which we possess of the ancient history of Mexico. He took
the history, as the native writers had instructed him, of the period
before the Conquest, and derived from them and his own observation much
respecting the kind of life which the conquerors found prevailing in
the country. In his account of the Conquest, which constitutes the
fourth book in vol. i., Torquemada seems to depend largely on Herrera,
though he does not neglect Sahagun and the native writers. Clavigero
tells us that Torquemada for fifty years had known the language of the
natives, and spent twenty years or more in arranging his history. He
also tells us of the use which Torquemada made of the manuscripts which
he found in the colleges of Mexico, of the writings of Ixtlilxochitl,
Camargo, and of the history of Cholula by another writer of native
origin, Juan Batista Pomar. Another book of considerable use to him was
the work of a warm eulogist of the natives, if not himself of their
blood; and this was the _Historia Eclesiástica Indiana_, a work written
by Gerónimo de Mendieta near the end of the sixteenth century. Mendieta
was in Mexico from 1554 to 1571,[1203] and his work, finished in 1596,
after having remained for two hundred years in manuscript, was printed
and annotated by Icazbalceta at Mexico, in 1870.[1204]
The _Monarquía Indiana_, in which these and other writers were so
freely employed as to be engrafted in parts almost bodily, was first
printed in three volumes at Madrid in 1615; but before this the
Inquisition had struck out from its pages some curious chapters,
particularly, says Rich, one comparing the migration of the Toltecs to
that of the Israelites. The colophon of this edition shows the date of
1614.[1205] It is said that most of it was lost in a shipwreck, and
this accounts, doubtless, for its rarity. The original manuscript,
however, being preserved, it served Barcia well in editing a reprint
in 1723, published at Madrid, which is now considered the standard
edition.[1206] Torquemada doubtless derived something of his skill in
the native tongue from his master, Fray Joan Baptista, who had the
reputation of being the most learned scholar of the Mexican language in
his time.[1207]
The _Teatro Mexicano_ of Augustin de Vetancurt, published at Mexico
in 1697-1698,[1208] is the next general chronicle after Torquemada.
Vetancourt, also, was a Franciscan, born in Mexico in 1620, and died
in 1700. He had the literary fecundity of his class; but the most
important of his works is the one already named; and in the third part
of the first volume we find his history of the Conquest. He seldom goes
behind his predecessor, and Torquemada must stand sponsor for much of
his recital.
=F.= MODERN HISTORIANS.—The well-known work of Solis (_Historia de
la Conquista de México_,[1209] published at Madrid in 1684) is the
conspicuous precursor of a long series of histories of the Conquest,
written without personal knowledge of the actors in this extraordinary
event. Solis ended his narrative with the fall of the city, the
author’s death preventing any further progress, though it is said he
had gathered further materials; but they are not known to exist. A work
by Ignacio Salazar y Olarte, continuing the narrative down to the death
of Cortés, is called a second part, and was published at Cordova in
1743, under the title of _Historia de la conquista de México, poblacion
y progressos de la América septentrional conocida por el nombre de
Nueva España_. This continuation was reprinted at Madrid in 1786, and
in the opinion of Bancroft[1210] abounds “in all the faults of the
superficial and florid composition of Solis.”
Solis, who was born at Alcala in 1610, was educated at Salamanca,
and had acquired a great reputation in letters, when he attracted
the attention of the Court, and was appointed historiographer of the
Indies. Some time afterward (1667) he entered the Church, at fifty-six;
but to earn his salary as official chronicler,—which was small enough
at best,—he turned, with a good deal of the poetic and artistic
instinct which his previous training had developed, to tell the story
of the Conquest, with a skill which no one before had employed upon the
theme. The result was a work which, “to an extraordinary degree,” as
Ticknor[1211] says, took on “the air of an historical epic, so exactly
are all its parts and episodes modelled into a harmonious whole, whose
catastrophe is the fall of the great Mexican Empire.” The book was a
striking contrast to the chronicling spirit of all preceding recitals.
[Illustration: SOLIS.
Fac-simile of engraving in his _Historia_, published at Venice in
1715. There are other likenesses in the Madrid (1783) edition, and in
Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s _Mexico_, vol. iii.]
The world soon saw—though the sale of the book was not large at
once, and the author died very poor two years later (1686)—that the
strange story had been given its highest setting. Solis gives no
notes; and one needs to know the literature of the subject, to track
him to his authorities. If this is done, however, it appears that his
investigation was far from deep, and that with original material within
his reach he rarely or never used it, but took the record at second
hand. Robertson, who had to depend on him more or less, was aware of
this, and judged him less solicitous of discovering truth than of
glorifying the splendor of deeds. This panegyrical strain in the book
has lowered its reputation, particularly among foreign critics, who
fail to share the enthusiasm which Solis expresses for Cortés. We may
call his bitter denunciations of the natives bigotry or pious zeal; but
Ticknor accounts for it by saying that Solis “refused to see the fierce
and marvellous contest except from the steps of the altar where he had
been consecrated.” The religion and national pride of the Spaniards
have not made this quality detract in the least from the estimation
in which the book has long been held; but all that they say of the
charm and purity of its style, despite something of tiresomeness in
its even flow, is shared by the most conspicuous of foreign critics,
like Prescott and Ticknor. Rich, who had opportunities for knowing,
bears evidence to the estimation in Spain of those qualities which have
insured the fame of Solis.[1212]
The story was not told again with the dignity of a classic,—except
so far as Herrera composed it,—till Robertson, in his _History of
America_, recounted it. He used the printed sources with great
fidelity; but he was denied a chance to examine the rich manuscript
material which was open to Solis, and which Robertson would doubtless
have used more abundantly. In a Note (xcvii.) he enumerates his chief
authorities, and they are only the letters of Cortés and the story as
told by Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Peter Martyr, Solis, and Herrera.[1213] Of
Solis, Robertson says he knows no author in any language whose literary
fame has risen so far beyond his real merits. He calls him “destitute
of that patient industry in research which conducts to the knowledge
of truth, and a stranger to that impartiality which weighs evidence
with cool attention.... Though he sometimes quotes the despatches of
Cortés, he seems not to have consulted them; and though he sets out
with some censure on Gomara, he frequently prefers his authority—the
most doubtful of any—to that of the other contemporary historians.”
Robertson judged that Herrera furnished the fullest and most accurate
information, and that if his work had not in its chronological order
been so perplexed, disconnected, and obscure, Herrera might justly
have been ranked among the most eminent historians of his country.
