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CRUCIAL MAPS in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada The Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for the years from 1929 to 1937 included a series in nine parts of important papers on "Crucial Maps" which have been a frequent source of reference ever since for students of the history of discovery and of early cartography. Their author, William Francis Ganong, had a life-long interest in the natural and human history of his native province, New Brunswick. Although he was primarily a botanist, with four full-length books and an amazing number of articles to his credit, it was through his series of monographs in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada that the breadth of his interests became known. For over fifty years he contributed almost annually to the Transactions the results of his systematic investigations into New Brunswick's physiography, aborigines, early explorations, wars and settlements. Crucial Maps, which concluded in 1937, was the last series of articles. Ganong was the first investigator to employ a critical classification of maps based upon groupings by period and type, although the cartography of Canada's east coast had earlier been introduced into our historiography by Baron Alexander von Humboldt. Ganong's contributions to cartography are enormous: for example, his reconstruction of Cabot's voyages, while all may not agree with it, is a masterpiece of inductive analysis which will remain a model in historical research; his chapters on Gomez, Verrazzano and Fagundes are still the chief secondary sources on these discoverers. There have been notable additions to the bibliography of discovery and maps since Ganong wrote; recently published works as well as the complete file of Ganongs correspondence with his fellow cartographer, G. R. F. Prowse, were consulted by Theodore E. Layng, Map Division, Public Archives of Canada, in preparing the commentaries which accompany this edition of Crucial Maps. These commentaries, with Mr. Layng's introduction, also provide an interesting sketch of Dr. Ganong and his work. Another important feature of this edition is the index prepared by William Morley of the John Carter Brown Library. In much of his work Ganong was a pioneer, and, while subsequent studies have reached different conclusions on some points, many of his results have seldom been challenged. Students of the present and future will still use and quote from Crucial Maps. Royal Society of Canada Special Publications No. 7
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA Special Publications 1. The Grenville Problem. Edited by JAMES E. THOMSON 2. The Proterozoic in Canada. Edited by JAMES E. GILL 3. Soils in Canada. Edited by ROBERT F. LEGGET 4. The Tectonics of the Canadian Shield. Edited by J. S. STEVENSON 5. Marine Distributions. Edited by M. J. DUNBAR 6. Studies in Analytical Geochemistry. Edited by DENIS M. SHAW 7. Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada. By W. F. GANONG. With an Introduction, Commentary, and Map Notes by THEODORE E. LAYNG
WILLIAM FRANCIS GANONG, 1864-1941 (Courtesy of the New Brunswick Museum)
CRUCIAL
MAPS
in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada
W.F. GANONG With an Introduction, Commentary, and Map Notes by Theodore E. Layng
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS IN CO-OPERATION WITH THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
(g) University of Toronto Press 1964 Printed in Canada
FOREWORD
For the text of the seventh volume of its Special Publications the Society has turned to the back volumes of the Transactions. Over the years these have included numerous papers of lasting interest and permanent value, many of which have become relatively inaccessible as volumes have dropped out of print. Notable amongst these is the remarkable series of papers on key maps in the early cartography of Canada, contributed by the late William Francis Ganong. Thirty years after their first appearance these continue to be classic studies in the field. Although much study has been devoted to early maps by other scholars, the papers are still an indispensable reference. Reprinting these papers is an important service to scholarship. The value of the new edition is much enhanced by the introduction, commentaries, and notes that have been contributed by Mr. T. E. Layng, Head of the Map Division in the Public Archivés of Canada. No one has more frequent occasion to use the Ganong papers than he, and no one can better appreciate and appraise their value. His notes indicate the chief points upon which research has been carried forward since Ganong's day, and bring the references to literature up to date. The original text has been corrected only in those few instances where errors are not self-evident. Mr. W. F. E. Morley of the John Carter Brown Library, who was compiling an index of the Ganong articles before this collection was conceived, kindly consented to incorporate his valuable work in the Society's volume. W. KAYE LAMB Honorary Librarian Royal Society of Canada
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CONTENTS (Citations in square brackets are to the Royal Society of Canada, Transactions, 3rd Séries, section 2)
FOREWORD
v
INTRODUCTION
ix
I. John Cabot—The La Cosa Map and the Cape Breton Landfall [XXIII (1929), 135-75] II.
João Alvares Fagundes—Place-nomenclature and Cartography, 1520-1530, and Analysis of the Micmac Names on the Later Homem Maps [XXIV (1930), 135-87]
III. Jean de Verrazzano—Analysis of His Letter and the Maps of Maggiolo, 1527, and H. de Verrazzano, 1529 [XXV (1931), 169-203] IV.
Estêvão Gomez—The Influence of His Explorations on the Ribero-type and Chaves-Santa Cruz Maps [XXVI (1932), 125-79]
3
45
99
135
V. The Significance of Composite Maps from 1526 to 1600 [XXVII (1933), 149-95] 191 VI.
Jacques Cartier—The Itinerary and Cartography of His Three Voyages [XXVIII (1934), 149-294] 239 vii
CONTENTS VII. Additional Maps, Based on Cartier, to 1569 [XXIX (1935), 101-29] 385 VIII. The Mercator Map of 1569 and an Evaluation of Thévet's Works [XXX (1936), 109-29] 415 IX.
The Cartographical Transition from Cartier to Champlain with Emphasis on the Levasseur Map [XXXI (1937), 101-30] 437 Commentaries and Map Notes
469
Historical Monographs and Papers by W. F. GANONG 499 Index compiled by W. F. E. MORLEY
505
(The reader will find a number of the maps referred to in the text at the back of the book in the 'Maps' section.)
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A generation of scholars has used and quoted Ganong's series of papers on "Crucial Maps" as it appeared from 1929 to 1937, Parts I to IX, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd series. Now this group of papers is being presented in a more convenient and compact form. All students of the history of discovery and of early cartography will welcome the Society's decision to republish this work. In reprinting "Crucial Maps" the Society pays tribute to a distinguished Fellow who, in his time, contributed much of lasting importance to the literature of Canada. The Society by its action is also making a very real contribution to present-day scholarship; although students now and in the future will undoubtedly find more within its pages to question, and more to add, they too will use and quote "Crucial Maps." William Francis Ganong was born on February 19, 1864, in West Saint John, New Brunswick. Later the family moved to St. Stephen, and it was there and in Saint John that Ganong spent his pre-college years. Many good holidays were passed at the family homestead on the Belle Isle River, with excursions to the St. Croix and the St. John, and amongst the islands of Passamaquoddy Bay. From some of the incidents of Ganong's boyhood which have been recorded by his friend and biographer, the late Dr. J. C. Webster, it appears that he developed early his life-long penchant for crowding his holiday schedules with research and industry. He came to know the waterways of New Brunswick through studying their flora and fauna, the roads by measuring distances by the number of revolutions of a cartwheel as he drove along. He made maps. He traced Indian trails and gathered in the lore and vocabulary of the aborigines. He was already preoccupied with both the natural and the human history of his native province. IX
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In 1884 he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick; two years later his Master's from the same university (which later gave him a Ph.D. in 1898 and an LL.D. in 1920). In 1887 Harvard gave him a B.A. and a Morgan Fellowship, and made him an assistant and later an instructor in botany. Seven years later, having obtained his doctorate at Munich, Ganong was appointed the first Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden in Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. These positions he held until 1932 when he retired with the title of Professor Emeritus. For those who know Ganong only through "Crucial Maps" and his other monographs in history and cartography, the knowledge that his principal work was in the field of botany will come as a surprise. During his thirty-eight years at Smith College he built up one of the best botanical departments in the United States. His researches were embodied in four full-length books and an amazing number of articles. In the journal of one learned society alone, the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, one hundred and fifty of his nature studies were published. In 1940 the American Society of Plant Physiologists awarded him the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership for his great contribution to the progress of plant physiology over a period of more than thirty years. It was, however, through his series of monographs in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada that the breadth of Ganong's interests became known. According to Dr. Webster "he early projected a plan for a systematic investigation of its [New Brunswick's] physiography, aborigines, early explorations, wars and settlements, evolution of boundaries, place-names, cartography, etc."1 And these were projects to be carried out in his spare time—his hobbies. For over fifty years the results of his researches appeared almost annually in the Transactions. "Crucial Maps," the ninth part of which appeared in 1937, was Ganong's last series of articles. In 1887 he had contributed to the Transactions his first historical treatise, "Jacques Cartier's First Voyage." On re-reading this paper after Ganong's death in 1942, G. R. F. Prowse wrote: "I am amazed at the maturity of thought and the manner of presentation for a young man of twenty three, who had just taken his post graduate degree."2 Ten years later "A Monograph of the Cartography of the Province of New Brunswick" was published in the Transactions. This was of course not the first time that the 1Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings, 3rd series, XXXVI (1942), p. 92. 2J. C. Webster, ed., William Francis Ganong Memorial (Saint John, 1942), p. 12. X
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cartography of Canada's east coast had been introduced into our historiography. In fact the honour of conducting the earliest enquiry into Canadian cartography, where modern research standards were employed, probably belongs to the German geographer Baron Alexander von Humboldt. It was he who re-discovered the La Cosa map in 1832 and gave birth to the association of its famous "named" coast with the explorations of John Cabot in the New World. Later the great searching minds of Henry Harrisse, Justin Winsor, and John G. Kohl were focused on the cartography of our coasts. Ganong however was the first to employ a critical classification of maps based upon groupings by period and type. Prowse believed that he had come under the influence of Justin Winsor. One might also believe that the influence of botany had something to do with Ganong's method of grouping. Certainly he brought to the study of early maps a more scientific approach than was common in that day. One wonders too how much Prowse in Winnipeg, teaching from Ganong's botany text by day and labouring by night to create his own groups and species of maps for his own Cartological Materials, was influenced by plant classification. Throughout "Crucial Maps" Ganong is careful to acknowledge his sources. The standard reference books of his day and of ours— Harrisse, Winsor, Kohl, Nordenskiôld, Biggar, Stokes—were always close at hand. Dr. J. A. Williamson's Voyages of the Cabots appeared just after Part I had gone to press, and it was not until Part VII was in preparation that Dr. Armando Cortesâo's two-volume work on Portuguese cartography was published. It is regrettable that these excellent works were not available to Ganong during the planning stages of "Crucial Maps"; and too, Williamson and Cortesâo would have profited from Ganong. By a happy coincidence, during 1962 both Williamson and Cortesâo produced further monumental additions to their already rich bibliographies (the latter as co-author with Teixeira da Mota) ; and now the work of these authors furnishes much of the content for the commentaries that accompany this reprinting of "Crucial Maps." There have of course been other notable additions to the bibliography of discovery and maps since Ganong wrote: for instance, Dr. Bernard Hoffman's Cabot to Cartier, which is frequently referred to in the commentaries. In 1958 Mr. R. A. Skelton's deluxe volume of Explorers' Maps appeared, sumptuously illustrated and embracing the highlights in exploration from earliest times up to and including the nineteenth-century polar navigations. There is also a book not yet published, and which therefore can only receive passing mention; but it is a book of distinguished lineage which will surely xi
