KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N:0 4. 



167 



We thus find at the very beginning of the seventeenth century maps of the world 

 sometimes with, and sometimes without, the group of islands with which we are here 

 more particularly concerned: during the following period the omission of the islands seems 

 at first to have been the rule. They reappear for the first time, so far as I have been able 

 to discover, in maps of America by Abraham Goos 1624 (Fig. 14), Hessel Gerritszoon 

 1630 (Fig. 15), 1 here without a name, and Willem Bleau 1631 ; 2 and afterwards they occur 

 in a number of maps, for instance in the atlases of Johannes Janssonius 1641 (America), 

 Blaeu 1662 (America), Pieter Goos 1666 (Zuyd-Zee), and F. de Wit about 1688 (America), 

 while in the maps of the world in the same atlases they are omitted. It was not until the 

 end of the century that they also appeared on the world niaps — by Sanson, 1691, and 



41 



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Trapicus Canrt 



2fcv Mexico 



Nci'a 



himx Ajjumochaliå 



2 3°\ 



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2Ö0 . 



z8s 



lin 



2 fö. 



15. Part of a Map of America by Hessel Gerritsz. 

 From "Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien" door Joannes de Laet, Leyden 1030. 



by Jaillot, 1695. As regards position, contours, and forms of names only unimportant 

 variants occur: the original type, common for all of them, is Plancius, through the inter- 

 mediary of Bleau or Hondius. The omission of the islands in many maps can scarcely 

 be regarded as intentional: quite certainly that has been due to the uncritical copying 

 of the original which happened to be at hand; the original meaning of the map had been 

 löst, and scarcely as much importance was attached to these insignificant islands as to 

 the pictures of ships, sea-fights, marine monsters etc. with which cartographers, especially 

 the earlier ones, were wont to fill up the empty spaces of the sea. 



In the main, one may say that the representation of the islands in the northern part 



1 "Americse sive Indi se Occidentalis tabula generalis", in Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien door Ioannes 

 de Laet, 2 e Druk, Leyden, bij de Elzeviers A° 1630. 



2 "Americae nova tabula auet. Guiljelmo Blaeuw", in Appendix Theatri A. Ortclii et Atlantis G. Merca- 

 toris, Amst. G. Blaeuw 1631. 



