92 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



Francisco Rodrigues, with the names transUterated, and this 

 was sent to the King. 



"Your Highness can truly see where the Chinese and 

 Gores come from, and the course your ships must take to 

 the Clove Islands, and where the gold mines lie, and the 

 islands of Java and Banda, of nutmeg and maces, and the 

 land of the King of Siam, and also the end of the navigation 

 of the Chinese, the direction it takes, and how they do not 

 navigate further." 



Albuquerque was not slow in following this up, and a small 

 expedition was despatched which reached Banda in 1512. The 

 Rodrigues mentioned above was a pilot on this voyage, and the 

 draughtsman of a series of charts including several of the 

 south-eastern archipelago and the coasts of eastern Asia. These 

 charts are assigned by Cortesao to the year 1513. Those of the 

 archipelago were no doubt partly based on Rodrigues' own 

 observations, but it may be assumed that they also embody 

 detail from the Javanese chart. Rodrigues himself did not get 

 further than Banda. Several features of his charts were long 

 current in later cartography, e.g. the exaggerated length of the 

 western coastline of Gilolo (Halmahera). On the other hand, 

 the more correct notion of the true proportions of the Indian 

 peninsula was not embodied in charts for some years. 



By 1518 these eastern islands are a feature of Portuguese 

 general charts, for on a chart of the Indian Ocean, preserved 

 in the British Museum, and ascribed by Cortesao to Reinel, 

 are depicted Java, Sumbaba and the northern coasts of two 

 other islands. Further to the east again, is an island group, the 

 names of which are now illegible, marked by the Portuguese 

 standard. The question to be settled was the position in 

 longitude of these islands. The solution can best be followed 

 on world charts, to which we must now turn. 



Sectional charts similar to those discussed above, and many 

 now lost, were incorporated in the world charts. The most 

 important of these was undoubtedly the Spanish Tadron 

 Real*. This chart, which was the official record of the dis- 

 coveries, was first made by order of King Ferdinand in 1508. 



