320 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Soui"ces of error in the maps themselves may be classitied as fol- 

 lows : 



1. Errors of copyists. In the earl}' maps we often tind that copies 

 made from the same original differ Avidel3^ This is due chiefly, no doubt, 

 to the carelessness of an uncritical age, but partly also to the individual 

 carelessness of copyists, who probably knew well enough that the originals 

 were themselves even approximately correct only in the main points. 

 Harrisse has said : " The ignorance or carelessness of copyists to whom 

 the work was entrusted, it does not matter where or b}' whom, is the 

 principal cause of geographical errors and enigmas which the critic 

 cannot ever hope to solve entirely." ' 



The use of tracing and transfer paper, and of systems or instruments 

 for enlarging and reducing, seems to have been unknown, and the copies 

 were made freehand ; and this, combined with the habitual carelessness, 

 produced most distorted results, Now and then, of course, arose a mas- 

 ter like Desceliers or Mercator whose copies were made with fair accuracy, 

 though even theirs, taken from the same originals, differed much from 

 one another. Doubtless, too, there is much difterence between the work 

 of the map-makers themselves and that of the hired copyists ;the former 

 would be much better than the latter. iVnother important class of errors, 

 wonderfully prevalent on the old maps, arose from the misprinting of 

 names. By copj'ing from written, and not always clearly made, letters of 

 words belonging often to a foreign tongue, similarly-made letters were 

 constantly confounded. Little attention was paid to the terms cape, 

 river, etc., which were exchanged very readily. Moreover, it was the 

 custom to translate foi-eign words into the tongue of the maker of the 

 copy, when their meaning was understood, and when it was not, they 

 were often, on the well-known principle of familiarization,^ altered to a 

 form resembling familiar sounds. The result of all this, combined 

 again with indifference on the part of the copyist as to whether they 

 were correct or not, made the names very different from the originals, 

 and those on different copies by the same copyist, different from one 

 another. If now these were again copied, new errors came in, and a 

 series of four or five copyings might make an entire series unrecogniz- 

 able, except for a few very clearly marked and unmistakable ones. Pro- 

 babh^ this has been the fate of the names given by Cabot on Newfound- 

 land, which upon La Cosa's map of 1500 have, with two or three excep- 

 tions, become meaningless. One has but to tabulate the names of a series 

 of maps of the fifteen centur}', applied to some one coast, and all derived 

 from one original, to see how wonderfully changed they may become 

 from copy to copy. It is possible that some of our most important 

 names, such as Acadia, have originated in snch changes. 



' Discoverj% 175. 



2 Discussed in these Trans. (N. S.) vol. II., sect, ii., 18:^ 



