[s. E. DAWSON] 



THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 



167 



method known of computing longitude ; and, second, because of the im- 

 mense difficulty of representing a globe on a plane surface. We read our 

 Mercator maps and are not misled, because we are accustomed to them, 

 and most people know they are true only as to the sea courses, but show 

 enormous distortions of the continental masses at the north, for a degree 

 of longitude at the pole, where it vanishes to nothing, appears as wide as 

 it is at the Equator. In reading these old maps we must take into 

 account not only the projection and the magnetic variation, but also the 

 impossibility of ascertaining longitude. 



Returning, however, to La Cosa's map, I would remark that if 

 countries so well known as England and Scotland, the Scandinavian 



TERRA INCOeMITA ^^ 



Fig. 5.— The (so called) Admiral's Map in the Strasburg Ptolemy (Waldsee- 



MULLER's) of 1513, SHOWING THE LATITUDES OF THE ANTILLES NORTH 



OF THE Tropic. 



peninsula and Denmark will not admit of measurement by a scale, bow 

 unreasonable it is to apply the strict rules of a modern map to the coasts 

 of America drawn eastwards by errors of 25° in longitude, for it will be 

 seen that the Cavo de Ynglatena is drawn eastwards almost to the Azores. 

 The same elongation is shown on the coast of South America, which is 

 cut by a meridional line drawn east of the Azores. Yet La Cosa was 

 chief pilot with Hojeda, in the expedition of 1499, which discovered an 

 extensive part of the coast of South America ; and, fresh from sailing 

 along the coast, immediately after his return to Spain, he drew this map. 