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take its place on the same shelf as Williamson, Cortesâo, and the rest— Dr. Lawrence Wroth's forthcoming full-scale study on Verrazzano.3 Ganong was fortunate in having a large circle of friends of the kind that must always be in the offing when a book that stands weathering is being produced. Amongst his many correspondents were Victor H. Paltsits, of the New York Public Library ; Professor E. L. Stevenson ; Lawrence Martin, of the Library of Congress; Father Pacifique, missionary to the Micmac Indians; and always there was the helping hand of Dr. H. P. Biggar of the London Office of the Public Archives of Canada. The story of the associates of "Crucial Maps" would not be complete without mention of 'Ganong's very special correspondent, G. R. F. Prowse, of Winnipeg. However much students may grouse at the eccentricities of Prowse's Cartological Materials, they know it to be an essential part of their stock-in-trade. From 1895 until 1941, for forty-six years, Prowse and Ganong corresponded. They never met. Cartological Materials had been in preparation for years before Ganong began to toil in the same field. Suddenly the correspondence which had been sporadic became voluminous. Map notes, map reproductions, and insults were exchanged with equal cordiality. Before the forty-six years were quite up they were almost on a first-name basis. John Cabot was their juiciest bone of contention. Prowse, from an old English family who had settled in Newfoundland, championed a landfall at Bonavista. Ganong, of loyalist stock settled in the Maritimes, was equally adamant for a Cape Breton landfall. But all this was manna to them both. In reading their letters one becomes aware that Ganong leaned heavily on the scores of items that came his way via Prowse. On one occasion, in January, 1931, Ganong wrote to his friend somewhat impatiently, accusing him of not making himself intelligible, but in the same letter he acknowledges "his great debt" and ends by writing: "So does the Junior lay down the law to the Senior." And the reply came back: "It is the fate of us poor devils writing pre-history, subjective to the nth degree, to become sologists. However if we were not chockful of prepossession, highbrows call them theories, our work would lose much of its interest."4 Ganong was a man who enjoyed contacts with many people concerned with botany, maps, commerce, and society generally. Prowse was a recluse with maps alone, and little money or support to '"Verrazzano" is the form of the name preferred by most authorities including the Italian National Committee to Honour Verrazzano. There is one extant signature by Verrazzano in which he used the latinized form "Janus Verrazanus." 4 New Brunswick Museum, Ganong Papers. xii
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give his ideas the dignity of publication. One reads with understanding the explosive annotations which are found in his copy of "Crucial Maps." Fortunately this story has an unusual and a happy ending. All the Ganong and Prowse papers—their manuscripts, their letters, their reproductions—have been brought together in the New Brunswick Museum at Saint John. It was thus agreed between two good friends and two worthy opponents. "Crucial Maps" is the kind of book a student reads to learn his profession, content at one point to know he understands the subject matter, but filled with the pride of graduation on the great day when he finds something within its pages to question, something upon which he can build a counter-argument. Then with deeper insight he begins his studies anew, selecting his own sources and making his own interpretations. He will return to the book, for no scholar is ever independent, and always he will find stimuli, and a deeper kinship with the author. Dr. Lawrence Wroth of the John Carter Brown Library, one of the great bookmen of our times, has known just such a kinship with Ganong. When I informed him of my present task he wrote: Ganong's "Crucial Maps" has been a source of information, instruction, and inspiration to me for a great many years. Quite aside from the integrity and fairness of the work itself I know of no other book in the field of historical cartography in which intensity of purpose, scholarly method, and first-hand observation have come so happily together. His chapters on Cabot and Verrazzano have been in my hands as a chief reliance throughout the years of my work on Verrazzano. I have never questioned that the desire to make a statement as nearly perfect as might be underlay all his effort. It has been a satisfaction to me to realize that year by year his work has become better known, and his conclusions have gained wider acceptance.6
Scholars who "make" history relating to the early discoveries and mapping of America are a little beyond the dress circles of historians who find their forte in less conjectural fields. They are chided for their speculative tendencies, and seldom do they close their own ranks for the strength of union. In other words they are an intractable lot, each insistent upon the rules by which the game must by played but none of them ready to submit to an umpire. That is why Prowse's phrase "subjective to the nth degree" is so often used in describing the work turned out by "us poor devils." Consider the perennial controversy that surrounds John Cabot; no one in this day and age will think it is a matter of great importance to know exactly his route to Canada or 'Letter to the author, 1963. xiii
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where he landed, but when all the pieces of the puzzle are laid out for inspection, it is a good mental exercise, and good fun, to attempt an answer. There are documents that can be read in many ways. Sebastian the son must be assigned a role. There are scores of fascinating maps to examine, each holding fast its secrets. The winds, currents, and magnetic variations of the Atlantic must be known, and the manner of early navigation. The red herrings of latter-day Cabotan history must be salted to taste. All of these pieces can be broken down into an amazing number of permutations and combinations, and it is indeed an accomplishment when men like Ganong, Williamson, and Cortesâo produce works in the field which will withstand the assaults of generations of students. Ganong had many difficulties to overcome in the preparation of "Crucial Maps." At the time he wrote it was a long and expensive task to bring together the map reproductions necessary to his work. In many cases he had to rely upon the poorest of photographs. Many map collections had not been catalogued with the care that is now common practice. There was much confusion concerning authors and dates. Ganong, because he was an excellent draughtsman, was able to reproduce a great many of his "crucial" maps in simple form making their interpretation easier, but unavoidably he made mistakes in copying names because he was seldom able to check against the original map. The reader is therefore advised to check Ganong's lists with more recent ones provided in such works as Portugaliae Monumento, Cartographica, and Bernard Hoffman's Cabot to Cartier. The presence of Indian names on many of the maps he studied demanded a knowledge of the Micmac, Maliseet, and other Indian dialects. His correspondence shows that he spared no efforts to make himself proficient in these dialects, and to arrive at correct meanings. Several European nations shared in the early mapping of Canada, and in the corrupt forms in which many place-names appear on early maps it is often a difficult matter to recognize the language they represent let alone to translate the word. In a few instances Ganong lapses into error, often enough to make the critics take note, but seldom if ever to the point of making himself unintelligible. In much of his work Ganong was a pioneer, which meant of course that often he worked within an extremely narrow frame of reference; but by his own efforts he widened immeasurably the basis of his studies. We may not all agree with his reconstruction of Cabot's voyages, but all acknowledge that it is a masterpiece of inductive analysis which will remain a model in historical research. His chapters xiv
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on Gomez,6 Fagundes, and Verrazzano are still the chief secondary sources on these discoverers. In his description of the Cartier voyages and cartography Ganong was able to rely upon the work of his close friend Dr. Biggar and together they achieved results that have seldom been challenged. After he has finished with Cartier, Ganong's studies take on the character of a scholar's notebook. They include a splendid series of monographs on significant maps of the latter half of the sixteenthcentury, interspersed with second thoughts and addenda to earlier papers. Before Ganong died he had prepared a draft text of a tenth part dealing with the voyages and cartography of the Champlain period. His manuscript and notes are still intact in the New Brunswick Museum and the Royal Society considered editing them for inclusion in the present publication. Because of the bulk of the material, and the necessity of accompanying it with adequate map illustrations and annotations, it was decided to postpone publication, rather than to delay the present volume. In any case "Crucial Maps" in its present form draws to a conclusion at the end of a very definite phase in the history of discovery. There is in my commentaries a note of impatience with Ganong's tendency to relate all significant cartographical advances along our northeast coast to Cabot, the Corte-Reals,7 Gomez, Fagundes, Verrazzano, and Cartier. This strict adherence to the rule and report of official documents is especially noticeable in his efforts to fill the apparent hiatus between the voyages of the Corte-Reals and Gomez with an over-emphasis on the role played by the Portuguese explorer, Fagundes. It is true no official discovery document of any consequence has been found for the period in question except the one of c. 1520 relating to Fagundes. This document presumably reaffirms his right to explore and settle the lands adjacent to Cabot Strait. From such scanty evidence Ganong implies that in the actual sequence of events Fagundes followed upon the Corte-Reals, and that his was the only significant influence in shaping maps of the southern coast of Newfoundland and of Nova Scotia for the next quarter-century. Surely Ganong is here demonstrating the fallacy of writing history in the presence of documents alone. I think Ganong in such an instance was a little victimized by the 'Most authorities including Ganong use this Spanish form of the name although Estêvâo Gomes was a native of Oporto in Portugal. '"Corte-Real" is the modern Portuguese form. The name appears in sixteenthcentury documents as "Corte Reall" or "Corterreal." Ganong uses "Cortereal." xv
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historical standards of his day. By refusing to fill gaps with probabilities, his pattern of events becomes in places anomalous. In other places however he is distinctly a rebel, showing the special enjoyment of a disciplined mind in occasional flurries of pure speculation. I would not enjoy my Ganong half as much if the man had not been capable of seeing in the armoured knight of Cape Breton on the Vopell map none other than John Cabot. We are inclined today to look at the gaps in our history of discovery as more apparent than real. How many maps bear witness to voyages never documented and now long forgotten will never be known. How many documents or maps are yet to be discovered which will close the gaps in our knowledge we cannot tell. Very recently I have received intimations that Yale University has acquired a fourteenth-century map which will shed some new light on early knowledge of the New World. A few years ago Dr. Vigneras, an indefatigable scholar, brought forth the now famous John Day letter which has been accepted as a "new" Cabot document. I am thinking too of the Portuguese historian, Dr. Armando Cortesâo, who with his years of rich experience in early cartography, has read into a 1424 map a discovery of the West Indies by his countrymen. In respect to pre-Cabot Portuguese voyages to Canadian waters, it is altogether possible that claims already advanced will one day be substantiated by the re-discovery or proper recognition of maps or documents in the archives of Portugal or of the Azores. If we imply that historians have attained in one generation a new level of enquiry, then we must at the same time acknowledge our debt to the Ganongs of yesteryear. If any one of us can make a contribution in our day comparable to that Ganong made in his then we shall indeed be able to rest happily on our laurels. How much easier is our task today! All over the world libraries and archives have achieved a new importance. Their collections have been steadily expanded and made more available to the public. The technique of reproducing items has been several times improved. Money is provided by a benevolent society for scholars to probe in far-away places. Learned societies gather their members from many nations for annual conferences. Lisbon is nine hours by plane from Ottawa. Air mail speeds and animates the exchange of ideas across the Atlantic. Working in community in today's more complete world we should indeed be able to solve many of the problems that beset Ganong. It has been a great pleasure to renew a working association with the John Carter Brown Library that I knew in the preparation of SixteenthCentury Maps. At Dr. Lawrence Wroth's suggestion Mr. William xvi
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Morley of the library staff had already planned to compile a separate index for "Crucial Maps" before the Royal Society of Canada had completed its plans for a republication of the entire work. Mr. Morley very generously offered to incorporate his index with the Society's edition. Those already acquainted with the depths of "Crucial Maps" will appreciate the difficulties and the extremely exacting nature of the task which Mr. Morley has brought to such a successful conclusion. I should like too to acknowledge the encouragement and suggestions of the Librarian Emeritus, Dr. Lawrence Wroth, and to thank Mr. R. A. Skelton of the British Museum with whom I have had the opportunity of discussing the form and content of the commentaries. In the preparatory stages of gathering material for my annotations I was privileged to work with the Ganong and Prowse Papers in the alcove of the New Brunswick Museum where much of "Crucial Maps" was written, overlooking the St. John River that Ganong loved so well. I should like to acknowledge the friendly courtesies extended to me by Dr. George MacBeath, Director of the Museum, and his assistant, Miss Jean Sereisky. My own task of writing the commentaries for the nine parts of "Crucial Maps" was somewhat complicated by a master-student complex. There are facets to the work, in particular the provenance of place-names, that I simply did not have the competence to deal with adequately. There are other places where I have perhaps committed the misdemeanour of appearing to make Ganong the occasion for controversy. My primary motives however have been to call attention to materials which have come to light since Ganong wrote, and to examine briefly some new thought on the old problems. There are probably several important omissions. For such I am blameworthy, but if I appear in other respects to have gone "beyond the pale," I can only repeat the subject is "subjective to the nth degree."
