[s. B. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 2S 



La Cosa's map had no influence upon the cai"togra])hy of the time. 

 It Avas, like other maps, jealously guarded in the royal library, or in the 

 archives of the marine board and of the council of the Indies, and disap- 

 peared for a long time, until it turned up in Paris, having probably been 

 carried away among the plunder of the French troops. It was bought 

 by the Bai*on von Walkenaer, ambassador of Holland, who freely com- 

 municated it to scholars, and to Humboldt among others. Walkenaer 

 died in 1853. and the Spanish government secured it, at the sale of his 

 library, as a national treasure. All the maps of Columbus have disap- 

 peared, and this is a contemporary map of his discoveries, also made by 

 one of his chief companions. 



The map is on parchment, and is mounted on a skin of Russia 

 leather, and jireserved under glass and in a costly oak frame in the naval 

 museum at Madrid. It is a marine chart, and in the interior countries 

 it is adorned with figures which exj^ress the current beliefs of the time. 

 It is a graphic summary of all the geographical knowledge of the age, 

 for it is a mapa mujidi, viajijoe monde, or world map. The continent of 

 Asia is shown a little beyond the Ganges, on the right, and on the left is 

 the new world, taken to be the eastern coast-line of Asia. There can be 

 very little doubt but that La Cosa had before him the map of the first 

 voyage made by John Cabot, which Pedro de Ayala sent to the King of 

 Spain. The coast-line to the south, where it meets the Spanish dis- 

 coveries, was either drawn from information brought by the return of 

 the second Cabot expedition, or, as might well happen, is an Asiatic 

 coast-line drawn from Toscanelli's majl and founded on Marco Polo's 

 information and that of other travellers. There are no Asiatic names 

 vipon it, however. On that unknown part of the coast which Columbus 

 and others were then searching, in order to find an opening through to 

 the west, La Cosa has drawn a picture of St. Christopher carrying the 

 Infant Jesus on his shouldei-s across the sea. Fancy has imagined a por- 

 trait of the admiral in the face of the saint, but it is jn'obably merely an 

 adaptation of the beautiful legend to give expression to the rehgious zeal 

 of the modern Christopher. 



Facsimiles of the American portion of this important map have 

 been published by Humboldt, Jomard, Harrisse, Winsor, Markhara, 

 Kohl, and other scholars. The tracing given in the writer's monograph 

 of 1894, and now reproduced, was reduced from a facsimile published at 

 Madrid in 1892, in commemoration of the fourth centenar}' of the dis- 

 covery by Columbus. It is of the full size of the original and in all the 

 brilliant colours and with all the quaint designs and illustrations which 

 make it so interesting to students. It was produced by lithography 

 under the care of Signor Canovas Vallejo and Professor Traynor of 

 Madrid. The descriptive book is by Antonio Vascano, whose name on 

 the tracing sketch in the monograph of 1894 is alone given, although it 

 would have been more proper to have given precedence to the two other 

 names. 



The importance of this map in the present controversy cannot be 

 overrated. The Cavo de Ynglaterra cannot be taken for any other than 

 that characteristic headland of northeast America, which for almost four 

 hundred yeai-s has appeared on the maps under one name in the various 

 forms of Cape Raz, Rase, Razzo, or Race, a name derived from the Latin 

 rasus — smooth shaven or flat. That the name is expressive and ap- 

 propriate will be seen from the following engraving from a photograph 



