64 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. I., No. 3. 



name of the place or printer. Yet, forty years 

 ago, no one, for two centuries and a half, 

 had seen a copj- of a map by Cabot. When, 

 therefore, it was announced that the National 

 library in Paris had found a Cabot map, a 

 great interest was excited. The distinguished 

 geographer, M. d'Avezac of Paris, wrote a 

 description of it in the Bulletin de la sociiU 

 de geograpJiie (4th ser. tome xiv. pp. 266- 

 268) ; and M. Jomard produced a facsimile 

 of it, without the inscriptions, for his great 

 work, the Monuments de la geographie, 1842- 

 1862. Geographers have been trjing to study 

 it ever since ; but the inscriptions had never 

 been copied, and it required a visit to Paris 

 to inspect them. In the glass case in which 

 the map was shown, it was scarcelj' access- 

 ible for study. Having occasion last winter 

 to make a study of the Cabot voyages, I 

 wrote to Paris to have a copj- made for me of 

 several of the inscriptions on this map, — the 

 greater part of which in their Spanish form 

 were nowhere accessible. The great charge 

 for the work was explained by the difHculty of 

 access to the map, of which I have spoken. 

 About this time, being in consultation with 

 the librarian of Harvard University', — Mr. 

 Winsor, — he suggested the practicability of 

 having a photograph made of the map and 

 its inscriptions. As the Hon. Robert C. Win- 

 throp, the president of the Massachusetts His- 

 torical Society, was about to sail for Europe, 

 the matter was laid before him ; and'he readilj' 

 entered into the plan, and, thanks to his kind 

 intervention during a late visit to Paris, the 

 work was accomplished, and the photograph 

 is a great success. The skilful photographer 

 employed by Mr. Winthrop was M. Sauvanaud, 

 who made for him ten copies, which have been 

 taken hj different libraries and societies in 

 this country, dividing the expense between 

 them. 



This map has a curious connection with 

 other historical memorials of three hundred 

 years ago, and an interesting piece of literary 

 histor}- might be made of it. I will state 

 briefl}' some of the points of interest. Richard 

 Hakluyt, the great collector of voyages and 

 travels, in a folio volume published in 1589, 

 called The principal navigations, etc., printed 

 ' ' An extract taken out of the map of Sebas- 

 tian Cabot, cut hj Clement Adams, concern- 

 ing his discover}' of the West Indias, which 

 is to be seen in her Majesty's privj- gallery at 

 Westminster, and in man}' other ancient mer- 

 chants' houses." The ' extract ' which follows 

 this heading is in Latin, and is in substance 

 the same as legend No. 8 on the Cabot map 



in Paris, from which I have made a quotation 

 above, relating to the discovery of unknown 

 lands. I saj' it is in substance the same ; but 

 the grammatical construction is quite different, 

 indeed, so verj- unlike that I suggested some 

 j'ears ago that the Latin of the Paris map and 

 the Latin of Clement Adams, or that which he 

 copied, were independent translations from a 

 Spanish original. Now, here we see another 

 Cabot map in London, from which Clement 

 Adams, a learned schoolmaster, made copies, 

 with the same legends upon it in Spanish, or 

 in Latin, or in both ; if in Latin, quite differ- 

 ent from that on the Paris map. Possibly it 

 had onl}' the legends in Spanish, and Adams 

 made his own independent translation, as sug- 

 gested above. 



Again, in 1594, — second edition, 1599; 

 third edition, 1606, — there was published a 

 rare and curious volume, edited bj' a German 

 traveller, Nathan Kochhaf, or, as he was called 

 bj' his Latin name, Chytraeus. He was in 

 England in 1565, picking up whatever of 

 antique and curious legends and monumental 

 inscriptions he could find for his book ; and 

 while apparently' at Oxford, he saw a document, 

 with some geographical tables, containing 

 several inscriptions in not very elegant Latin, 

 he says, but which, on account of the value of 

 the matter contained in them, he copied and 

 printed in his volume, fiUing twenty-two pages 

 of this book. They are wholly in Latin, and 

 they correspond substantial!}- with the Latin 

 inscriptions on the sides of the Cabot map in 

 Paris. There is this difference : The inscrip- 

 tions here are but nineteen in number, while 

 on the Paris map there are twentj'-two, five of 

 them in Spanish only. Legend No. 17, which 

 I have quoted above in i^art from the Paris 

 map, has the date 1549 inserted as the year 

 in which the map to which the inscriptions 

 belonged was composed ; instead of 1544, as 

 on the Paris map. This which Chytraeus saw 

 may be a second edition of the Paris map, 

 made after Cabot had returned to England. 

 So here, again, we have another Cabot map to 

 be added to our cartographical bureaux, along 

 with that of Clement Adams and the map 

 from which he made his copies, which were 

 hanging up, in Hakluyt's time, ' in many 

 ancient merchants' houses,' — all of which we 

 must class with the desiderata. 



I have spoken of the volume of Chytraeus, 

 which contains substantially the legends as on 

 the Paris map in Latin. The language in 

 which the legends were originally written was 

 Spanish ; and on the Paris map, as I have 

 alreadj' said, thej' appear in Spanish as well 



