Tuttle: Historic Maps of Staten Island 73 



London, March 22nd 161 1 : 



" Sire : — This king sent last year a surveyor to survey that 

 Province, and he returned here about three months ago, and 

 presented to him (King James) a plan or map of all he could 

 discover, a copy of which I send Y. M. Whose Catholic Person," 

 etc. 



This map and other papers were copied from the Spanish 

 Archives of Simancas for Alexander Brown; and were repro- 

 duced in his book " The Genesis of the United States " published 

 in 1890, when this map, including the territory from New- 

 foundland to Virginia, was made public for the first time. 



The coast in the vicinity of New York was drawn, Mr. Brown 

 thinks, from surveys by Hudson in 1609, and Argall in 1610. 

 This map is presented as the earliest that shows Manhattan 

 and Staten Island. It is of further interest on account of the 

 possibility that the part of the map including the Hudson River, 

 and the vicinity of New York, was plotted from Hudson's sur- 

 veys. An examination of the map shows that while the coast 

 lines near New York are mapped in approximately their correct 

 direction, the Hudson River is shown about 13 degrees to the 

 eastward of its true northerly course. The river must have been 

 plotted from a survey, for Verplanck's Point, Dunderberg moun- 

 tain, Peekskill, West Point, Anthony's Nose, Kingston, Athens, 

 etc., can be identified on the map by the bends in the river, 

 which are correctly located as to latitude and distance from the 

 Narrows. The eastward trend of the river may be explained 

 by the use of magnetic bearings for true ones in mapping its 

 location, and we have Hudson's observation on his way up, that 

 the compass needle pointed 13 degrees west of north. Tradition 

 has it that Coney Island was the place where Hudson first 

 landed, and while one would not expect to find it located on such 

 a map yet it is there. The Mohawk is shown branching off and 

 connecting with a large body of water, evidently intended for 

 Lake Ontario, which appeared on some of the maps of the time 

 as a lake of unknown extent and considerably out of its true 



