KTTNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. NIO 4- 153 



long story of development. That this is the case, however, I shall try to show; and in so 

 doing we ha ve to trace a development not from the more imperfect and worse to the more 

 careful and better, but a retrograde process, during which uncriticalness, ignorance and 

 carelessness ha ve combined to bring abont a final result in which it is difficnlt, in a number 

 of cases impossible, to trace the original constituent parts. 



In our examination of the cartographical material, we wish to make a beginning 

 with the collection of maps which was first published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp 

 in 1570, under the title Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, and which afterwards appeared in many 

 new editions augmented with new maps. In the very first edition we find a map of Asia 

 (Asice Nova Descriptio) 1 which is of fundamental importance for our subject (Fig. 6). 

 It is principally based on Portuguese sources: especially is this the case with the drawing 

 of Japan and the Loo-Choo Archipelago. But the Spanish discoveries in the Pacific Ocean 

 that fall within the limits of the map, have evidently found a place there by means of 

 Portuguese cartographers or on the basis of information that came to Portugal about 

 those discoveries. 



South of Japan, in about 25° N. lat., we see on the map in question two groups, each 

 consisting of three islands. By the side of the western ones we read the names Laim and 

 Dos ermanos (Two Brothers); by the side of the eastern islands, the names Laniem, Volcan 

 del fuego, and La farfana, the last certainly a distortion of the Spanish word Huerjana 

 (The fatherless and motherless one). These names and the position of the islands show 

 that we have before us the islands that were discovered by Bernard o de la Torre in 

 1543. 2 As the discoverer, like the other participators in Villalobos' expedition, fell into 

 the hands of the Portuguese on the Moluccas, it is natural to suppose that the map gives 

 these discoveries in the way the Portuguese learnt about them through the stories of their 

 Spanish prisoners. How they were conceived by an Italian cartographer, on the basis 

 of a Spanish source, we see in Jacopo Gastaldi's map Tertia Pars Asice (1561 ), 3 which 

 obviously rests on Gaetan's narrative published by Ramusio: he gives names to only two 

 of the islands, namely Due Sorelle and Vlcan, the latter drawn as a fire-spouting mountain; 

 but he places them by mistake in 11° — 13° lat., between Philippina and Yslas diladri 

 (the Mariannes). 



Although the narratives of de la Torre' s discoveries are very scanty and do not 

 agree with each other in detail, there can scarcely be any doubt that these islands stånd 

 for the present Volcano and Bonin Archipelagos; one might also perhaps assume that the 

 westernmost group on Ortelius' map corresponds to Volcano, the easternmost to Bonin, 

 although it is not impossible that both the groups ref er to only one of these archipelagos — 

 preferably to the first -named. The sketchy way in which the islands are drawn and 

 the exaggerated distance between them suggest that the map published by Ortelius is 



1 As early as 1567 Ortelius had published a map of Asia on a fairly large scale: Asice Orbis partiurn 

 maximcB nova descriptio. This map, of which only two perfect copies have been preserved to our day, I have 

 not been able to examine. It is said to agree in the main with the reduced map in Theatrum. See Jean 

 Denucé, Oud-Nedcrlandsche kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantijn, II. Antwerpen 1913, p. 21. 



2 See above p. 33 note. 



3 Facsimile in Nordenskiöld, Periplus, Tab. LYI. 



K. Sv. Vet. Akad. Handl. Band 57. N:o 4. 20 