William Smyth, in the twenty-first section of his _Lectures on Modern
History_, in an account which is there given of the main sources of
information respecting the Conquest, as they were accessible forty or
fifty years ago, awards high praise—certainly not undeserved for his
time—to Robertson. Southey accused Robertson of unduly depreciating the
character and civilization of the Mexicans; and others have held the
opinion that he had a tendency to palliate the crimes of the invaders.
Robertson, in his later editions, replied to such strictures, and held
that Clavigero and others had differed from him chiefly in confiding in
the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada and
Boturini.
Francisco Saverio Clavigero was a Jesuit, who had long resided in
Mexico, being born at Vera Cruz in 1731; but when expelled with his
Order, he took up his abode in Italy in 1767. He had the facilities
and the occasion for going more into detail than Robertson. His
_Storia antica del Messico cavata da’ migliori storici spagnuoli,
e da’ manoscritti; e dalle pitture antiche degl’Indiani: divisa in
dieci libri, e corredata di carte geografiche, e di varie figure:
e dissertazioni sulla terra, sugli animali, e sugli abitatori del
Messico_,[1214] was published in four volumes at Cesena in 1780-1781.
He gives the names of thirty-nine Indian and Spanish writers who
had written upon the theme, and has something to say of the Mexican
historical paintings which he had examined. H. H. Bancroft esteems him
a leading authority,[1215] and says he rearranged the material in a
masterly manner, and invested it with a philosophic spirit, altogether
superior to anything presented till Prescott’s time.[1216] It is in his
third volume that Clavigero particularly treats of the Conquest, having
been employed on the earlier chronicles and the manners and customs of
the people in the first and second, while the fourth volume is made up
of particular dissertations. Clavigero was not without learning. He had
passed three years at the Jesuit College at Tepozotlan, and had taught
as a master in various branches. At Bologna, where he latterly lived,
he founded an academy; and here he died in 1787, leaving behind him a
_Storia della California_, published at Venice in 1789.[1217]
Fifteen years ago it was the opinion of Henry Stevens,[1218] that all
other books which have been elaborated since on the same subject,
instead of superseding Clavigero’s, have tended rather to magnify its
importance.[1219]
The most conspicuous treatment of the subject, in the minds of the
elders of the present generation, is doubtless that of Prescott, who
published his _Conquest of Mexico_ in 1843, dividing it into three
distinct parts,—the first showing a survey of the Aztec civilization;
the second depicting the Conquest; while the final period brought
down the life of Cortés to his death. Charton[1220] speaks of Solis
as a work “auquel le livre de Prescott a porté un dernier coup.”
Prescott was at great expense and care in amassing much manuscript
material never before used, chiefly in copies, which Rich and others
had procured for him, and he is somewhat minute in his citations from
them. They have since been in large part printed, and doubtless very
much more is at present accessible in type to the student than was in
Prescott’s day.[1221]
Prescott was of good New England stock, settled in Essex County,
Massachusetts, where (in Salem) he was born in 1796. His father
removed to Boston in 1808, and became a judge of one of the courts. A
mischance at Harvard, in a student’s frolic, deprived young Prescott
of the use of one eye; and the other became in time permanently
affected. Thus he subsequently labored at his historical studies under
great disadvantage,[1222] and only under favorable circumstances and
for short periods could he read for himself. In this way he became
dependent upon the assistance of secretaries, though he generally wrote
his early drafts by the aid of a noctograph.
[Illustration: WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.
This cut follows an engraving in mezzotint in the _Eclectic Magazine_
(1858), and shows him using his noctograph. The likeness was thought
by his wife and sister (Mrs. Dexter) to be the best ever made, as Mr.
Arthur Dexter informs me. See other likenesses in Ticknor’s _Life of
Prescott_; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, iv. 167; and _N. E. Hist. and
Geneal. Reg._ (1868), p. 226.]
From 1826 to 1837 he was engaged on his _Ferdinand and Isabella_, and
this naturally led him to the study of his Mexican and Peruvian themes;
and Irving, who had embarked on them as a literary field, generously
abandoned his pursuit to the new and rising historian.[1223] The
_Conquest of Mexico_ appeared in 1843,[1224] and has long remained a
charming book, as fruitful in authority as the material then accessible
could make it.
In the Preface to his _Mexico_ Mr. Prescott tells of his success in
getting unpublished material, showing how a more courteous indulgence
was shown to him than Robertson had enjoyed. By favor of the Academy
of History in Madrid he got many copies of the manuscripts of Muñoz
and of Vargas y Ponçe, and he enjoyed the kind offices of Navarrete in
gathering this material. He mentions that, touching the kindred themes
of Mexico and Peru, he thus obtained the bulk of eight thousand folio
pages. From Mexico itself he gathered other appliances, and these
largely through the care of Alaman, the minister of foreign affairs,
and of Calderon de la Barca, the minister to Mexico from Spain. He also
acknowledges the courtesy of the descendants of Cortés in opening their
family archives; that of Sir Thomas Phillipps, whose manuscript stores
have become so famous, and the kindness of Ternaux-Compans.
To Mr. John Foster Kirk, who had been Prescott’s secretary, the
preparation of new editions of Prescott’s works was intrusted, and in
this series the _Mexico_ was republished in 1874. Kirk was enabled, as
Prescott himself had been in preparing for it, to make use of the notes
which Ramirez had added to the Spanish translation by Joaquin Navarro,
published in Mexico in 1844, and of those of Lúcas Alaman, attached to
another version, published also in Mexico.[1225]
Almost coincident with the death of Prescott, was published by a
chance Mr. Robert Anderson Wilson’s _New History of the Conquest of
Mexico_.[1226] Its views were not unexpected, and indeed Prescott had
been in correspondence[1227] with the author. His book was rather an
extravagant argument than a history, and was aimed to prove the utter
untrustworthiness of the ordinary chroniclers of the Conquest, charging
the conquerors with exaggerating and even creating the fabric of the
Aztec civilization, to enhance the effect which the overthrow of so
much splendor would have in Europe. To this end he pushes Cortés aside
as engrafting fable on truth for such a purpose, dismisses rather
wildly Bernal Diaz as a myth, and declares the picture-writings to be
Spanish fabrications. This view was not new, except in its excess of
zeal. Albert Gallatin had held a similar belief.[1228] Lewis Cass had
already seriously questioned, in the _North American Review_, October,
1840, the consistency of the Spanish historians. A previous work by
Mr. Wilson had already, indeed, announced his views, though less
emphatically. This book had appeared in three successive editions,—as
_Mexico and its Religion_ (New York, 1855); then as _Mexico, its
Peasants and its Priests_ (1856); and finally as _Mexico, Central
America, and California_.
