322 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



ously too large. When now these niups were copied by others upon a 

 larger scale, these features were enlarged in the same proportion, as the 

 copyist had no means of knowing, even had he cared, that the features 

 were out of proportion on the earlier maps. Thus, brooks might become 

 great rivers, and islands, really very small, might, upon enlarged maps, 

 become far too large ; it is in this way that the Magdalene group, us 

 shoAvn in the early maps, is represented so large that many students 

 have mistaken it for Prince Edward Island. Of somewhat similar 

 nature are the errors arising from copying from one kind of projection 

 to another. 



J. Errors from wilful misrepresentat ion. Two causes for such errors 

 are imaginable ; first, political reasons ; second, personal or business ones. 

 As to the first, some students think that we have an example in the plac- 

 ing of the inscription, " prima terra vista," on the Cabot map at the 

 north of Cape Breton Island, this being supposed to be an attempt on 

 the part of Cabot to establish a claim for England of discovery in that 

 part of the continent. As to the second, we have examples in the delib- 

 erate adding of invented names to maps to make them seem more com- 

 plete or more recent than those of other makers. Kohl says : " 1 do 

 not believe that the Spanish, Italian, and German map-makers of the 

 time of Columbus and soon after him, were in the habit of inventing 

 new names. The}- gave them as they found them. A little later, when 

 elegant maps were much sought after and became fashionable, tind when 

 great numbei-s were fabricated in Italy and elsewhere, unknown coun- 

 tries may sometimes have been embellished with merely fimciful names."' 

 Under this head, perhaps, comes the name Isle St. John, applied to the 

 Magdalenes on the Cabot map. Related to this is the deliberate omission 

 of dates from maps, and the reissue of old maps with later dates, a cus- 

 tom very prevalent at the close of the sixteenth century.'* 



6. Errors from attem]>ts to make maps from narratives. Of this kind 

 of error I know of but a few instances, one of them a prominent one. In 

 the middle of the sixteenth centur}' we find a series of marvellously dis- 

 torted Italian maps showing the voyages of Cartier. As I shall show later, 

 these are perfectly explained by the fact that the Italian map-makers had 

 the narratives of Cartier, but not his maps. Their efforts to fit his nar- 

 ratives to their earlier imperfect ntaps, gave us these curious productions. 



1 Discovery, 1(52. 



2 "The general atlases at this time [sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] beconi- 

 ng familiar to P^urope were unfortunately made up on a thrifty principle, little condu- 

 cive to keeping the public mind abreast of current discovery,— so far as America, at 

 least, was concerned,— and very perplexing now to any one studying the course of the 

 cartographical development of American geography. Dates were sedulously erased 

 with a deceitful purpose (which is not yet gone into disuse) from plates thus made to 

 do service for many years, and united with other dated maps, to convey an impres- 

 sion of a like period of production." (America, IV., î^).) 