THEODORE E. LAYNG
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CRUCIAL MAPS in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada
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SECTION II
[135]
TRANS. R.S.C.
Crucial Maps in the early Cartography and Place-nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, I By W. F. GANONG, A.M., Ph.D. Corresponding Member, R.S.C. (Read May Meeting, 1929) Introduction The historical cartography and place-nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of British America falls naturally as to cartography into four periods, and as to geography into three regions. The first, or "early," period is that of discovery and rapid preliminary exploration by expeditions officially chartered by European monarchs, later supplemented by observations of sundry pilots and captains. It extends (aside from the Norse voyages) from the first voyage of John Cabot in 1497 down to the advent of Champlain, or, broadly speaking, over the sixteenth century. The original maps are all lost, but the surviving compilations show that they were based on eye-sketches, magnetic compass bearings, estimated distances, crudely observed latitudes, and dead-reckoning longitudes. The defects of those methods entailed anomalies which the cartographers, in the compilation of the general maps that survive, had to reconcile as best they could; and it is no wonder that such maps are so often inconsistent, erroneous, and unintelligible, and a sore trouble to those who now attempt to interpret them. The second, or "transitional," period began with Champlain, who in 1603 started mapping anew, with ampler knowledge, better facilities, and improved technique; and it extends down to the beginning of professional surveys after 1750, or, broadly speaking, over the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries. The resultant maps, based upon true, though crude, surveys filled out by eye-sketching, are systematically complete and recognizable for the regions, their problems resting in details: while they are further marked by the introduction of the local place-nomenclature, originating with the pilots and fishermen, in replacement of the older formalized, corrupted, and locally-unknown map names. The third, or "modern," period is that of the Admiralty surveys, made by the professional surveyors Cook, DesBarres, Holland and others, who, working with refined methods and ample facilities, produced charts that were fundamentally accurate, marking indeed a carto3
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graphical revolution. These charts, dating from about 1760, served for over half a century, when the needs of growing navigation necessitated yet greater detail and accuracy, which were supplied in new Admiralty surveys by Bayfield, Owen, Shortland and others, whose charts are now in use, supplemented, however, for the more important navigable waters, by new editions and additions, including a series prepared and issued by the Department of Marine and Fisheries of Canada. The fourth, or "precision," period is in course of inauguration under our own eyes by the altogether admirable and unsurpassed work of the Geodetic, and the Topographical, Survey of Canada. As to the three regions into which the historical cartography of the Atlantic Coast of British America naturally falls on the basis of correlated geography and history, the first comprises the Greenland and Labrador coasts with Newfoundland south to Cape Race. It was first explored, apparently, by the Cabots for England in 1498, by the Cortereals for Portugal in 1501-2, and later by others. Its cartography and place-nomenclature, lightly touched in earlier works, were first systematically studied by J. G. Kohl, with results set forth in his admirable History of the Discovery of Maine, 1869 (really covering the entire coast from Labrador to Florida): were later critically reviewed, with additional detail, in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, Vols. III-IV, 1884: and were discussed by Henry Harrisse, in his Discovery of America, 1892, and monographed in his Découverte et Évolution Cartographique de Terre-neuve et des Pays Circonvoisins, 1900. There are, of course, other works on special phases of the subject, whereof the more notable are the critical Historical and Geographical Notes on the earliest Discoveries in America by Henry Stevens, in American Journal of Science and Arts, XLVIII, 1869, 299-316: the general summary of the Portugese voyages to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia by Rev. George Patterson, in these Transactions, VIII, 1890, ii, 127-173: Harrisse's books on the Cabots and Cortereals : the f oundational monographic discussion of the Voyages of the Cabots and Corte-reals by H. P. Biggar, in Revue Hispanique, X, 1903, 485-593, and the same author's invaluable collection of the known documents touching the voyages, in original and translation, in his Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1911: and also the notable study of the Norman navigators, including the nomenclature from their maps, by l'Abbé A. Anthiaume, in his Voyages de Découverte chez les Normands, 2 vols. 1916. Noteworthy, also, especially for its lists and accounts of maps is Die Entwicklelung der Kartographie von Amerika bis 1570, by Sophus Ruge, 1892, while most useful for many details is the Cabot Bibliography by G. P. Winship, 1900. Of these works, 4
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however, by far the most important is Harrisse's Terre-neuve, which, despite some shortcoming of detail, presents so exceptional a combination of wealth of knowledge, profusion of new detail, scientific spirit, beauty of form, excellence of illustration, and copiousness of index, as to make it not only the indispensable foundation for all future studies of its subject, but also well nigh a model of what such a work should be. Of this region I have nothing more to say, except to call attention in passing to E. B. Delabarre's recent claim of a rockinscription recording Miguel Cortereal's presence in New England in 1511 (Dighton Rock, 1928), and to the attractive subject awaiting some student in the monographic investigation of the copious and varied place-nomenclature of Newfoundland as a whole, a subject hardly touched as yet except for a preliminary outline published some years ago by Archbishop Howley in the Newfoundland Quarterly. The second of the three regions aforementioned (and that with which the present paper is concerned) comprises our Atlantic coast from Cape Race in Newfoundland westward to Cabot Strait, and thence from Cape Breton southwest along Nova Scotia into Maine, with a natural boundary at the Penobscot. It was first explored, in divers overlapping parts, between 1497 and 1525, by John Cabot for England, Juam Alvarez Fagundes for Portugal, Jean Verrazano for France, and Estevan Gomez for Spain. The exceptional overlapping of voyages and paucity of records renders the profuse cartography of this region much the more obscure of the three, especially as it has not yet had the benefit of concentrated monographic study. It is treated in general by the aforecited works of Kohl, Winsor, Harrisse, Patterson, Biggar, and Anthiaume, and in some special studies, whereof the most important by far are those, centering in Cabot Strait, on the voyages of the Cabots by S. E. Dawson, in these Transactions, XII, 1894, ii, 51-112: II, 1896, ii, 3-30: III, 1897, ii, 139-268, some minor lapses wherein are pointed out by Harrisse in the same Transactions, IV, 1898, ii, 103-106. Dawson's papers are summarized in his later The Saint Lawrence. Its Basin and Border-Lands, 1905, and in their rigidly scientific analyses of all data then available stand in great contrast with two highly imaginative papers on the same subject by Archbishop O'Brien, also in these Transactions, III, 1897, cv-cxxix: V, 1899, ii, 427-455. Very noteworthy, also, for its method as well as its material on this region, is the Essay on the Development of Knowledge regarding the East Coast of North America, by F. C. Wieder and I. N. Phelps Stokes, in the latter's superb Iconography of Manhattan Island, II, 1916, 1-40. Third of the three regions is the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Aside 5
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from earlier dubious visits by unknown adventurers, it was first systematically explored and mapped in 1534 and later by Jacques Cartier, whose cartography dominated that of the region well-nigh completely until the coming of Champlain. With the cartographical clarification of the Cartier voyages and the subsequent maps of the century I have myself been privileged to have something to do (these Transactions, V, 1887, ii, 121-136: VII, 1889, ii, 17-58: III, 1897, ii, 335-347), while the subject in direct relation to Cartier's voyages has been thoroughly covered by Biggar in his Voyages of Jacques Cartier, 1924, which work renders additional service through his admirable reproductions of some crucial maps. There are also more or less valuable writings on special features of the subject by various Canadian students, notably J. Pope and Archbishop Howley, while the major works of Kohl, Winsor, Harrisse and others extend over this region also. As result of all this study it seemed that the cartography and place-nomenclature of the Saint Lawrence basin must now be so well known that only details remained to be elucidated, but recently Mr. G. R. F. Prowse, after prolonged researches, has issued a work (Exploration of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 14.99-1526, separate mimeographed text and outline maps, privately published, Winnipeg, 1929) which reopens the pre-Carterian cartography of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and secondarily of the other regions also, with some novel theories based upon features of the old maps not heretofore noticed. The test thereof, however, is hardly possible from the very synoptical data the author presents, and must await the detailed evidence in his promised complete work. It is pertinent to ask here through what means we may hope to make advance over our predecessors in these studies, the matured fruits of whose labours we inherit. The answer is found partly in discovery of maps or records since their day, partly in better facilities for securing knowledge of the places and phenomena concerned, but chiefly in our acquisition of dependable copies of the original documents and maps. As to documents, those earlier published, in a less critical era and often in support of some particular thesis, are all too often incomplete, mistranslated, misprinted, and editorially corrupted by interpolation and in other ways, even the great Hakluyt being a notorious sinner in this respect. In gratifying contrast are the complete and exact copies of originals, with translations by competent scholars, all as immaculate as printing skill can make them, now becoming accessible in works like Biggar's Precursors, and many critical modern monographs. As to maps, the earlier "facsimiles" of the unique originals scat6
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tered widely in closely-guarded European archives, are quite undependable for details, which often are crucial. Even the great so-called facsimile atlases of Santarem, 1842-53: of Lelewel, 1850-2: of Jomard, 1855-62: of Kunstmann, 1859: and of Kretschmer, 1892, published at great expense, and reproducing the leading maps often in all the glory of their superb colouring, involve errors and omissions accompanying the hand transfer to lithographic plates or the efforts to restore or interpret damaged details. Nor are the simple lithograph copies of Kohl trustworthy in details. Far better for scientific purposes, though unjust to the beauty of the originals, are the later collections, which reproduce the maps directly by photographic processes, as notably in the Facsimile Atlas, 1889, and the Periplus, 1897, of A. E. Nordenskiôld : the Remarkable Maps, 1894, of F. Muller: the Kartographischer Denkmàler, 1907, of Hantsch and Schmidt: the Monumenta Cartographica, 1925-, of F. C. Wieder: the Tabulae Geographicae, 1926-, of G. Caraci; and the series now in issue by the British Museum; while the method reaches its perfection in the superb series of 12 Maps illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America, 1903-5, of E. L. Stevenson. The photographic method has also been used in most recent monographic works, first, so far as I have noticed, by Stevens in his aforecited Notes, of 1869, and later by Harrisse, Biggar, and others, reaching a culmination which leaves little to be expected or desired, in the already-cited Iconography of Phelps Stokes, which work, very happily (in volume II expecially), extends at times into our region, whereof it includes some invaluable maps. The just-mentioned photographic processes are principally three. Of these the common zincographic line-cut is clearest and most convenient, especially as it may be set with text and freely copied by others; but it is available only for those old maps which are wholly without shading or colour. Where shading is present, only a collotype is usable, though the method involves the defects that there is always some loss of detail, and the printing requires separate plates. Colour is fairly rendered by the three-colour half-tone process, but all halftones leave fine lettering illegible, as shown by many recent reproductions, and by comparison of the Ribero with the Desceliers maps in Biggar's Voyages of Jacques Cartier. The best procedure for scientific purposes, like the present, seems to rest in precise tracing, direct from the original when possible (as usually it is not), but otherwise from a full-size expertly-taken photograph, showing all details that are certain, and how those look that are not, the drawing being then reproduced by zincograph line cut. Thus the illustrations in these papers are mostly made. 7
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The early cartography and place-nomenclature of the second of the three Atlantic coast regions of British America,—that from Cape Race to Maine. We turn now to our proper subject of this paper (and possible continuations thereof)—that expressed by the foregoing title. The maps of this region for that period—the sixteenth century— are far more abundant than would be expected for the time. Of those which, in diverse degrees of generality or detail, touch or cover the region in a way to require mention in any monographic treatment of the subject, and of which reliable copies are now accessible, well over a hundred are known, while others reported but not yet reproduced, plus probable new discoveries, will carry the number, no doubt, above a hundred and fifty. Of all these, however, not more than some half dozen represent types based on new discovery, all of the others being copies or combinations thereof in more or less degenerated and corrupted state, though occasionally incorporating new details based upon sailors' reports. These type maps are—(1) the Cosa of 1500, representing the first Cabot voyage; (2) the L. Homen of 1554, representing the Fagundes explorations; (3) the Maggiolo of 1527, and the H. Verrazano of 1529, representing the Jean Verrazano voyage; (4) the Ribero type of 1527-9, representing the Gomez voyage ; and (5) the Gastaldi type of 1548 and later, representing the effort to lay down on an older topography the results of the Verrazano and Cartier voyages from their reports alone in absence of their maps. It is these type maps, with their influence upon the others, that we are now to critically re-examine in light of the best available records and the correlated local conditions. 1. The Cosa map of 1500 This is the earliest known map to represent any part of the North American continent, and as such it has been often described, discussed, and reproduced, its bibliography being probably greater than that of any other American map. Its general features, in black and white and about half size, are well shown in the fine photolithograph accompanying one of Dawson's papers in these Transactions, III, 1897, ii, p. 268; and it is therefrom that our Fig. 1 is taken, though with great loss of detail. The original is a unique manuscript planisphere of the entire world as then known, beautifully drawn in relatively large scale, and elaborately coloured, on the prepared surface of an ox-hide some five and a half by three feet in size. Found, rather damaged, in a bric-a-brac 8