It was easy to accuse Wilson of ignorance and want of candor,—for he
had laid himself open too clearly to this charge,—and Mr. Prescott’s
friend, Mr. George Ticknor, arraigned him in the _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proc._, April, 1859.[1229] He reminded Wilson that he ought to have
known that Don Enrique de Vedia, who had published an edition of Bernal
Diaz in 1853, had cited Fuentes y Guzman, whose manuscript history of
Guatemala was before that editor, as referring in it to the manuscript
of Bernal Diaz (his great-grandfather), which was then in existence,—a
verity and no myth. Further than this, Brasseur de Bourbourg, who
chanced then to be in Boston, bore testimony that he had seen and used
the autograph manuscript of Bernal Diaz in the archives of Guatemala.
In regard to the credibility of the accounts which Prescott depends
upon, his editor,[1230] Mr. Kirk, has not neglected to cite the
language of Mr. E. B. Tylor, in his _Anahuac_,[1231] where he says,
respecting his own researches on the spot, that what he saw of Mexico
tended generally to confirm Prescott’s History, and but seldom to make
his statements appear improbable. The impeachment of the authorities,
which Wilson attacks, is to be successful, if at all, by other
processes than those he employs.
Meanwhile Arthur Helps,[1232] in tracing the rise of negro slavery
and the founding of colonial government in Spanish America, had
published his _Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen_ (London,
1848-1852),—a somewhat speculative essay, which, with enlargement of
purpose and more detail, resulted in 1855-1861 in the publication of
his _Spanish Conquest in America_, reprinted in New York in 1867. He
gives a glowing account of the Aztec civilization, and, excerpting the
chapters on the Conquest, he added some new details of the private
life of Cortés, and published it separately in 1871 as an account of
that leader, which is attractive as a biography, if not comprehensive
as a history of the Conquest. “Every page affords evidence of historic
lore,” says Field, “and almost every sentence glows with the warmth of
his philanthropy.”[1233] Helps has himself told the object and method
of his book, and it is a different sort of historical treatment from
all the others which we are passing in review. “To bring before the
reader, not conquest only, but the results of conquest; the mode of
colonial government which ultimately prevailed; the extirpation of
native races, the introduction of other races, the growth of slavery,
and the settlement of the _encomiendas_ on which all Indian society
depended,—has been the object of this history.”[1234]
Among the later works not in English we need not be detained long. The
two most noteworthy in French are the _Histoire des nations civilisées
du Mexique_ of Brasseur de Bourbourg, more especially mentioned on
another page, and Michel Chevalier’s _Mexique avant et pendant la
Conquête_, published at Paris in 1845.[1235] In German, Theodor
Arnim’s _Das Alte Mexico und die eroberung Neu Spaniens durch Cortes_,
Leipsic, 1865, is a reputable book.[1236] In Spanish, beside the _Vida
de Cortés_ given by Icazbalceta in his _Coleccion_, vol. i. p. 309,
there is the important work of Lúcas Alaman, the _Disertaciones sobre
la Historia de la República Mejicana_, published at Mexico in three
volumes in 1844-1849, which is a sort of introduction to his _Historia
de Méjico_, in five volumes, published in 1849-1852.[1237] He added
not a little in his appendixes from the archives of Simancas, and the
latter book is considered the best of the histories in Spanish. In 1862
Francisco Carbajal Espinosa’s _Historia de México_, bringing the story
down from the earliest times, was begun in Mexico. Bancroft calls it
pretentious, and mostly borrowed from Clavigero.[1238]
Returning to the English tongue, in which the story of Mexico has been
so signally told more than once from the time of Robertson, we find
still the amplest contribution in the _History of Mexico_, a part of
the extended series of the _History of the Pacific States_, published
under the superintendence of Hubert H. Bancroft. Of Bancroft and these
books mention is made in another place. The _Mexico_ partakes equally
of the merits and demerits attaching to his books and their method. It
places the student under more obligations than any of the histories of
the Conquest which have gone before, though one tires of the strained
and purely extraneous classical allusions,—which seem to have been
affected by his staff, or by some one on it, during the progress of
this particular book of the series.
=G.= YUCATAN.—With the subsequent subjugation of Yucatan Cortés had
nothing to do. Francisco de Montejo had been with Grijalva when he
landed at Cozumel on the Yucatan coast, and with Cortés when he touched
at the same island on his way to Mexico. After the fall of the Aztecs,
Montejo was the envoy whom Cortés sent to Spain, and while there the
Emperor commissioned him (Nov. 17, 1526) to conduct a force for the
settlement of the peninsula. Early in 1527 Montejo left Spain with
Alonso de Avila as second in command. For twenty years and more the
conquest went on, with varying success. At one time not a Spaniard
was left in the country. No revolts of the natives occurred after
1547, when the conquest may be considered as complete. The story
is told with sufficient fulness in Bancroft’s _Mexico_.[1239] The
main sources of our information are the narrative of Bernal Diaz,
embodying the reports of eye-witnesses, and the histories of Oviedo
and Herrera. Bancroft[1240] gives various incidental references. The
more special authorities, however, are the _Historia de Yucathan_ of
Diego Lopez Cogolludo, published at Madrid in 1688,[1241] who knew how
to use miracles for his reader’s sake, and who had the opportunity of
consulting most that had been written, and all that had been printed
up to his time. He closes his narrative in 1665.[1242] The Bishop of
Yucatan, Diego de Landa, in his _Relation des choses de Yucatan_, as
the French translation terms it, has left us the only contemporary
Spanish document of the period of the Conquest. The book is of more
interest in respect to the Maya civilization than as to the progress
of the Spanish domination. It was not printed till it was edited by
Brasseur de Bourbourg, with an introduction, and published in Paris in
1864.[1243]
Landa was born in 1524, and was one of the first of his Order to
come to Yucatan, where he finally became Bishop of Mérida in 1572,
and died in 1579. Among the books commonly referred to for the later
period is the first part (the second was never published) of Juan de
Villagutierre Sotomayor’s _Historia de la Conquista de la provincia de
el Itza_, etc., Madrid, 1701. It deals somewhat more with the spiritual
and the military conquests, but writers find it important.[1244]
The latest English history of the peninsula is that by Charles St.
