Februaey 23, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



68 



Cape Breton, and the Isle of St. John. The 

 west coast of America is delineated as far 

 north as lat. 35°, California being drawn from 

 the well-known chart made by the pilot Cas- 

 tillo in 1541. To the noith of this, of conrse, 

 is the unknown region ; for nobod3" then knew 

 certainl)' whether America and Asia were one 

 continuous continent, or were di\ided b}' 

 straits, and the conjectures of geographers 

 were at variance. 



But the interest in this map centres princi- 

 pally in its inscriptions ; and, though the most 

 of these contain little of value in a geograph- 

 ical or historical point of view, a few of them 

 are of special significance. The seventeenth 

 inscription, hy turning it into English, reads 

 as follows : — 



"Sebastian Cabot, captain and pilot-major 

 of his sacred imperial majestj', the emperor 

 Don Carlos, the fifth of this name, and the 

 king our lord, made this figure extended on 

 a plane surface, in the 3-ear of the birth of 

 our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1544, having drawn 

 it hy degrees of latitude and longitude, with 

 the winds, as a sailing-chart, following partlj' 

 Ptolem3- and partly the modern discoveries, 

 Spanish and Portuguese, and partly the dis- 

 covery made In' his father and himself: by it 

 you may sail as by a sea-chart, having regard 

 to the variation of the needle," etc. 



Then follows a discussion relative to the va- 

 riation of the needle, which Sebastian Cabot 

 claimed to have first noticed. Here we have 

 the declaration, that the map was made by 

 Sebastian Cabot, pilot-major of the Emperor 

 Charles V., and in the year 1544, at which 

 time we know he was living in Spain and held 

 that office. And this is accompanied hj the 

 statement, that, in making the map, he was 

 guided by the discoveries of his father, John 

 Cabot, and himself. 



Inscription No. 8 reads thus : — 



"This country was discovered b}' John 

 Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot his 

 son, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

 MCCCCXCIV [1494], on the 24th of June 

 in the morning, which land thej' called '■pri- 

 ma vista;' and a large island adjacent to it 

 the}' named the Island of St. John, because 

 they discovered it on the same day," etc. 



This is an important statement made or 

 authorized by the alleged author of the map, 

 said in the inscription No. 17 to be Sebastian 

 Cabot ; and, though the year of the discovery 

 expressed is believed to be a typographical 

 or a clerical error, the whole passage bears 

 evidence of proceeding from Sebastian Cabot 

 himself. The body of the map itself contains 



numerous iuscriptions, some brief, and others 

 of greater length, with references bj- numbers 

 to the legends on the aides ; so that these 

 tables belong to and are a part of the map 

 itself. The priraa vista of legend No. 8, 

 or ^ prima tierra vista,' that is, the land 

 first seen b}' the Cabots, is inscribed on the 

 map near the head of the delineation of Cape 

 Breton. 



Like man}' of the large maps of that period, 

 a number of figures of men and animals, the 

 supposed natives of the countries described, 

 are introduced into the body of the map. 

 Savages are at war with each other, and ti- 

 gers and bears are roaming over the American 

 continent ; the Emperor of Tartary is depicted 

 in state ; and Prester John, holding a cross, 

 is placed near the great lakes, the sources of 

 the Nile. In the original map the figures are 

 colored. The map has no name of engraver 

 or publisher, or place of publication. One 

 would naturally saj' it was published in Spain ; 

 but the polic}- of the government was opposed 

 to the publication of maps which delineated 

 their own possessions. Dr. Kohl thinks it 

 was published in Germany or Belgium. In 

 one corner of the map is depicted the double- 

 headed eagle displaj'ed on the arms of Ger- 

 many. 



I do not propose to discuss in this brief 

 notice all the questions which have arisen, or 

 ■which suggest themselves, respecting the genu- 

 ineness and value of this map, but simplj' to 

 describe it. It can be studied now by means 

 of the photographic copies taken, as it never 

 could be studied before from the position of 

 the original in the national librar}' in Paris. 



We now know, from sources independent 

 of this map, that John Cabot, in a single vessel 

 from Bristol, discovered North Amei-ica in the 

 year 1497. His son Sebastian maj' have been 

 with him. The expedition returned in about 

 three months. In the following year, 1498, 

 John Cabot sailed again with a larger number 

 of vessels, and Sebastian no doubt went with 

 him. The}' had not returned by the end of 

 October. Nobody knows when they returned, 

 and nobody knows what became of John 

 Cabot. Sebastian returned, and lived fifty 

 years after this second embarkation. He 

 or his father, or both of them, made maps 

 at the time, illustrating the voyage of dis- 

 covery ; but these are lost. Writers in the 

 sixteenth century, before Hakluyt's time, often 

 speak of Sebastian Cabot's maps (they never 

 speak of John Cabot) , but without describing 

 them. Ortelius in 1570 had a copy of a map 

 by Cabot engraved on copper, without the 