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shop in Paris in 1832, and further degenerated by fading since then, it is now a treasure of the Spanish Marine Museum at Madrid. Happily the name of its maker and its date are clearly inscribed upon it. This maker, Juan de la Cosa, a Basque by birth but long in service of Spain, was one of the greatest practical navigators and cartographers of his day, as fully set forth in an excellent biography, by A. Vascáno, accompanying the Vallejo and Traynor reproduction of the Cosa map, of 1892, of which work, with the former's full history and description of the map, there is a careful translation by Traynor in Publications of the Canadian Archives, No. 8, 1912, 545-562. Of the many reproductions of the American part of the map, only five have been made direct from the original, and of these only four have any critical value. The first was a reduced, partly coloured lithograph made for Baron von Humboldt, who included it in his Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, Vol. III, 1837, and again, re-drawn, with his description of the map in Ghillany's Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin Behaim, 1853. Though far from a facsimile (the names are in modern type) and embodying some obvious errors, it has a certain value because made when the map was in the best state since its discovery. The second, nearly if not quite as early, and far better, is Ramon de la Sagra's full-size lithograph (our Fig. 4), evidently made by careful tracing from the original, contained in the atlas to his Histoire physique de I'He de Cuba, 1837 (with a French edition in 1842). Clearly a condensed copy of Sagra's, and not from the original, is that which Lelewel gives in the atlas of his Géographie du Moyen Age, pi. 41, of 1852. The third is the black and white full-size lithograph (coloured in some copies), made while the original was still in Paris, by the Polish artist Rembielinski, for Jomard's great Monuments de la Géographie, wherein it was published about 1860 (our Fig. 5). Though evidently made with care, it is nevertheless (as we shall see) not "en facsimile absolutement complet," despite M. Cortambert's statement in his Introduction to the Monuments, of 1879. With its great authority, it has naturally formed the foundation of most subsequent reproductions, of which there are many, by Kohl, Stevens (photo-copy), Winsor, Kretschmer (re-drawn with some errors), Harrisse, and others, including notably Dawson's photolithograph in these Transactions, as aforementioned. It is also a very careful re-drawing of Jomard which is the original of the photolithographed reproduction in Museo Espagnol de Antiqüedades, of 1875. Harrisse (Discovery, 90, 144) mentions a photograph, which I have not seen, taken for him from the original in 1889 or 1890, and used in making the copy in his Discovery and Terre-neuve, although 9
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that copy seems wholly based on Jomard, and Kretschmer's new drawing therefrom. The fourth is a full-size lithograph, said to be hand-coloured, of the entire map, published in 1892 at Madrid by Vallejo and Traynor, but it is far from deserving the encomiums of Vascáno (in his aforecited work, 562), for it is so crude and erroneous as to be useless for any critical purpose, at least in the two copies I have seen. It is, however, the source of some recent greatly reduced reproductions (e.g., in papers by Stevenson, and in Thacher's Continent of America), and is the basis of Dawson's line-cut in his papers on the Cabots (these Transactions, 'XII, 1894, ii, 70; II, 1896, ii, 17), though he evidently took the names from Kretschmer's copy of Jomard. The fifth, and last, consists in a photogravure of a recent untouched reduced photograph direct from the North American part of the original in Madrid contained in the Stokes Iconography aforecited, Vol. II, Plate 1. This photograph shows that the representation of our region has suffered less damage than might be expected, the topography being clear, and the names identifiable if not legible, enabling us to place their exact positions. It is this invaluable photograph that is presented in our unfortunately very crude cut, Fig. 6. For the use of a special print from his fine unique negative I am deeply indebted to the generosity of Mr. Stokes; and in this connection I cannot forbear to mention also his and my friend, Mr. Victor H. Paltsits of the New York Public Library, who has, with his wonted generosity, laid open to me his rich stores of knowledge, and the resources of his great Library, in the preparation of this as of other of my papers. We centre attention now upon the representation of our region on the Cosa map. As the reproductions show, in the original map the western, in great contrast with the eastern, continents are covered with a uniform dark colouring, relieved only by an obviously conventional and decorative network of interior waterways which can of course have no geographical significance except, it may be, at some of their exits. Further, as our Fig. 1 shows, the drawing of the entire North American coast, likewise, is conventional, lacking names and other indications of exploration, with the single exception of the east and west part marked by definite and detailed lining, a number of place-names, and a line of five flags which, for a reason given below, are known to be those of England at that time. In view of the prepossession then prevalent among cartographers, as embodied in the well-known Laon and Behaim globes, that Asia was separated from Europe-Africa by a far lesser distance than it actually is, we naturally try to find in 10
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Cosa's North American coast line some relation to the eastermost Asiatic coast as recorded on the aforementioned globes or upon contemporary maps of Asia, but comparison shows not the least resemblance except perhaps in the southwestern part. Certainly far the greater part, including the named and flagged east-west coast, as likewise all that lies northeast of it, is new. Happily, however, we do not lack indications of the source whence Cosa drew these parts, as will appear in the sequel. Our immediate problem, now, is the identification of Cosa's aforementioned east-west coast. All students agree that this "named coast," as we may call it, with its comparatively definite topography, its many names, and its series of English flags, must have been taken by Cosa from a map of some actual exploration; and, moreover, there is equal agreement that this exploration must have been that of the Cabots, for the first of whose voyages at least, as there is ample reason, later to appear, for believing, John Cabot's map was accessible to Cosa in Spain. When it comes, however, to placing this named coast in the actual geography of the northeastern part of America, the most diverse views have been advanced. First, von Humboldt, in his aforecited works of 1837 and 1853, held that it represents the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in this was followed by Stevens in 1869. Second, Kohl in 1869 interpreted it as the south coast of Newfoundland from Cape Race westward, including Cape Breton Island, and the same conclusion was reached by Dawson after his more thorough studies in 1894-7, was accepted by Markham in his review of the Cabot Voyages in Geographical Journal, IX, 1897, 604-15, and by Biggar in his work of 1903, and is held in part by Prowse, though with the important exception that he makes the western part represent the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Third, Harrisse, in his later works at least, took the new position that the Cabot voyages covered only the eastern coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and gave up in despair the attempt to identify the position of the named coast of Cosa. Harrisse's view, however, carries the logical corollary that if Cosa derived his named coast from a Cabot map, he must have set it, whether by inadvertence or misunderstanding, at right angles to the direction Cabot gave it,—a possibility, it is true, but a great improbability in light of the fact that both Cosa and Cabot were among the most eminent navigators and map-makers of their time. Nevertheless this view is very positively advanced by Archbishop O'Brien, who makes the named coast of Cosa represent the entire north-south coast of Labrador and Newfoundland all the way from Cape Chidley at Hudson Strait to Cape Race as also the east-west 11
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coast thence to Cabot Strait and Cape Breton,—an idea so ill-supported and replete with anomalies as hardly to need detailed discussion, especially as its fallacies have been fully exposed in Dawson's latest paper. Fourth, A. J. Weise, in his Discoveries of America to the year 1525 (1884, 201), identifies the named coast with that from Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy, while yet other suggestions also have been offered, but of lesser weight. For the testing of these views, or elaboration of others, we have three sources of evidence, viz., the authentic records of the Cabot voyages; the general geography of the named coast itself; and the correlated topography and place-nomenclature of the named coast as matched against detailed modern maps. These we consider in order. The source-records of the Cabot voyages are all assembled, in precise original form and translation, in Biggar's aforecited Precursors. They include letters patent and chance items in English documents; unimpeachable contemporary letters and dispatches from Italian and Spanish residents in London to relatives and rulers at home; and a legend and place-names on the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544. Collectively they show that on the first voyage John Cabot left Bristol in a small ship, with eighteen men, on May 2, 1497, and after a general westerly course sighted land, some 700 leagues from England, on June 24 in the early morning. Of this land he took possession, planting there a large cross, with a banner of England and one of St. Mark (the latter because he was a naturalized Venetian), while an island discovered off the land the same (St. John's) day he named St. John. This place of his landfall is specifically and doubly marked on the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544 as on Cape Breton Island. He then coasted the land for a distance reported as 300 leagues, finding it excellent in soil and temperate in climate, with a sea of slack tides replete with fish ; and although he saw no natives he found traces of their presence. On the way home he saw two islands, on which he had not time to land, and two of the islands discovered he presented to companions of his voyage,—a Burgundian and his barber from Castiglione. His accounts of his discoveries were all confirmed by his crew of Bristol Englishmen. He reached England on August 7, his journey thus lasting somewhat over three months, and it was reported that the new land lay not 400 leagues distant. After his return he exhibited a map and a globe showing his discoveries, of which map a copy was soon in possession of the Spanish ambassador available for transmission to the King of Spain. For the second voyage the records are scant and dubious, but seem to show that Cabot left Bristol with two ships in early May 1498, and taking a 12
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northerly course to Greenland and Labrador thence followed the coast southward to near 38°, returning to England in October. The foregoing, and following, interpretation of the course of the Cabot voyages is that contained in the Voyages of the Cabots, and the Precursors, of Biggar, who, building on the assimilated results of a long line of predecessors, and upon all of the existent records in full and correct form, has reached conclusions so consistent with all the known data, and withal so inherently probable, that there seems little room for doubt as to their essential correctness. While these records bear, as we shall see, on details of our problem of the identity of Cosa's named coast, they help little as a whole in its solution. This much, however, is evident, that the use by Cosa, as an official cartographer of Spain, of that copy of Cabot's map of the first voyage which the Spanish ambassador in London had ready in July, 1498 to send to the King of Spain (Biggar, 29), provides a wholly consistent explanation of the presence of the named coast, with its English flags, on Cosa's map of 1500, while the reasonable assumption that Cosa had received through the same sources reports but no map of the voyage of 1498 would equally explain the presence on his map of the continuous and fairly placed, though conventionalized and nameless, coast line from high latitudes to near the Spanish discoveries in the West Indies, the remainder of the coast line being pieced out, apparently, from a map of Asia. It is known that Cabot thought he had found Asia, or at least a coast leading thereto (Biggar, 20). We consider next the general geography of the named coast. The most obvious feature thereof, and the one least likely to be seriously in error, is its general east and west course, which is matched only in our regions by the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the south coast of Newfoundland with Nova Scotia in part. It is true, the named coast tips a little downward from west to east, whereas the two others just mentioned tip a little the other way. The difference may be accidental, but, as well known, and clearly explained by Champlain, the maps of America in early times were made by aid of compasses corrected for the very different declination in Europe, the effect of which was to throw our coasts out of line in the way shown by Cosa. A second feature of Cosa's named coast is its relatively great length, which is obviously far greater (Figs. 2, 3) than that of any east-west coast on our North Atlantic seaboard. Expressed in numbers, by aid of the scale of degrees, each of fifteen Spanish leagues (according to Stevens) at the top of Cosa's map (Fig. 2), it is over 400 leagues from the landfall eastward, and above 550 between the extreme flags. 13
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This distance is far greater than Cabot could possibly have coasted on his first voyage, for while his outward journey to his landfall (May 2 to June 24) required 53 days, his coasting and recrossing the ocean (June 24 to Aug. 7) took only 44 days, which left far too short a time for any great distance of coasting, with all the attendant observational and navigational delays, though the discrepancy is far less serious if, as data given below seem to show, his coasting coincided with part of the return journey. Here, however, is a point of first consequence,
Fig. 2 (above). Tracing, reduced to nearly one-fifth, from the Jomard copy of Cosa, with its scale of degrees, each of 15 leagues of the time, and an added dotted line drawn due west through Bristol. Fig. 3 (below). Tracing from a modern chart on Mercator's projection. A degree of longitude in latitude of Bristol is about 43 statute miles.