J. Fancourt, _History of Yucatan_, London, 1854;[1245] but a more
extended, if less agreeable, book is Ancona’s _Historia de Yucatan
desde la época mas remota hasta nuestros dias_, published at Mérida
in four volumes in 1878-1880. It gives references which will be found
useful.[1246]
=H.= BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MEXICO.—The earliest special bibliography of
Mexico of any moment is that which, under the title of _Catalogo de sa
museo historico Indiano_, is appended to Boturini Benaduci’s _Idea de
una nueva historia general de la America septentrional_ (Madrid, 1746),
which was the result of eight years’ investigations into the history of
Mexico. He includes a list of books, maps, and manuscripts, of which
the last remnants in 1853 were in the Museo Nacional in Mexico.[1247]
Of the list of New Spain authors by Eguiara y Eguren, only a small part
was published in 1755 as _Bibliotheca Mexicana_.[1248] It was intended
to cover all authors born in New Spain; but though he lived to arrange
the work through the letter J, only A, B, and C were published. All
titles are translated into Latin. Its incompleteness renders the
bibliographical parts of Maneiro’s _De Vitis Mexicanorum_ (1791)
more necessary, and makes Beristain’s _Bibliotheca Hispano-Americano
Septentrional_,[1249] of three volumes, published at Mexico in 1816,
1819, and 1821, of more importance than it would otherwise be.
Beristain, also, only partly finished his work; but a nephew completed
the publication. It has become rare; and its merits are not great,
though its notices number 3,687.
Of more use to the student of the earlier history, however, is the
list which Clavigero gives in his _Storia del Messico_ published in
1780. A Jesuit, and a collector, having a book-lover’s keen scent, he
surpassed all writers on the theme who had preceded him, in amassing
the necessary stores for his special use. Since his day the field has
been surveyed more systematically both by the general and special
bibliographers. The student of early Spanish-Mexican history will of
course not forget the help which he can get from general bibliographers
like Brunet, from the _Dictionary_ of Sabin, the works of Ternaux and
Harrisse, the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, not to speak of other important
library catalogues.
The sale catalogues are not without assistance. Principal among them
are the collections which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian of
Mexico,—which was sold in Leipsic in 1869 as the collection of José
Maria Andrade,[1250]—and the _Bibliotheca Mexicana_ formed by José
Fernando Ramirez, which was sold in London in 1880.[1251]
All other special collections on Mexico have doubtless been surpassed
by that which has been formed in San Francisco by Mr. Hubert Howe
Bancroft, as a component part of his library pertaining to the
western slope of America. Lists of such titles have been prefixed to
his histories of _Central America_ and of _Mexico_, and are to be
supplemented by others as his extended work goes on. He has explained,
in his preface to his _Mexico_ (p. viii), the wealth of his manuscript
stores; and it is his custom, as it was Prescott’s, to append to his
chapters, and sometimes to passages of the text, considerable accounts,
with some bibliographical detail, of the authorities with which he
deals.[1252] Helps, though referring to his authorities, makes no such
extended references to them.[1253]
DISCOVERIES
ON THE
PACIFIC COAST OF NORTH AMERICA.
BY THE EDITOR.
THE cartographical history of the Pacific coast of North America is
one of shadowy and unstable surmise long continued.[1254] The views of
Columbus and his companions, as best shown in the La Cosa and Ruysch
maps,[1255] precluded, for a considerable time after the coming of
Europeans, the possibility of the very existence of such a coast; since
their Asiatic theory of the new-found lands maintained with more or
less modification a fitful existence for a full century after Columbus.
In many of the earliest maps the question was avoided by cutting
off the westerly extension of the new continent by the edge of the
sheet;[1256] but the confession of that belief was still made sometimes
in other ways, as when, in the Portuguese _portolano_, which is placed
between 1516 and 1520, Mahometan flags are placed on the coasts of
Venezuela and Nicaragua.[1257]
In 1526 a rare book of the monk Franciscus, _De orbis situ ac
descriptione Francisci epistola_,[1258] contained a map which
represented South America as a huge island disjoined from the Asiatic
coast by a strait in the neighborhood of Tehuantepec, with the legend,
“Hoc orbis hemisphærium cedit regi Hispaniæ.”[1259] A few years later
we find two other maps showing this Asiatic connection,—one of which,
the Orontius Finæus globe, is well known, and is the earliest engraved
map showing a return to the ideas of Columbus. It appeared in the Paris
edition of the _Novus Orbis_ of Simon Grynæus, in 1532,[1260] and was
made the previous year. It is formed on a cordiform projection, and
is entitled “Nova et integra universi orbis descriptio.” It is more
easily understood by a reference to Mr. Brevoort’s reduction of it
to Mercator’s projection, as shown in another volume.[1261] The same
map, with a change in the inserted type dedication, appeared in the
Pomponius Mela of 1540,[1262] and it is said also to be found much
later in the _Geografia_ of Lafreri published at Rome, 1554-1572.
[Illustration: SLOANE MANUSCRIPTS, 1530.
This follows a drawing in Kohl’s Washington Collection.]
[Illustration: RUSCELLI, 1544.
This follows a sketch given by Dr. Kohl in his _Discovery of Maine_,
pl. xv., which is also copied in Bancroft’s _Central America_, vol. i.
p. 148. Cf. Lelewel, p. 170; Peschel, _Geschichte der Erdkunde_ (1865),
p. 371.]
The other of the two maps already referred to belongs to a manuscript,
_De Principiis Astronomiæ_, preserved in the British Museum among the
Sloane manuscripts.[1263] It closely resembles the Finæus map. The
authorities place it about 1530, or a little later. In 1533, in his
_Opusculum Geographicum_, Schöner maintained that the city of Mexico
was the Quinsay of Marco Polo; and about the same time Francis I., in
commissioning Cartier for his explorations, calls the St. Lawrence
valley a part of Asia.
What is known as the Nancy Globe preserved the same idea, as will be
seen by the sketch of it annexed, which follows an engraving published
in the _Compte Rendu_ of the Congrès des Américanistes.[1264]
[Illustration: THE NANCY GLOBE.]
The same view is maintained in a manuscript map of Ruscelli, the
Italian geographer, preserved in the British Museum. Perhaps the
earliest instance of a connection of America and Europe, such as
Ruscelli here imagines, is the map of “Schondia,” which Ziegler the
Bavarian published in his composite work at Strasburg in 1532,[1265]
in which it will be observed he makes “Bacallaos” a part of Greenland,
preserving the old notion prevailing before Columbus, as shown in the
maps of the latter part of the fifteenth century, that Greenland was in
fact a prolongation of northwestern Europe, as Ziegler indicates at the
top of his map, the western half of which only is here reproduced.
