APPENDIX A. 



Champlain s explanation of two maps of New France in his " Voyages " (1613) at p. 413 of the 



edition edited b/j the Abbé Laverdière. 



"I bave thought proper to say a few words, also, touching the two maps, so as to make them 

 understood ; for though one is the counterpart of the other so far as ports, baj's, capes, headlands and 

 rivers running inland are concerned, they differ as to the situations. The small one is in its true 

 meridian, according to the method demonstrated by Sieur de Castelfranc in his book on the ' Méco- 

 métrie of the Magnetic Needle,' wherein I have remarked several declinations which have been most 

 useful to me, as will be seen by the said map, with all the altitudes, lalitudcs and longitudes, from the 

 forty-first to the fifty-first degree of latitude towards the north polo, which are the limits of Canada 

 as far as the Grand bay, in which the Basques and Spaniards generally carry on their whale fishery. 

 I have also noticed at certain places in the great river St. Lawrence, at the forty-fifth degree of latitude, 

 as much as twenty-one degrees of variation of the magnetic needle, which is the greatest that I have 

 seen. The small map may well be used in navigating, provided one knows how to set the needle 

 to the compass card. l''or e.'cample, to use it, it is necessary, for greater facility, to take a com- 

 pass card whereon the thirty-two points are equally marked, and fix the point of the magnetic 

 needle at 12, 15 or IC! degrees from the fleur-de-lis on the northwest side, which is neai-ly a point and 



6 i« H<vze 



C-hys-tort 



SUM"* 



Part of Champlaln's small map in its true meridian. 



a half; that is, one point from the northwest towards the north, or a little more than a point from 

 the fleur-de-lis of the card, and place the card in the compass on arriving at the Grand bank where 

 the fishery is carried on. By this means one can find with certainty all the altitudes of the capes, 

 ports and rivers. I know that a great many will not use the small map, and will rather resort to the 

 large map, more especially as it is based on the compass of France, where the magnetic needle points 

 northeast, because thej' are so well accustomed to that method that it is difficult to induce them to 

 do otherwise. On this account I have prepared the large map in that way, for the benefit of the 

 majority of pilots and navigators to New France, fearing that if 1 had not done so I would have been 

 charged with a fiiult they could not account for, because the small charts or maps of the new lands 

 mostly disagree as to the situations and altitudes of the coasts, and if there are a few who possess 

 some small maps which are pretty correct, they consider them so valuable that they do not make 

 them publicly known so as to put them to good use Map making is done in such a way that north- 

 northeast is taken as the meridian line, and west-northwest as west. It is contrary to the ti-ue 

 meridian of this place to call uoi-th-norLheast the north ; because instead of the needle being taken to 