viz., whatever the distance Cabot actually coasted, the distance he is said to have stated on his return, (and which he would naturally have tended to make as great as he could and round off with the next highest round number), was 300 leagues; and it would seem that this reported distance was the basis for the length assigned the named coast on Cosa. It is true, even this distance is too short for the length of the named coast, but some cartographical exaggeration would be natural, partly, as Kohl noted, as a means of compensating 14
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the convergence of the meridians towards the poles; partly from the custom of the time and long after to enlarge on the maps the scale of a known place or region at the expense of the unknown spaces, in order to permit full and clear representation of details; and partly through the early cartographer's temptation to make the utmost of any positive contribution to the filling of vast spaces otherwise perforce left vacant on his map. The east and west trend of the named coast simplifies the problem of latitudes and longitudes. As to latitude, though the map has no scale, such is inferable by extrapolation from the equator and tropic of Cancer, on which basis, as also by comparison with the much better known western Europe (Figs. 2, 3) the named coast is placed too high for any east-west coast of our Atlantic seaboard, thus favouring the Humboldt theory. As often noted, however, Cosa has the West Indies, best-mapped part of the new world, north instead of south of the tropic of Cancer, and thus several degrees too high ; and the casual error thereof may well have operated to raise pro rata the latitude of the named coast. Exact discussions of the latitudes and longitudes of a map so crude in these respects can have, however, no great worth in determining the identity of the named coast, but fortunately the map provides a much more likely explanation of this point. For, as Fig. 2 shows, the average latitude of Cosa's named coast closely approximates to that of Bristol whence Cabot sailed; and as his general course was known to be westward it would have been natural for Cosa, especially in absence of information on the latitude, to place Cabot's explored coast there. As to longitude, also, Cosa's map lacks a scale, though such is inferable from the scale of leagues at the top of the map. At first sight the longitude difference of the named coast from Europe seems much too small, and for this supposed fact Kohl suggested the explanation that Cosa tried thus to compensate the convergence of the meridians towards the poles. If, however, using Cosa's scale of degrees, one marks off the 400 leagues the new land was reported to be distant from England (a distance that Cabot would naturally tend to make as small as he could and round off with the next lowest round number), and lays this distance off westward from Bristol on Cosa's map, it will be found to reach nearly across the ocean, while if it be applied to the actual width of the ocean, from y. verde to Ireland, it fits almost exactly. Cabot's distances, fortunately, are consistent in themselves, for, as earlier noted, it was reported that he covered 700 leagues to his landfall, while he coasted 300 leagues, and the new lands lay 400 leagues distant. This, of course, requires that his coasting was coincident with part of his 15
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return journey, a consideration fully consistent with, and thus incidentally supporting, the interpretation of the named coast indicated by a concurrence of other evidence given below. Thus it seems wholly reasonable to infer that, as with its length, it was the directions and distances from Bristol as given by Cabot, not latitudes and longitudes, which determined the placing of the named coast where it is on Cosa's map, a procedure the more natural in case the copy of Cabot's map used by Cosa lacked scales of length, latitude, and longitude. As to the outline of the named coast, though far more definite and detailed than on any other part of Cosa's North American seaboard, it fits none of the suggested regions closely, although it does, as we shall see, fit the south coast of Newfoundland and Cape Breton of the Kohl theory far more closely than the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence of the Humboldt theory, nothing existing on Cosa to answer to Anticosti and the north part of Newfoundland required by the latter. Indeed, no close fit in detail is to be expected, for Cosa's map is a copy, if not indeed a copy of a copy or higher degree, made conformably to the methods of the time, by eye-sketching not tracing, without our spirit of meticulous accuracy, and with full knowledge that an original so hastily made could not itself possibly be accurate. Thus every copy would be debased from its predecessor, with the irregularities smoothed out or exaggerated in accord with the personal equation, or the object, of the copyist. Even the original map of Cabot, hastily made with imperfect methods, must have been far from accurate, so limited was his vision from the deck of his ship, and so often obscured by mist or mirage, fog, storm, semi-darkness, and navigational emergencies, not to mention the ever-present falsification in aspect of an irregular coast through horizontal foreshortening, which jumbles islands, peninsulas, coves and bays hopelessly together. How hard it is for the modern student unversed in practical navigation, and looking down on a whole country spread out on our practically perfect maps, to appreciate the limitations of the explorer, and understand the anomalies his maps present! By our maps we can take a birdseye view of a great country, while the explorer is limited to a germseye view, so to speak, on its surface. Only he who has himself tried to map new country can fully appreciate the deceptions it can present. Thus the geographical data of the Cosa map are not conclusive as to the identity of his named coast, though this important fact emerges, that they are far more consistent with the Kohl theory, of Cape Race to Cape Breton Island, than with any of the others. We undertake now the critical analysis of the detailed topography 16
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and place-nomenclature of the Cosa named coast, the data wherefor are presented in our plate Figs. 4, 5, 6, 7. Spaced along this coast are five prominent flags, all alike and bearing in their two dark quarterings the cross of St. George (not shown in our reproductions, though clear in the partially coloured copy by Humboldt) which show them to be the flags of England. This proof of formal connection with England prior to 1500 can apply to no other expedition than Cabot's. The flags, however, have presumably a further meaning. In the letters patent for the first voyage (.Biggar, 9) the Cabots were granted by Henry VII the right "to sail under our banners, flags, and ensigns," and given license "to set up our aforesaid banners and ensigns in any town, city, castle, island or mainland whatsoever, newly found by them." One record of the voyage says (Biggar, 14) that Cabot "planted on the land which he has found a large cross with a banner of England and one of St. Mark, as he is a Venetian." It was the natural custom of the time for discoverers, as old records show, to erect such marks of possession, the Portuguese, especially, making them, of enduring stone; and it may have been one of theirs, rather than of Sebastian Cabot's, that Cormack mentions as cut on a rock at Point of Grates on the east coast of Newfoundland (Narrative, of 1828). It was of course such a mark, in form of a cross thirty feet high bearing under the cross-bar a shield with three fleurs-de-lys in relief and above them a board carved in large Gothic letters "Vive le Roy de France," which Cartier set up at Gaspé in 1534, though explained to the protesting Indians as a navigation mark (Biggar, Voyages, 64). We may gain some idea of the probable form used by Cabot from the description of the taking possession of St. John's, Newfoundland, by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, where, after description of various ceremonies, it is said,—"And afterward were erected not farre from that place the Armes of England ingraven in lead, and infixed upon a pillar of wood" (Hakluyt, ed. of 1904, VIII, 54). It is therefore wholly reasonable to suppose that these flags on Cosa's map, following Cabot's, indicate places where Cabot set up marks of English possession, a conclusion supported by the fact that they always stand at notably prominent points, indeed the five most prominent points on the named coast. The words on the named coast are all in Spanish form, in this according with the custom of the time whereby a map-maker assimilated to his own tongue, as far as he could, all words from other maps regardless of the original language. Jomard's careful reproduction (Fig. 5) shows that they fall into two series,—first, a few which are obvious place-names, compound, with initial capitals, in thinner 17
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lettering, and set well out from the coast, and second, a larger number which are mostly single words, uncapitalized, in heavier lettering, and closer to the coast. All circumstances would suggest that the latter represent words or fragments of phrases descriptive of features of the coast important to sailors, originally on Cabot's map and here turned into Spanish form. They are, however, unintelligible to scholars in Spanish, and must therefore be grievously corrupted, through repeated careless copying or allied cause; and the extent of the corruption provides a reason for thinking that this Cosa map is not the original, but a copy, perhaps several times removed. It is true, Archbishop O'Brien, in his aforecited papers, has no trouble in finding suitable meanings for them all, but only by methods which appeal more to the imagination than the reason. It is possible, though I think not probable, that we may be driven to a resort offered us by a remark of Nordenskjôld's, when (Periplus, 149), speaking of some Cosa names in northern Europe, he says that they must be pure fantasy and written simply to fill a blank space on the map, adding,—"Doubtless many names in Cosa's map of the New World have a similar origin." I suspect that the words in question are genuine, but have a status to which we have not yet found the clue, possibly being designed to convey information secretly. We take the names in order from west to east, leaving for the moment the phrase "mar descubierta por inglese." CAUO DESCUBIERTO, in "descriptive" form, means obivously "(the) cape (that was) discovered." This phrase would naturally designate the place where Cabot first sighted land, which place is identified as the northern part of Cape Breton Island on the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544, where appear the words "prima vista" and "prima tierra vista." If one thinks it navigationally improbable, or impossible, that Cabot, coming from England, could have missed Newfoundland and made a landfall on Cape Breton, let him read Dawson's conclusive argument and evidence on this point in his aforecited first paper on the Cabot voyages. So much substantial evidence points to Cauo descubierto as Cabot's landfall, with none to the contrary, that we may well accept this conclusion, at least temporarily as a working hypothesis. Here, however, is a point of consequence, viz., the phrase on Cosa's map stands against no cape, but opposite a prominent incurved bight of the coast, the greatest of all on the named part of the map. As the cape east of this bight bears a cape name (Co., i.e., Cauo, de S. Jorge), it is quite reasonable to suppose that our Cauo descubierto really belongs to the prominent cape at the western end of the bight, where the name stood on Cabot's map, 18