[Illustration: ZIEGLER’S SCHONDIA, 1532.
This is a fac-simile made from Mr. Charles Deane’s (formerly the
Murphy) copy. Cf. Dr. A. Breusing’s _Leitfaden durch das Wiegenalter
der Kartographie bis zum Jahre 1600_, Frankfurt a. M., 1883, p. 11.]
In this feature, as in others, there is a resemblance in these maps of
Ziegler and Ruscelli to two maps by Jacopo Gastaldi, “le coryphée des
géographes de péninsule italique,” as Lelewel[1266] calls him. These
maps appeared in the first Italian edition of Ptolemy, published at
Venice in 1548.[1267]
The first (no. 59), inscribed “Dell’universale nuova,” is an elliptical
projection of the globe, showing a union of America and Asia, somewhat
different in character of contour from that represented in the other
(no. 60), a “Carta Marina Universale,” of which an outline sketch is
annexed.
[Illustration: CARTA MARINA, 1548.
The key is as follows:
1. Norvegia.
2. Laponia.
3. Gronlandia.
4. Tierra del Labrador.
5. Tierra del Bacalaos.
6. La Florida.
7. Nueva Hispania.
8. Mexico.
9. India Superior.
10. La China.
11. Ganges.
12. Samatra.
13. Java.
14. Panama.
15. Mar del Sur.
16. El Brasil.
17. El Peru.
18. Strecho de Fernande Magalhaes.
19. Tierra del Fuego.
This map is also reproduced in Nordenskiöld’s _Bröderna Zenos_,
Stockholm, 1883.]
[Illustration: VOPELLIO, 1556.
(_Reduction of western half._)]
This same map was adopted (as no. 2) by Ruscelli in the edition of
Ptolemy which he published at Venice in 1561,[1268] though in the
“Orbis descriptio” (no. 1) of that edition Ruscelli hesitates to accept
the Asiatic theory and indicates a “littus incognitum,” as Gastaldi did
in the map which he made for Ramusio in 1550.
[Illustration]
Wuttke[1269] has pointed out two maps preserved in the Palazzo Riccardi
at Florence, which belong to about the year 1550, and show a similar
Asiatic connection.[1270] The map of Gaspar Vopellius, or Vopellio
(1556), also extended the California coast to the Ganges. It appeared
in connection with Girava’s _Dos Libros de Cosmographia_, Milan,
1556,[1271] but when a new titlepage was given to the same sheets in
1570, it is doubtful if the map was retained, though Sabin says it
should have the map.[1272] The Italian cartographer, Paulo de Furlani,
made a map in 1560, which according to Kohl is preserved in the
British Museum. It depicts Chinamen and elephants in the region of the
Mississippi Valley.
[Illustration: PAULO DE FURLANI’S MAP, 1560.
The key is this:
1. Oceano settentrionale.
2. Canada.
3. panaman.
4. Mexico.
5. s. tomas.
6. Nova Ispania.
7. Cipola.
8. Le sete cita.
9. Topira.
10. tontontean.
11. Zangar.
12. Tebet.
13. Quisai.
14. Cimpaga.
15. Golfo de Tonza.
16. Ys. de las ladrones.
17. mangi.
18. mar de la china.]
From Kohl’s sketch, preserved in his manuscript in the library of the
American Antiquarian Society, the annexed outline is drawn. Furlani
is reported to have received it from a Spanish nobleman, Don Diego
Hermano, of Toledo.[1273] The connection with Asia is again adhered
to in Johannes Myritius’s _Opusculum geographicum_, where the map is
dated 1587, though the book was published at Ingolstadt in 1590.[1274]
Just at this time Livio Sanuto, in his _Geografia distinta_ (Venice,
1588), was disputing the Asiatic theory on the ground that the Mexicans
would not have shown surprise at horses in Cortés’ time, if they had
formerly been inhabitants of a continent like Asia, where horses are
common. Perhaps the latest use of the type of map shown in the “Carta
Marina” of 1548 was just a half century later, in 1598, in an edition
of Ortelius, _Il Theatro del mondo_, published at Brescia. The belief
still lingered for many years yet in some quarters; and Thomas Morton
in 1636 showed that in New England it was not yet decided whether
the continent of America did not border upon the country of the
Tartars.[1275] Indeed, the last trace of the assumption was not blown
away till Behring in 1728 passed from the Pacific to the Arctic seas.
* * * * *
Such is in brief the history of the inception and decline of the belief
in the prolongation of Asia over against Spain, as Toscanelli had
supposed in 1474, and as had been suspected by geographers at intervals
since the time of Eratosthenes.[1276] The beginning of the decline of
such belief is traced to the movements of Cortés. Balboa in 1513 by his
discovery of the South Sea, later to be called the Pacific Ocean,[1277]
had established the continental form of South America, whose limits
southward were fixed by Magellan in 1520; but it was left for Cortés to
begin the exploration to the north which Behring consummated.
After the Congress of Badajos had resolved to effect a search for a
passage through the American barrier to the South Sea, the news of
such a determination was not long in reaching Cortés in Mexico, and
we know from his fourth letter, dated Oct. 15, 1524, that it had
already reached him, and that he had decided to take part in the
quest himself by despatching an expedition towards the Baccalaos on
the hither side; while he strove also to connect with the discoveries
of Magellan on the side of the South Sea.[1278] Cortés had already
been led in part by the reports of Balboa’s discovery, and in part by
the tidings which were constantly reaching him of a great sea in the
direction of Tehuantepec, to establish a foothold on its coast, as the
base for future maritime operations. So his explorers had found a fit
spot in Zacatula, and thither he had sent colonists and shipwrights to
establish a town and build a fleet,[1279] the Emperor meanwhile urging
him speedily to use the vessels in a search for the coveted strait,
which would open a shorter passage than Magellan had found to the
Spice Islands.[1280] But Cortés’ attention was soon distracted by his
Honduras expedition, and nothing was done till he returned from that
march, when he wrote to the Emperor, Sept. 3, 1526, offering to conduct
his newly built fleet to the Moluccas.
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC, 1513.
