52 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



Latin. Unlike most maps of this type, it has a scale, each 

 division of which represents 100 miles. The title is rather 

 difficult to decipher and recalls Walsperger's. An approximate 

 translation is: "This is the true description of the world of the 

 cosmographers, accommodated to the marine (chart), from 

 which frivolous tales have been removed." 



The elliptical frame is unusual for this period, but it 

 appears to have no great significance. The outline, particularly 

 in Asia, is largely Ptolemaic. After the Alexandrian, the 

 second main authority for the eastern portion is Nicolo Conti, 

 the Venetian traveller, who reached the east Indian islands and 

 perhaps southern China, and whose narrative was written 

 down by Poggio Bracciolini shortly after 1447. 



The details from Conti's narrative make a considerable 

 showing: e.g. the large lake in India between Indus and Ganges 

 "of a marvellous sauerie and pleasaunt water to drink, and al 

 those that dwell there about drink of it, and also farre off . . ." ;^ 

 the island 'Xilana' (Ceylon) to the east of the peninsula; the 

 great city 'Biznigaria', representing the Vijayanagar kingdom 

 of southern India, which occurs in most late fifteenth-century 

 accounts, but here sadly misplaced near the Ganges; the 

 details of the nature of the Ganges delta; the addition of 

 'Scyamutha' (Sumatra) as an alternative name for Taprobana. 

 The name Sine, for China, was also probably taken from 

 Conti. 



But it is perhaps in respect to the islands of the south-east 

 that the map is of greatest interest. In the extreme east are two 

 large islands, Java major and Java minor, and to the south-east 

 two smaller islands 'Sanday et Bandam'. All these are taken 

 from the Conti narrative: Java major is thought to be Borneo, 

 and Java minor the island now known by that name. Though 

 the names Sanday and Bandam have not been satisfactorily 

 explained, the reference in the legend to spices and cloves 

 makes it fairly certain that they are islands of the Molucca 

 group. If this is so, this is the fi-rst time that the much sought 

 after spice islands appear clearly on a map. Conti describes 

 them as lying on the extreme edge of the known world: beyond 



^Quoted from Conti's Elizabethan translator, Frampton. 