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being probably forced from that position on Cosa's map through lack of room caused by prior printing of the phrase "mar descubierta por inglese." Indeed, the presence of this phrase is perhaps responsible for an elision of other place-names from the coast above it. As to the exact place of the landfall, we have no knowledge, but the first landing place in its vicinity may be indicated in that "Port Breton, proche du cap sainct Laurent en l'Isle du Cape Breton" (perhaps our Aspy Bay) intended to be marked by an unfortunately missing Figure 71 on Champlain's map of 1632, and clearly shown, as P. Breton not far south of C. St. Laurent on the Guerard map of 1631. Just west of this cape, Cosa places a group of islands, which is by far the most prominent and definitely drawn of any group on this coast, a fact suggesting that they were laid down on Cabot's map for some specially noteworthy reason. Their position is consistent with that of the group of islands, peninsulas, and broken country which must look from the sea more like an archipelago than it really is, at the eastern extension of Cape Breton Island, centering in the Cape Breton of our modern maps (Fig. 7). The largest and farthest projecting of these islands, viz., Scatari, is taken by Dawson and by Biggar for the Isle St. John so named by Cabot (legend of the Sebastian Cabot map) because discovered later on the day of the landfall (June 24), which was made early in the morning; but there is reason for believing, as noted in a moment, that Cabot's Isle St. John was our St. Paul, north of the landfall. As to the waterway which debouches between Cauo descubierto and the islands, that may have been suggested by a glimpse of the great valley of the tidal Bras d'Or system, assumed to swing down from the north. It is true, the testimony of the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544 has been held of slight, if any worth, by Harrisse and others, partly because of their doubt as to his part in it, and more because of their doubt as to his veracity. As result of no small study of this map, on which I hope later to comment more fully, I agree with those who think it a mediocre production quite unworthy the known cartographical powers of its alleged author; for in the main it is no more than a poor compilation from materials then current among map-makers. Nevertheless the words "prima vista," and "prima tierra vista," at the northern end of Cape Breton Island, appear on no other known map, and could hardly have been supplied by any other than Sebastian Cabot himself, as is also admittedly true of the legends pertaining to our region as printed on the margins of the map. My own conclusion is that Sebastian Cabot had nothing to do with the compilation of the map, which is hack work, but did supply, presumably in reply to 19
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persuasive request, certain materials for the legends, with information as to the place of the landfall, including the words (in Latin, be it noted, though affected by the Spanish nomenclature of the map) prima tierra vista and prima vista, which expressed his knowledge or belief that the Cabot landfall was at or near the northern end of Cape Breton Island,—a matter in which he was in a position to be correct. Further, like considerations would explain the puzzling matter of the application of the name y. de S. Juan (Isle St. John) to an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence which all students now agree was the larger of the Magdalene group as mapped by Cartier. This name also is on no other map, and it is wholly reasonable to suppose that Sebastian Cabot placed it there (near a half century after the event) under the impression that this specially prominent island north of Cape Breton Island was meant for our Isle St. Paul (see Fig. 7) which had been named St. John on the first expedition. The reasonableness of this explanation of the old puzzle as to the presence of the Isle St. John of the Cabot map yields a certain support to the assumption that the island named St. John by Cabot was really our St. Paul's Island, a conclusion further supported by the fact that Alfonse, in his Cosmographie of 1545, clearly applies the name St. John to our St. Paul's (Biggar, Voyages, of 1924, 301). As to the large island of St. John outside of the Gulf, shown diversely upon many maps from Reinel, 1505 onward, and variously interpreted as Scatari or as Cape Breton Island itself, that seems to be merely a cartographical convention, retained but diversely interpreted and represented on later maps. As to the relation of either Isle St. John with the Isle St. John now called Prince Edward Island,— that appears to be quite another story, and in any case there is not the least ground for warping the Cabot itinerary to include the latter island, as several students have done, notably F. Kidder, in N.E. Historical and Genealogical Register, XXXII, 1878, 380. Returning to our Cosa map, we find westward of the group of islands a very distinct bight of squarish shape crudely conformable to Louisburg Harbour, and marked by one of those flags which we take to indicate landings and the erection of marks indicative of English possession. Now the former name of Louisburg Harbour was "Port of the English," as shown by the earliest maps and records which make use of the local place-nomenclature,—in this case the Leigh narrative of 1597 (Hakluyt, ed. 1904, VIII, 174) which has "the English port," and Champlain's narrative of 1607, which has "Port aux Anglois," a name appearing thereafter on numberless maps for over a century. Recent writings ascribe to the name an origin in the early resort there of English fishermen, but that is a pure guess unsupported by any 20
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record ; and it is reasonable to suppose that the name originated in a visit of Cabot's expedition, the presence of the flag suggesting that it was here he erected his first mark of possession, that "large cross with a banner of England and one of St. Mark," of which the record speaks; and he may well have passed here his first night in the new world. Further, the Bay next west of Louisburg Harbour is now called Gabarus, a word of quite unknown origin, even though it has been explained as a corruption of Chapeau rouge, used in documents connected with the sieges of 1745 and 1758, as also of Cabarrus, a French personal name appearing in connection with Cape Breton Island in 1736 and later (Bourinot, these Transactions, IX, 1891, ii, 267, and A. Fauteux, in Bull, des Recherches Historiques, XXXV, 72-74). It seems plain enough that the former is an English corruption of Gabarus, but a connection between Gabarus and Cabarrus seems negatived by the fact that the name appears as early as the Jean Guerard map of 1631, where it has the form Gabor (Gabari, Jumeau, 1685: Gabon, Bellin, 1744: Gabarus, Franquet, 1751). Thus there seems a possibility that this word is a corrupted survival of some term in which the Gaba- or Gabo- was originally Cabot,—often spelled Gabot in the contemporary records. One might indeed hazard a pure guess to the effect that, as this Bay and Louisburg Harbour have a headland, in common, on. or near where the Cabot cross would naturally have stood, Gabarus may represent a gallicized corruption of ''Cabot's Cross", applied to that headland. If a connection with Cabot could be proved for this name, it would present one of the most striking cases of poetic justice in history, for in that case Gabarus, embodying Cabot's name, would be the oldest surviving place name of European origin on the North American continent. But it is only a speculation. As to the coast westward to the next English flag, that is less clear, but its representation on Cosa's map is consistent with the supposition that it is a very greatly exaggerated representation, as sketched from a moving ship, perhaps not by Cabot, but by another member of the expedition using a different scale, of the coast as far west as Cape Canso, the indentations answering to the prominent valleys of St. Peter's Bay and the Gut of Canso, or possibly Chedabucto Bay. The flag at the cape may well indicate the erection of another of the marks of possession (though the Flag Island, on detailed charts there, is doubtless a coincidence), and the western limit of the voyage, since beyond that point there is not the least connection traceable between Cosa's map and the real topography. This part of the named coast,—from the 3rd to the 5th flags,—is very differently interpreted in the recent work by Prowse, who makes it represent the 21
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Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the inlets standing for the Strait of Belleisle, St. Lawrence River, Bay Chaleur, &c. A chief argument therefor rests in a certain resemblance of this part to the round bay generally accepted as representing the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the well-known Viegas, Riccardiana, and Wolfenbüttel maps. It is not, however, impossible that the supposed Gulf of St. Lawrence on these maps is a copy, further exaggerated, originating in this part of Cosa,—a matter needing further investigation. Co. DE s: JORGE, in "place-name" form, means of course "Cape (Cauo) of St. George," an appropriate name to be given by Cabot, exploring for England. It stands near the eastern end of the great bight whereof the western entrance is formed by the prominent cape we have identified as Cosa's Cauo descubierto, which bight, accordingly, could represent only the great entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This entrance, by the way, bears on recent maps the appropriate name Cabot Strait, not, however (it may be well to add) as a survival from Cabot's day, but because newly given in 1888 by the British Admiralty, (Geographical Journal, IX, 1897, 609; ms. statement from the Hydrographer). Looking now to our modern maps we find that just within the eastern end of the great bight (which is at the cape marked by a flag) is a projecting peninsula bearing the name Cape St. George, with a deep bay southeast of it called St. George's Bay. This name, in full local use, is very old, going back to the earliest maps which record the local nomenclature, and even earlier, for it occurs, applied to the Bay, in a narrative of a voyage to this region in 1594, given by Hakluyt (edition of 1904, VIII, 163). Every consideration would indicate that this Cape St. George is an actual survival of Cosa's Co. de s: Jorge, a conclusion which I find that Prowse, in his recent work, has independently reached. It is a reasonable inference from the data that Cabot, after first sighting land near the northern end of Cape Breton Island, soon afterwards saw St. Paul's Island (naming it St. John) and, far away, the high lands of southwestern Newfoundland. First turning, however, southward to examine the Cape Breton coast as we have described, he on his return crossed towards Newfoundland, mistaking, in view of the presence of land to the northeast, the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a great bight of the coast with shore hidden by mist or distance, precisely as Cartier, in 1534, made the strait south of Anticosti a bight of the coast. It is possible, however, that Cabot himself took this bight for open sea (leaving it undefined on his own map), in which case we have good explanation of his reported account of his discovered country as "two new very large and fertile islands" (Biggar, 16). 22
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Nearing Cape Ray (or Cape Anguille), where he could see Cape St. George, he may well have swung north to a clear view of Cape and Bay, entering very likely the latter, as our next name indicates. If it seems improbable that our name Cape St. George (with Gabarus, and others later noted) can be a survival of a name given by Cabot, we have only to recall that he was accompanied by English sailors, some of whom undoubtedly would have been taken as pilots on the several later voyages from Bristol (Biggar, xx-xxi), whence there was a gradual transition to the use of that coast by fishermen and residents. Thus names given by Cabot and known to his sailors would be passed along from mouth to mouth until fixed, their inclusion upon maps and in records being a secondary later matter. Here, however, is a point worthy of separate and special mention, viz., if the foregoing conclusions are well founded, this name Cape St. George, is the oldest authenticated place-name of Europaen origin not only in Newfoundland, but also in British America, and the entire North American continent. Its only possible competitors for this major honour would seem to be the very dubious Gabarus already mentioned, and the somewhat different case of Cape Breton later discussed. The foregoing conclusions as to Cabot's itinerary thus far raise the question as to why Cosa's map spreads these localities along nearly an east and west line, although, as comparison of Figs. 4, 5, or 6, with 7 shows, a northerly and northeasterly course are involved. In answer it may be said that the deviations of these courses from their true meridians is somewhat lessened by the aforementioned use of European compasses in Cabot's time, but more important is the fact, indicated especially by the already-noted great corruption of the Spanish descriptive words, that our Cosa map is apparently a copy, if not a copy of a copy even to several degrees, of Cosa's own original ; and the usual tendency of all such copying, done not by tracing but simply by eye-sketching, is to smooth out and straighten a coast. Even the Cabot map used by Cosa must necessarily have been a sketched copy, or copy of a copy, and therefore imperfect to begin with. Later maps than Cosa's show such a straightening even more remarkably, as in the Maggiolo, the H. Verrazano, and the Ribero, maps showing the Verrazano and Gomez voyages, in all of which the outer coast of Nova Scotia and the coast of Maine form one continuous line, ignoring the great right-angled bend necessary to lead from one to the other. Even Champlain's maps, and Coronelli's of 1689, show the south coast of Newfoundland in a straighter line than does Cosa. LAGO FORi, in "descriptive" lettering, seems clearly to belong with 23