Kohl gives this old Portuguese chart of the Pacific in his Washington
Collection, after an original preserved in the military archives
at Munich, which was, as he thinks possible, made by some pilot
accompanying Antonio da Miranda de Azevedo, who conducted a Portuguese
fleet to the Moluccas in 1513 to join the earlier expedition (1511)
under D’Abreu and Serraō. A legend at Maluca marks these islands as
the place “where the cloves grow,” while the group south of them is
indicated as the place “where nutmegs grow.” The coast on the right
must stand for the notion then prevailing of the main of America, which
was barring the Spanish progress from the east.
Of the early maps of the Moluccas, there is one by Baptista Agnese in
his _portolano_ of 1536, preserved in the British Museum; one by Diego.
Homem in a similar atlas, dated 1558, likewise in the Museum; and one
of 1568, by J. Martines. Copies of these are all included in Kohl’s
Washington Collection.]
But two other fleets were already on the way thither,—one under Garcia
de Loaysa which left Spain in August, 1525, and the other under
Sebastian Cabot, who stopped on the way at La Plata, had left in April,
1526. So Cortés finally received orders to join with his fleet that of
Loaysa, who had indeed died on his voyage, and of his vessels only one
had reached the Moluccas. Another, however, had sought a harbor not far
from Zacatula, and had brought Cortés partial tidings at least of the
mishaps of Loaysa’s undertaking.[1281] What information the rescued
crew could give was made use of, and Cortés, bearing the whole expense,
for a reimbursement of which he long sued the home Government, sent out
his first expedition on the Pacific, under the command of his cousin
Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron, armed with letters for Cabot, whose delay
at La Plata was not suspected, and with missives for sundry native
potentates of the Spice Islands and that region.[1282]
After an experimental trip up the coast, in July, 1527,[1283] two
larger vessels and a brigantine set sail Oct. 31, 1527. But mishap was
in store. Saavedra alone reached the Moluccas, the two other vessels
disappearing forever. He found there a remnant of Loaysa’s party, and,
loading his ship with cloves, started to return, but died midway, when
the crew headed their ship again for the Moluccas, where they fell at
last into Portuguese prisons, only eight of them finally reaching Spain
in 1534.
It will be remembered that the Portuguese, following in the track of
Vasco da Gama, had pushed on beyond the great peninsula of India, and
had reached the Moluccas in 1511, where they satisfied themselves, if
their longitude was substantially correct, that there was a long space
intervening yet before they would confront the Spaniards, pursuing
their westerly route. It was not quite so certain, however, whether
the line of papal demarcation, which had finally been pushed into the
mid-ocean westerly from the Azores, would on this opposite side of
the globe give these islands to Spain or to themselves. The voyage of
Magellan, as we shall see, seemed to bring the solution near; and if
we may believe Scotto, the Genoese geographer, at about the same date
(1520) the Portuguese had crossed the Pacific easterly and struck our
northwest coast.[1284] The mishaps of Loaysa and Saavedra, as well as
a new understanding between the rival crowns of the Iberian peninsula,
closed the question rather abruptly through a sale in 1529—the treaty
of Saragossa—by Spain, for 350,000 ducats, to Portugal of all her
rights to the Moluccas under the bull of demarcation.[1285]
Cortés, on his return from Spain (1530), resolved to push his
discoveries farther up the coast. The Spaniards had now occupied
Tehuantepec, Acapulco, and Zacatula on the sea, and other Spaniards
were also to be found at Culiacan, just within the Gulf of California
on its eastern shore. The political revolutions in Cortés’ absence had
caused the suspension of work on a new fleet, and Cortés was obliged to
order the construction of another; and the keels of two were laid at
Tehuantepec, and two others at Acapulco. In the early part of 1532 they
were launched, and in May or June two ships started under Hurtado de
Mendoza, with instructions which are preserved to us. It is a matter
of doubt just how far he went,[1286] and both vessels were lost. Nuño
de Guzman, who held the region to the north,[1287] obstructed their
purpose by closing his harbors to them and refusing succor; and Cortés
was thus made to feel the deadliness of his rivalry. The conqueror
now himself repaired to Tehuantepec, and superintended in person,
working with his men, the construction of two other ships. These, the
“San Lazaro” and “Concepcion,” under Diego Becerra, left port on the
29th of October, 1533, and being blown to sea, they first saw land in
the latitude of 29° 30´ north on the 18th of December, when, coasting
south and east, they developed the lower parts of the Californian
peninsula. Mutiny, and attacks of the natives, during one of which the
chief pilot Ximenes was killed, were the hapless accompaniments of the
undertaking, and during stress of weather the vessels were separated.
The “San Lazaro” finally returned to Acapulco, but the “Concepcion”
struggled in a crippled condition into a port within Guzman’s province,
where the ship was seized. A quarrel ensued before the _Audiencia_,
Cortés seeking to recover his vessel; but he prospered little in his
suit, and was driven to undertake another expedition under his own
personal lead. Sending three armed vessels up the coast to Chiametla,
where Guzman had seized the “Concepcion,” Cortés went overland himself,
accompanied by a force which Guzman found it convenient to avoid. Here
he joined his vessels and sailed away with a part of his land forces to
the west; and on the 1st of May, 1535, he landed at the Bay of Santa
Cruz, where Ximenes had been killed. What parts of the lower portion
of the Californian peninsula Cortés now coasted we know from his map,
preserved in the Spanish Archives,[1288] which accompanied the account
of his taking possession of the new land of Santa Cruz, “discovered by
Cortés, May 3, 1535,” as the paper reads. The point of occupation seems
to have been the modern La Paz, called by him Santa Cruz. The notary’s
account of the act of possession goes on to say,[1289]—
“On the third day of May, in the year of our Lord 1535, on the said
day, it may be at the hour of noon, be the same less or more, the
very illustrious Lord don Hernando Cortés, Marquis of the Valley of
Guaxaca, Captain-general of New Spain and of the Southern Sea for his
Majesty, etc., arrived in a port and bay of a country newly discovered
in the same Southern Sea, with a ship and armament of the said Lord
Marquis, at which said port his Lordship arrived with ships and men,
and landed on the earth with his people and horses; and standing on
the shore of the sea there, in presence of me Martin de Castro, notary
of their Majesties and notary of the Administration of the said Lord
Marquis, and in presence of the required witnesses, the said Lord
Marquis spoke aloud and said that he, in the name of His Majesty, and
in virtue of his royal provision, and in fulfilment of His Majesty’s
instructions regarding discovery in the said Southern Sea, had
discovered with his ship and armament the said land, and that he had
come with his armament and people to take possession of it.”
