164 KOYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" drawn to scale, nor in strict conformity with modern maps as to figure." 

 It is an imperfect map, because the materials are imperfect, for it is the 

 very earliest existing map upon which any part of the new world is 

 shown, and it was made only eight years after the discovery of the West 

 Indies by Columbus, and three years after the first voyage of Cabot. 

 There is no east coast of Asia on the map ; for the coast we now know 

 as America is taken as the east coast of Asia, as will appear on inspection 

 of the map attached to this paper. Winsor remarks that the drafts of 

 John Cabot " were doubtless used by Juar de La Cosa in delineating the 

 " Asiatic coast in the map of A.D. 1500, now preserved in the Archives 

 " of the Marine of Madrid." *^ Those who use it for measurements, as a 

 modern map, must fall into error, for modern maps are based on scientific 

 surveys ; and those who see only an extract from it must fail to under- 

 stand it, because they do not see the extract in relation to the rest of the 

 map. It is a map of the whole world, drawn on a plane, before Merca- 

 tor's projection was invented, and, therefore, from the very necessity of 

 the projection the east and west lines at the north must be enormously 

 exaggerated. Any one will see that who will peel an orange and lay out 

 one hemisphere of the skin on a ])lane surface. It was the glory of Mer- 

 cator sixty years later to have invented a method of compensation by 

 which true distances and courses on the sea may be ascertained, although 

 it is still by enormously exaggerating the land areas at the north. 



La Cosa got his information where he could, from all existing maps, 

 and from the charts of the Portuguese who, only three years before (in 

 1497), had doubled the Cape of Good Hope and sailed their ships in 

 eastern seas. The original is in colours, and the continental areas are, 

 after the manner of that age, filled with kings and queens and towered 

 cities. It is full of legendary and biblical lore — the three Kings of the 

 East, the Queen of Sheba, the Great Khan of Tartary, Gog and Magog, 

 are there, together with men whose heads are set flat down on their 

 shoulders, and many other traditional monsters. To reproduce these in 

 colour would cost too much, and would not assist in this controversy. 

 Defective as the map is, it is distinctly superior to the maps made for 

 many years after. It is fairly drawn, for France, Spain, Italy, the Levant 

 and the Black sea and Sea of Azof ; the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts 

 of Africa arc fairly well done, but Denmark, the Baltic sea and the Scan- 

 dinavian countries are very imperfect and far out of correct proportion. 

 In the east, Hindostan is scarcely indicated ; while Ceylon is enormously 

 exaggerated and distorted ; Zanzibar and Madagascar arc far out of 

 position in the eastern ocean, and the former island is immensely too 

 large. These islands had at that time been visited by the Portuguese, 

 while only the Cabots had reached the northern part of America. A 

 glance at the map will show how impossible it would be to apply measure- 

 ments to the distorted delineations of the northern countries of Europe, 