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the deep bay (plain on Sagra and Jomard though obscure on the Stokes photograph) southeast of Co. de s: Jorge, and therefore our St. Georges Bay. Lago is no doubt "lake," but for! is obscure, though one may surmise that the term applies either to the elongated straight lake through which the St. Georges River enters the head of the Bay, or else to Port au Port, which, seen across a low narrow isthmus, must look anomalously like a great enclosed salt lake. It is inherently probable that Cabot would have gone to the head of this remarkable deep bay, the first to be met in the land northeast of Cape Breton. On this basis the cape marked by the next flag would be the prominent Cape Ray, a wholly natural place for the erection of another of the marks of possession. The origin of this very old name Ray is unknown and may possibly have connection with Cabot's voyage, though a derivation from Cartier's name Cape Royal, via a form Real, has been suggested on slight grounds (these Truncations, VII, 1889, ii, 51). It is not to be supposed that Cosa repeats all of the names on Cabot's map. ANSRO, or AUSTO, an indistinct word omitted by Humboldt and by Sagra, Is obscure. On old maps appears here a word Sanscot (in diverse forms), presumably a coincidence. Co. DE S. LUZiA (SLUZIA on Jomard, modernized to CBO. DE SA. LUCIA by Humboldt), would seem clearly to mean "Cape of St. Lucia," but a reason for its application is not evident. Standing nearly opposite the most southerly bend of the coast here, it would fall not far from the Bazile, or the Dead Islands, undistinctive places, and one would like to connect it with the Highlands of Garia a little to the eastward. REQUILEA (REQUILIA; R. CONILIA, with three islands in a row, on Sagra: Rio RALIA, clearly an error, on Humboldt), another "descriptive" term, might well describe something near La Poile Bay, where three islands (one called Ireland I.) do indeed occur, as shown on detailed charts. One would like to connect it with Connoire Bay (R. CONILIA), but that is rather far east. Its significance is obscure, but Biggar mentions a French word elsewhere, viz., Raquelay, as having the sense of "refuge" (Voyages, of 1924, 290). JUSQUEI (INSQUEI on Humboldt: PISQUES on Sagra), in "descriptive" form, is also obscure. It stands at or near the position of the Burgeo Islands. Sagra's form PISQUES would suggest that this was one of the places where Cabot found the fishery so abounding (Biggar, 20). s: LUZIA, (placed too far east on Sagra, as shown by the Stokes photograph), also in "descriptive" lettering, would seem to mean 24
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"Saint Lucia," but herein is involved an evident anomaly, since an unmistakable cape of this name has just been mentioned, and it is wholly unlikely that the same place-name would be given two places not far separated. Hence I infer that the present word is a "descriptive" term, though also obscure. Co. DE LISARTE (Co. DE HLARTE on Sagra, through obvious error, as shown by the Stokes photograph) is in typical place-name form, and has been taken by Kohl and others to mean "Lizard Cape." The name might well indicate some resemblance of the cape to a lizard, or, as more likely, to the well-known Lizard Point, or Head, the most southerly point in England, not far from Bristol, and of course well known to Bristol sailors. The name seems clearly to belong to the prominent peninsula, of the Sagra and Jomard maps, which I take to be the present Bear Head, at the eastern side of White Bear Bay, described in the Newfoundland Pilot (U.S. edition, of 1919, 207), as "a steep bluff falling abruptly from its summit 526 feet high, and fringed by dark cliffs." This cape seen from the southwest would have the group of the Ramea islands projected against the land to the eastward, explaining the three islands in a row of Sagra and the Stokes Photograph, these islands themselves being described in the Pilot, 209, as forming irregular flat-topped ridges, 427 feet high, "conspicuous on northerly bearings." Here, however, is a remarkable fact, viz., after identifying Co. de usarte with Bear Head on purely topographical grounds, I found in the Pilot (p. 208) the statement that among the islands at the entrance of White Bear Bay, just west of Bear Head, there is a "Lizard Rock." In view of the general consistency of the itinerary of Cabot in this region, and the fact that others of the names in "place-name" form have survived (see also below), it seems reasonable to conclude that we are here dealing not with an extraordinary coincidence, as first thought would have it, but with an actual vestigial survival of a name applied by Cabot. The lazerna of the Oliveriana map (noted below) may be the same. MENISTE, (alike on all reproductions, but misspelled MENISTRE on the Kretschmer copy of Jomard, followed by Harrisse, Dawson, and others), is one of the "descriptive" words, though completely mysterious. It would seem to belong with the inlet east of Bear Head, and therefore perhaps to Bay de Vieux of our charts. ARCARE (ARGAIR on Humboldt and ARGNA on Sagra), another "descriptive" word, stands opposite the three islands (of Sagra and Stokes) which we take for Ramea Islands, and of whicn it may describe some feature. FORTE (FONTE on Humboldt and Sagara) also "descriptive," stands 25
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opposite the next projecting point to the east, which is our Cape La Hune, though possibly applying to the Penguin Islands (presumable former resort of the Great Auk, much used as food by the early navigators) well off this cape. There is a Spanish marine term forte, meaning "avast!", and the Pilot (204) mentions lofty cliffs bordering La Hune Bay on both sides, with a remarkable cone on the west, and on the east two waterfalls whence water (fonte?) is easily procured. RO. LONGO, also "descriptive," should mean "a long river," and might well designate the straight elongated Hermitage Bay, or perhaps Despair Bay with valley of Conne River, seen by Cabot just before he swung southeast towards his isla de la trenidat. The Long Island and Long Passage between these Bays on our charts is of course a coincidence. ISLA DE LA TRENIDAT, a typical "place-name" (which does not, however, again appear,) meaning "Island of the Trinity," is applied to the only large island on this coast, which must therefore be our Miquelon-Langlade (or-Langley), as others have noted. The appearance of "three," suggesting the name was presumably given by the three summits, all above 600 feet high, of Miquelon and Langlade (these two being connected only by sand-beaches) with St. Pierre, as seen (and assumed to belong to one island) from the north-east in Fortune Bay, whence Cabot would naturally have approached. It is true, Cosa shows it lying east-west instead of north-south as it does, and thus indeed the group may look as seen foreshortened from Fortune Bay. But it is to be noted that it also lies east-west on later maps wholly unconnected with Cosa (e.g. Champlain's of 1612 and 1632, Mason's of 1624, and Coronelli's of 1689,) the reason here resting, apparently, in a conferred conformity to the general east and west trend given the coast on all of these maps. This isla de la trenidat bears a flag indicating one of Cabot's marks of possession, a most appropriate place for one. Here, however, is a crucial matter, viz., the present name Langlade for the southern island (called also Little Miquelon) seems indubitably a corruption of the word England, as shown by the maps. Thus the Detcheverry map of 1689 (Harrisse, Terre-neuve, pi. xxiv), which closely reflects the local nomenclature, names the southwest point of the Island C. dangleterre, incidentally indicating the place of Cabot's flag-mark, though the name of that point on detailed charts, viz., Plate Pi., originated no doubt not in finding of one of Cabot's lead plates, but in a corruption of the French for "flat point." The de Courcelle map of 1675 (idem, PI. xxiii), has Mielan He anglaise: the Visscher Carte nouvelle of about 1670, has for the southern Island Langlois : the Velasco (or Simancas) map of 1610 26
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(Stokes, Iconography, II, Frontispiece) has Terra England (though the group is too far west), followed by Briggs of 1625, and others. Thus Langlade would be a survival of England, somewhat gallicized, hereby providing a confirmation of Cabot's connection with it. s. NICOLAS, which is clearly on Sagra s. MICULAS, applied to some part of isla de la trenidat, is in "descriptive" form though seemingly a place-name, meaning St. Nicholas, or (in Sagra's form), St. Michael. Here, however, is another crucial point, viz., it seems wholly probable that this word NICOLAS or MICULAS survives, somewhat gallicized, in our present name MIQUELON. The name appears on the de Courcelle map of 1675 as Miclon; on the Chaviteau of 1698 as Miguelon; on the Detcheverry of 1689 as Miquelon (as at present); and on the Mason, of 1626, giving the English local names of the time, (Harrisse, 308) as Miklon. Farther back than this I have not been able to trace it, but it seems hardly possible, especially in view of the identity of Langlade and England, that Miklon, Miclon, and Miquelon can be anything other than a gallicized survival of Miculas. As to the s. or s : before the word, the case is like that of s. luzia and s: grigor below, all in "descriptive" form; and the letter s may not stand for "saint" at all, but for some term like strait. The names of saints on the Cosa map raise the question of a connection between their feast days and the dates of the Cabot voyage. But inspection of these,—St. George, St. Lucia, St. Nicholas, the second St. John (next noted) and St. Gregory,—shows not the least correlation, unless Cabot's voyage occupied not three months, but a year and three months, as some students have suggested (Geographical Journal, IX, 1897, 617-9). There are surely reasons for the occurrence of saints' names on early maps besides dates of discovery. CAUO DE s. IOHAN (CAUO DES WHAN on Sagra), in.typical "placename" form, apparently meaning "Cape of St. John," stands opposite a westerly-extending peninsula whence several islands continue in the same line to isla de la trenidat. As the detailed charts show, such a line of islands exists in Brunei, Sagona, and others, while the peninsula in question, forming the western headland of Fortune Bay, bears on detailed charts the name St. Johns Head, with a St. Johns Island and a St. Johns Bay between them,—and moreover, a Harbour Briton, an English Harbour, and an English Cove occur in the vicinity. Here would seem at first sight another possible survival from the Cabot voyage, but when we note also the presence in the same vicinity of two or three times as many typically French place-names, it seems far more probable that the entire series is of later origin, and connected with the resort here of French, interspersed with English fishermen, 27
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though of course these names may have been coincidentally superposed on an older St. John. There are several St. Johns in Newfoundland, and they cannot be all connected with Cabot, who, moreover, was unlikely to apply the name to a second place so soon after giving it to the island near his landfall. Possibly, however, the name was originally not St. John at all, for Sagra has it DES WHAN, though that may not mean much. The definiteness of delineation of this part of Cosa seems to imply that Cabot went there; and it is not unlikely, indeed, that the name Fortune Bay at least originated with him, perchance from some good-fortune experienced here by the expedition, for on the Oliveriana map, further mentioned below for its possible Cabot nomenclature, there occurs on this coast the name BONAVENTURA, Or BAIA VENTURA.