Finding his men and horses insufficient for the purposes of the colony
which he intended to establish, Cortés despatched orders to the main
for assistance, and, pending its arrival, coursed up the easterly
side of the gulf, and opportunely fell in with one of his vessels,
much superior to his own brigantine. So he transferred his flag, and,
returning to Santa Cruz, brought relief to an already famishing colony.
News reaching him of the appointment of Mendoza as viceroy, Cortés
felt he had greater stake in Mexico, and hurriedly returned.[1290]
Not despairing of better success in another trial, and spurred on by
indications that the new viceroy would try to anticipate him, he got
other vessels, and, putting Francisco de Ulloa in charge, despatched
them (July 8, 1539) before Guzman’s plan for their detention could be
put into execution. Ulloa proceeded up the gulf nearly to its head, and
satisfied himself that no practicable water passage, at least, could
bring him to the ocean in that direction, as Cortés had supposed.[1291]
Ulloa now turned south, and following the easterly coast of the
peninsula rounded its extremity, and coursed it northerly to about 28°
north latitude, without finding any cut-off on that side. So he argued
for its connection with the main.[1292]
[Illustration: CORTES’ MAP OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA.]
And here Cortés’ connection with discoveries on the Pacific ends; for
Mendoza, who had visions of his own, thwarted him in all subsequent
attempts, till finally Cortés himself went to Spain. The name which his
captains gave to the gulf, the Sea of Cortés, failed to abide. It grew
to be generally called the Red Sea, out of some fancied resemblance, as
Wytfliet says, to the Red Sea of the Old World. This appellation was
supplanted in turn by the name of California, which, it is contended,
was given to the peninsula by Cortés himself.[1293]
The oldest map which we were supposed to possess of these explorations
about the gulf,[1294] before Dr. Hale brought the one, already
mentioned, from Spain, was that of Castillo, of which a fac-simile is
herewith given as published by Lorenzana in 1770, at Mexico, in his
_Historia de Nueva España_. Castillo was the pilot of the expedition,
sent by Mendoza to co-operate by sea with the famous expedition of
Coronado,[1295] and which the viceroy put under the command of Hernando
d’Alarcon. The fleet, sailing in May, 1540, reached the head of the
gulf, and Alarcon ascended the Colorado in boats; but Marcou[1296]
thinks he could not have gone up to the great cañon, which however he
must have reached if his supposed latitude of 36° is correct. He failed
to open communication with Coronado, but buried some letters under a
cross, which one of that leader’s lieutenants subsequently found.[1297]
[Illustration: CASTILLO’S MAP, 1541.
This map is marked “Domingo del Castillo, piloto me fecit en Mexico,
año del nacimiento de N. S. Jesu Christo de M. D. XLI.” Bancroft,
_Central America_, vol. i. p. 153, gives a sketch of this map, and
again in _North Mexican States_, i. 81; but he carries the outer coast
of the peninsula too far to the west.]
In 1542 and 1543 an expedition which started under Juan Rodriguez
Cabrillo, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, explored the coast as
far as 44° north,[1298] reaching that point by coasting from 33°, where
he struck the land. He made a port which he calls San Miguel, which
Bancroft is inclined to believe is San Diego; but the accounts are
too confused to track him confidently,[1299] and it is probable that
Cabrillo’s own vessel did not get above 38°, for Cabrillo himself died
Jan. 3, 1543, his chief pilot, Ferrelo (or Ferrer), continuing the
explorations.[1300] Bancroft does not think that the pilot passed north
of Cape Mendocino in 40° 26´.
Thus from the time when Balboa discovered the South Sea, the Spanish
had taken thirty years to develop the coast northerly, to the latitude
of Oregon. In this distance they had found nothing of the Straits of
Anian, which, if Humboldt[1301] is correct, had begun to take form in
people’s minds ever since Cortereal, in 1500, had supposed Hudson’s
Straits to be the easterly entrance of a westerly passage.[1302]
[Illustration: HOMEM, ABOUT 1540.
This follows Kohl’s drawing, of which a portion is also given in his
_Discovery of Maine_, p. 298. It is evidently of a later date than
another of his in which the west coast is left indefinite, and which
is assigned to about 1530. In the present map he apparently embodied
Cabot’s discoveries in the La Plata, but had not heard of Orellana’s
exploration of the Amazon in 1542; though he had got news of it when
he made his map of 1558. A marked peculiarity of the map is the
prolongation of northwestern Europe as “Terra Nova,” which probably
means Greenland,—a view entertained before Columbus.]
There seems to have been a general agreement among cartographers
for some years yet to consider the newly discovered California as
a peninsula, growing out of the concurrent testimony of those who,
subsequent to Cortés’ own expedition, had tracked both the gulf and
the outer coast. The Portuguese map given by Kunstmann[1303] shows it
as such, though the map cannot be so early as that geographer places
its anterior limit (1530), since the development of the gulf could
not have been made earlier than 1535; unless by chance there were
explorations from the Moluccas, of which we have no record. The map
in this part bears a close resemblance to a manuscript chart in the
British Museum, placed about 1536, and it seems probable that this is
the approximate date of that in Kunstmann. The California peninsula is
shown in much the same way in a map which Major ascribes to Baptista
Agnese, and places under 1539.[1304] It belongs (pl. iv.) to what has
been sometimes spoken of as an atlas of Philip II. inscribed to Charles
V., but in fact it was given to Philip by Charles.[1305] Its essential
features were almost exactly reproduced in a draft of the New World
(preserved in the British Museum) assigned to about 1540, and held to
be the work of the Portuguese hydrographer Homem.
Apian[1306] and Münster[1307] in 1540, and Mercator in 1541,[1308]
while boldly delineating a coast which extends farther north than
Cabrillo had reached in 1542, wholly ignore this important feature. Not
so, however, Sebastian Cabot in his famous Mappemonde of 1544, as will
be seen by the annexed sketch. The idea of Münster, as embodied in his
edition of Ptolemy in 1540,[1309] already referred to, was continued
without essential change in the Basle edition of Ptolemy in 1545.[1310]
In 1548 the “carta marina” of Gastaldi as shown on a previous
page,[1311] clearly defined the peninsula, while merging the coast line
above into that of Asia. The peninsula was also definitely marked in
several of the maps preserved in the Riccardi palace at Florence, which
are supposed to be of about the middle of the sixteenth century.[1312]
[Illustration: CABOT, 1544.
Sketched from a photograph of the original mappemonde in the great
library at Paris.]
