[GANONo] CARTO(îRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 317 



Such was tho (.-use, and still is, in Franco, where the Depot des Cartes de 

 hi Marine contains i-ich materials ; and, in Canada, the Crown Land 

 offices contain materials of priceless cartographical and historical value 

 for the periods since their foundation. It is pi'obable that in the older 

 states of the Union which do not possess this system, it may not be pos- 

 sible to recover as much of the cartographical history as is possible in thft 

 Canadian provinces. 



2. On. ihe History uf Map-Makln<j. 



Like other subjects which are the result of an evolution, Cartography 

 had no definite period of beginning, but had its roots deep in other 

 human interests. From the first rude sketches of water-courses drawn 

 with a stick on the sand by one savage for the information of another, 

 down to the productions of the British Ordnance Survey, is a long step ; 

 but every intermediate stage exists, through the crude sketches on skins, 

 which gradually became the beautifully illuminated manuscript maps of 

 three hundred 3'ears ago, through the rough wood-cuts of the early days 

 of printing, the fine copper-plates of a later period, and the manifold pro- 

 cesses, including photography, of to-day. Eut the history of the subject 

 is essentially a part of the broader field of the Science of Cartography, 

 and not of a very local section of it, and the reader who is interested 

 may find references to the literature of the subject in a later part of 

 this paper. [ need give here but the briefest sketch. American Carto- 

 gra])hy does not begin until after 1492. a time when map-]naking was a 

 well advanced art. The earliest map of any interest to our present sub- 

 ject is that of LaCosa of 1500, beautifully painted on an ox-hide. For a 

 long time afterwards the principal maps were in manuscrij^t. This was 

 partl^^due, no doubt, to the expense of engraving and other purel}- busi- 

 ness reasons, but chiefly to the fact that the great exploring nations were 

 extremely jealous of their knowledge, and unwilling that it should prove 

 of advantage to their neighbours. By some rulers it was strictly forbidden 

 to communicate maps to luivigiiers, and, of course, one of the best \\a,jf> 

 to prevent this was to forbid their publication, and allow of the circula- 

 tion of but a few manuscri])t copies.' The earliest known engraved map 

 of the world is in Ptolemy's Geography of 1478, and the first showing 

 any part of America was that of Euj^sch, 1508, but the first one to repre- 

 sent the Northeast coast in any detail was that of Sebastian Cabot of 

 1544, engraved on copper. But for a time even after Cabot most of the 

 important maps were in manuscript, and it was not until after the great 



' Compare Kohl, Lecture, 101-102 ; Dawson, Voyages, 68, which gives references 

 to Harrisse. Harrisse, at first held that the transfer of maps was strictly forbidden> 

 but lately has written diirerently ; see Discovery, 801. There is a very interesting 

 reference as to hoAv map-makers kept materials from one another in the last century 

 in Green's E.xplanatioii for the new map of Nova Scotia, 1755, p. i:^. 