In the map of Juan Freire, 1546, we have a development of the coast
northward from the peninsula, for which it is not easy to account;
and the map is peculiar in other respects. The annexed sketch of it
follows Kohl’s drawing of an old _portolano_, which he took from the
original while it was in the possession of Santarem. Freire, who was
a Portuguese hydrographer, calls it a map of the Antipodes, a country
discovered by Columbus, the Genoese. It will be observed that about
the upper lake we have the name “Bimini regio,” applied to Florida
after the discovery of Ponce de Leon, because of the supposition that
the fountain of youth existed thereabout. The coasts on both sides of
the gulf are described as the discovery of Cortés. There seems to be
internal evidence that Freire was acquainted with the reports of Ulloa
and Alarcon, and the chart of Castillo; but it is not so clear whence
he got the material for his draft of the more westerly portions of the
coast, which, it will be observed, are given much too great a westerly
trend. The names upon it do not indicate any use of Cabrillo’s reports;
though from an inscription upon this upper coast Freire credits its
discovery to the Spaniards, under orders from the emperor, conducted by
one Villalobos. Kohl could not find any mention of such an explorer,
but conjectured he was perhaps the one who before Cabrillo, as Herrera
mentions, had named a river somewhere near 30° north latitude “Rio
de Nuestra Señora,” and which Cabrillo sought. Kohl also observes
that though the coast line is continuous, there are places upon it
marked “land not seen,” with notes of its being again seen west of
such places; and from this he argues that the expedition went up and
not down the coast. It not unlikely had some connection with the
fleet which Ruy Lopez de Villalobos conducted under Mendoza’s orders,
in November, 1542, across the Pacific to the islands on the Asiatic
coast.[1313]
[Illustration: FREIRE, 1546.
This is sketched from a drawing in the Kohl Collection at Washington.]
[Illustration: PTOLEMY, 1548.
Key:
1. Basos.
2. Ancoras.
3. p^o. balenas.
4. S. Tomas.
5. C:+
6. Mar Vermeio.
7. b: canoas.
8. p^o. secōdido.
9. R. tontonteanc.
10. p^o. tabursa.
11. puercos.
12. s. franc^o.
13. b: de s.+
14. Vandras.
15. Ciguata.
16. s. tiago.
]
In 1554 Agnese again depicts the gulf, but does not venture upon
drawing the coast above the peninsula, which in turn in the Vopellio
map of 1556,[1314] and in that in Ramusio the same year,[1315] is
made much broader, the gulf indenting more nearly at a right angle.
The Homem map of 1558, preserved in the British Museum, returns to
the more distinctive peninsula,[1316] though it is again somewhat
broadened in the Martines map of about the same date, which also is of
interest as establishing a type of map for the shores of the northern
Pacific, and for prefiguring Behring’s Straits, which we shall later
frequently meet. Mention has already been made of the Furlani map of
1560 for its Asiatic connections, while it still clearly defined the
California peninsula.[1317] The Ruscelli map in the Ptolemy of 1561
again preserves the peninsula, while marking the more northerly coasts
with a dotted line, in its general map of the New World; but the “Mar
Vermeio” in its map of “Nueva Hispania” is the type of the gulf given
in the 1548 edition. The Martines type again appears in the Zaltieri
map of 1566, which is thought to be the earliest engraved map to show
the Straits of Anian.[1318]
[Illustration: MARTINES, 155-(?).
This sketch follows a copy by Kohl (Washington Collection) of the
general map of the world, contained in a manuscript vellum atlas in
the British Museum (no. 9,814), from the collection of the Duke de
Cassano Serra. It is elaborately executed with miniatures and figures.
The language of the map is chiefly Italian, with some Spanish traces.
Kohl believes it to be the work of Joannes Martines, the same whose
atlas of 1578 is also in the Museum, and whose general map (1578)
agrees in latitudes and other particulars with this. The present one
lacks degrees of longitude, which the 1578 map has, as well as the name
“America,” wanting also in this. Kohl places it not long after the
middle of the sixteenth century. In the _Catalogue of Manuscript Maps_,
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]
[Illustration: ZALTIERI, 1566.
It was published at Venice, and was in part followed by Ortelius in
1570. It is also sketched in Vol. IV. p. 93.]
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.
[Illustration: MERCATOR, 1569.]
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.
[Illustration: PORCACCHI, 1572.]
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.
[Illustration: MAP OF PAULO DE FURLANI, 1574.
Furlani is said to have received this map from a Spaniard, Don Diego
Hermano de Toledo, in 1574. The sketch is made from the drawing in
Kohl’s manuscript in the American Antiquarian Society Library. The key
is as follows:
1. Mare incognito.
2. Stretto di Anian.
3. Quivir.
4. Golfo di Anian.
5. Anian regnum.
6. Quisau.
7. Mangi Prov.
8. Mare de Mangi.
9. Isola di Giapan.
10. Y. de Cedri.]
[Illustration: FROM MOLINEAUX’S GLOBE, 1592.
This is sketched from a draught in the Kohl Collection. Cf. Vol. III.
pp. 196, 212. The dotted line indicates the track of Drake. There has
been much controversy over the latitude of Drake’s extreme northing,
fixed, as it will be seen in this map, at about 48°, which is the
statement of the _World Encompassed_, and by the _Famous Voyage_, at
43°. The two sides were espoused warmly and respectively by Greenhow
in his _Oregon and California_, and by Travers Twiss in his _Oregon
Question_, during the dispute between the United States and Great
Britain about the Oregon boundary. Bancroft (_Northwest Coast_, vol. i.
p. 144), who presents the testimony, is inclined to the lower latitude.]
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]
[Illustration: SPANISH GALLEON.
A fac-simile of the sketch given in Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les marins
du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_.]
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.
[Illustration: FROM WYTFLIET, 1597.
Bancroft (_North Mexican States_, vol. i. p. 152) sketches this map; it
is also in his _Northwest Coast_, vol. i. p. 82.]
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].
[Illustration: WYTFLIET, 1597].
An important voyage in both furthering and confusing the knowledge
of the California coast was that of Sebastian Viscaino.[1354] This
navigator, it is sometimes said, had been in a Manilla galleon which
Cavendish had captured near Cape St. Lucas in 1587, when the English
freebooter burned the vessel and landed her crew.[1355] He is known to
have had much opportunity for acquiring familiarity with the coast; and
in 1597 he had conducted an expedition to the coast of the California
peninsula which had failed of success.[1356]
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.
[Illustration: DUDLEY, 1646.]
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.
[Illustration]
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.