AGRON, another "descriptive" term, would seem to stand at the southern end of the great Burin peninsula near or opposite the line of dangerous Lamalin ledges, of which, perhaps, Cabot's original word gave warning. C. FASTANATRE (FASTANATRE on Jomard, FASTANARRO on Sagra, FASTANAIRA on Humboldt, but interpreted as SASTONATRE by Stokes in his text), has the typical "descriptive" form. It stands just west of the flag, as Cauo de ynglaterra stands just east thereof; and both may well apply to the same point, the place of the flag, one descriptively and the other as a place-name. It is noteworthy that Sagra has not the C. for Cauo, but instead an elliptical figure with longdiameter line, which may be a conventioanl symbol. The meaning of the word is obscure, though Harrisse thinks it a corruption of finisterre, "end of the land," here appropriate in view of its supposed position at the end of the mainland. The word has some suggestion of the Spanish word Estandarte, used in the phrase Estandarte Real, "Royal Standard," possibly recording the standard of England erected here at the end, as it was at the beginning, of the exploration. CAUO DE YNGLATERRA, in typical place-name form, means clearly "Cape of England," a very appropriate name for Cabot to give under the impression that it was the nearest point of the main new found land to England, while the same reason would make it a most suitable place for one of the marks of possession, indicated by the flag. All topographical evidence, including its distance from isla de la trenidat, in comparison with the distance thence to Cape Ray, would place this Cauo de ynglaterra at the southeastern angle of the Burin Peninsula, at or near St. Lawrence Harbours, close to which stands Chapeau Rouge, (Cosa's agron?) a lofty striking hill which forms a landmark for ships far out at sea. Possibly the word survives in great abbrevia28
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tion and gallic corruption in the old name Laun, also L'ane, L'asne, and Trou de l'Asne, for two harbours in this vicinity. The thought must here arise that perhaps this Cauo de ynglaterra was after all the landfall, where Cabot set up his banners of England and St. Mark, the exploration proceeding thence westward, to Cape Breton and Cape Canso. Many circumstances, however, including the position of the name C. descubierto as already discussed, are opposed to this view. Even greater difficulties attend Weise's idea that the Cauo de ynglaterra of Cosa was our Cape Breton in both position and name, the exploration proceeding southwestward to the Bay of Fundy which was the "mar descubierta por inglese." The Cauo de ynglaterra given to the end of the mainland towards Europe on Cosa's map has been taken by Kohl, Dawson, Biggar and others to apply to Cape Race, but that view is wholly inconsistent with its relative distance from isla de la trenidat, while moreover it leaves no explanation for the large island off the east coast, whereof more in a moment. Prowse, in his aforecited work, identifies Cauo de ynglaterra with Cape English (also a very old name) in St. Mary's Bay near its eastern headland; but this attractive view, which I formerly held and abandoned with reluctance, seems quite negatived by the lack of anything on Cosa's map between Cauo de ynglaterra and isla de la trenidat that could stand for St. Mary's and Placentia Bays. Conceivably, however, the Cabots, on the second voyage the next year, finding their Cavo de ynglaterra was not after all the easterly end of the new land, may have erected another mark of possession at Cape English, thus originating the name. s: GRIGOR, suggests a meaning "St. Gregory," but its typical "descriptive" form is inconsistent with a place-name. It seems clearly to apply to the open sound shown by Cosa between Cauo de ynglaterra and y. verde, which could be only Placentia Bay, whose great length and low separation from the continuing Trinity Bay beyond would give it that appearance from Cauo de ynglaterra, especially in misty weather. Y. BERDE, or VERDE, also in "descriptive" form, clearly applies to the single quadrangular island off the coast, and would mean "(a) green island." There is, of course, no such island east of Cape Race, but everything is consistent with the assumption, that it represents a part of the Avalon peninsula, imperfectly seen by Cabot from his Cauo de ynglaterra across his supposed sound of s : grigor, and mistaken naturally for an island. Cabot, we must remember, saw the country not by looking down in comfort and leisure on a complete modern 29
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chart, but across the water in storm or mist in a wholly unknown region. It is no doubt only a coincidence that across Placentia Bay from Cabot's Cauo de ynglaterra our charts mark a Verde Point. Associated with y. verde is one of those cartographical quirks which so confuse research ; for while th« earlier reproductions of the Cosa map by Humboldt and Sagra, have east of Cavo de ynglaterra a single island clearly named y. verde, with s: grigor applied to the sound, the later reproductions, from Kretschmer on, have two islands, named respectively s : grigor and y. verde. The source of the error is easily traced. Jomard, unfortunately, omitted the name y. verde (perfectly clear on the original as the Stokes photograph shows) allowing the name s:grigor to be mistaken for that of the one island. It was, apparently, under this misapprehension that Krestchmer, finding the name y. verde on Humboldt or Sagra, and thinking a second island to fit the name should be present, added one, out of whole cloth as it
Fig. 5a. Tracing, slightly reduced, from the Kretschmer drawing of Jomard's Cosa, showing the misleading errors followed by others.
seems, placing it just east and at right angles to his island of s: grigor (compare our Figure 5a with Figs. 5, 1, 4, 6); and in this has been followed by Harrisse and others. Dawson's photolithograph of Jomard, however, places this second island farther south, annexing a dark spot there on the Velasco reproduction with which he was familiar. But this dark spot, as shown by the Vallejo-Traynor reproduction and the Stokes photograph, is merely one of the holes in the original Cosa map! On any count, therefore, the second island is an error, and there was on Cosa but one, and that named y. verde, with s: grigor for the sound. It is rather a pity the second island is not real, for its presence would make clear Pasqualigo's statement from Cabot (Biggar, 14) that "on the way back he saw two islands, but was unwilling to land in order not to lose time, as he was in want of provisions." The statement in many writings, that these two islands 30
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lay on the right hand, has been shown by Biggar (Voyages, of 1903) to rest on a mistranslation. Despite Cosa, Cabot may really have seen two supposed islands, the second representing the part beyond St. Mary's Bay, including Cape Race. It is reasonably assumable that Cabot, leaving his Cauo de ynglaterra in belief that it was the end of the mainland, stood off south of east in order to safely clear his mistily seen y. verde, and then on for England. This clear implication of the Cosa map that Cabot's exploration did not extend to Cape Race, but closed at his supposed open sound of srgrigor, (our Placentia Bay), has support from independent sources. As well-known, the earliest maps showing the explorations of the Cortereals in 1500-2 show the Newfoundland-Labrador region as an island in the ocean widely separated by open sea from the Spanish possessions in the tropics, standing thus in distinctive contrast with the continuous coast-line of those maps which show the Cabot discoveries. The earliest of these Portugese maps is that of Cantino (Fig. 8, and Harrisse, Terre-neuve, PI. Ill and p. 44) though another by Canerio is very similar. Now it is evident that the explored coast on these maps, marked by Portugese flags as the two extremities, is laid down from something in the nature of a crude survey. This survey, after Fig- 8. Tracing, reduced to oneextending down the east coast of New- third; from the Revelli Photo- of r ji j . /-. n Cantino of 1502. loundland, turns at our Cape Race along the south coast, where it shows inlets which could stand either for Trepassey and St. Mary's Bays, or as more likely, especially in light of the Reinel map of about 1505, (Harrisse, PL V, and Kohl, PI. IX), for our St. Mary's and Placentia Bays. At all events at the west of the last of the bays the survey ends abruptly, at a Portugese flag, the coast beyond merging indefinitely away. That the Cortereals observed, even though they did not survey, farther is shown by the said Reinel map, which adds to the definite survey topography a general rather conventionalized sketch of the coast to our Cabot Strait, with the east and south coasts of our Cape Breton, to another Portugese flag, including a prominent island of sam johâ (St. John) which may or may not be Cabot's. If we ask now why the Cortereals stopped their survey though not their explorations just where our other evidence shows that Cabot's explorations closed, a wholly reasonable explanation seems to be that it was because they came, at Cauo de 31
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ynglaterra, upon Cabot's mark of possession, and ended their own survey, presumably with a flag mark of their own set up opposite his, or perhaps at Cape St. Mary on the opposite side of Placentia Bay. Probably it was the presence of their cross and flag which gave to St. Mary's Bay its former name of Port de Cruz, shown on early maps. Furthermore, this Cosa-Cabot supposed open sound of s : grigor, with, its attendant y. verde played a later cartographical part of no small import. Thus, the well-known published Mercator map of 1538 (Fig. 9, as also with additions, his globe of 1541), lays down in this region a striking regular north-and-south sound, at whose south-west end lies a little quadrangular island resembling in shape and position the Cosa y. verde, while the land east of the sound is a massed group of islands Fig. 9. Tracing (crude), slightly named Insules Corterealis. These reduced, from Am. Geogr. Soc. photo, islands of Cortereal bear not the of the Mercator of 1538. least resemblance to the indubitable Cortereal region shown in the Cantino and Canerio maps, and must have been added from a wholly independent source. The collective facts are completely consistent with, and explained by, the assumption that on the second voyage, of 1498, the Cabots coasting southward from Labrador too hurriedly for a survey, or for following the many deep passages to their heads, naturally mistook the broken east coast of Newfoundland for a great group of islands, and, rounding our Cape Race, made connection with the preceding year's explorations at Cavo de ynglaterra without discovery that their supposed sound of s: grigor was really an elongated closed bay; and it was from information to this effect, derived ultimately from the Cabots, that Mercator laid down this region as he did on the maps in question. An illuminating sidelight on the island-prepossession, so to speak, of the Cabots, is given by Hakluyt, following the preface to Ramusio, to the effect that Sebastian Cabot once wrote "he veryly beleeved that all the north part of America is divided into Islands" (Winship, Cabot Bibliography, 55). In any case it seems clear that the influence of the Cabots and Mercator underlies the fact that Newfoundland appears as a group of islands on most of the maps for the remainder of the sixteenth century. We do not know, as yet, with what earlier maps Mercator worked, but it is wholly possible, and indeed likely, that he had a sketch, obtained by persuasive inquiry from Sebastian Cabot himself. 32
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But the cartographical career of the Cosa-Cabot sound of s: grigor, with y. verde, did not end here, for not only does Mercator's representation of this region appear on later maps (e.g. the Nancy Globe), and as an elongated but closed bay on some others, e.g., the Egerton of 1508 (Fig. 13, from Stevenson, Atlas of Portolan Charts, 1911), but it is the unmistakable original on which was based the topography of this region on the prominent Gastaldi maps in Ramusio, —the foundation of the fifth independent type for our region for this period, as noted on an earlier page, and as I hope later to show in detail. Comparison of the most elaborate of the Gastaldi maps (Fig. 10) with the Mercator (Fig. 9) seems to make it quite clear that the
Fig. 10. Tracing, reduced to below one-third, and omitting the profusion of decorative detail, from Baxter photo, of the Gastaldi of 1556.
eastern part of Gastaldi represents a cartographical and imaginative elaboration of Mercator, with his north-and-south sound (s:grigor) much broadened, and with the rectangular y. verde bearing the name C. Zw/on,—duplicated further west as C. de breton. Herein rests the simple explanation of the shape of Gastaldi's north and south waterway, which has sorely puzzled all of our later students, who have taken it for the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To the westward the Gastaldi map embodies an attempt to place on a much older topography, by aid of a narrative in absence of a map, a representation of prominent places of 33
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the Verrazano voyage. The older topography, indeed, bears resemblance to Cosa in its system of conventional interior waterways, and even, on the coast, to the. easternmost extension of the Asiatic continent as laid down on the Behaim and Schoner Globes. The presence of the name C. breton on y. verde, was evidently a necessity of the' fact that the Verrazano voyage was known to have ended where the land explored by the Bretons began. As to the names on the east coast of the islands, whereof many survive, these may be those given by the Cabots on their second voyage, for none are known to be associated with the Cortereals, with exception of C. de raz. Indeed, it is only the presence of the latter name on the typical early Portuguese "King," or "Hamy" map of 1505 as Capo raso which saves it from a claim to French origin, since in Finisterre, France, is a Trépassé Bay lying between capes Ras and Van, as in Newfoundland Trepassey Bay lies between Cape Race and Cape Pine, the latter reading Van on early maps,—e.g., a rare map of North America of 1669. Finally, the cartographical sound of s:grigor and island of verde (without those names, of course), survived yet longer, with notable consequences. If one compares with Gastaldi the great "Harleian" map of about 1536 (Harrisse, PI. XII : Biggar, Voyages of 1924) it becomes obvious that the group of islands representing Newfoundland matches island for island throughout with Gastaldi's, while the quadrangular y. verde also appears with the name c. Berton, and has been commonly taken for Cape Breton Island, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso. This island also survives upon later maps. A further influence of the sound of srgrigor appears in the very elongated entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, though this feature is partially due to the merging of the Magdalenes with Cape Breton and the contiguous mainland. All this is true also for the much cruder Rotz map of 1542. If it be said that a map of about 1536 could not be copied from one of 1556, the answer is found in the fact that the Gastaldi is a far more primitive type than the "Harleian", showing not the slightest knowledge of Cartier, whose discoveries in the Gulf the "Harleian" so well sets forth; and therefore the Gastaldi, or a prototype for this part for both maps, must have been available long before 1556, as indeed there are other reasons for believing, as e.g., the well known cruder form of this map by Gastaldi of 1548. If now we trace Newfoundland on the post"Harleian" maps, we find it nearly always represented as a group of islands, more or less condensed and variant, to the end of the century and beyond. Moreover, as such a group of islands could by no means be reconciled with Cartier's account of the west coast of 34
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Newfoundland, his nomenclature there is mostly ignored (with exception only of the Desceliers of 1546) ; while a number of maps meet this unsolvable problem by allowing the west coast to merge off without boundary to the Gulf, a subject to which I hope to return. For these cartographical quirks, no great blame should attach to the map-makers at home, who, if allowance be made for the limitations of their times, were as competent in their profession as are their greatest successors to-day. Geographically myopic as the first explorers perforce were, even blinder were the cartographers at home, who had to piece together and reconcile, without the slightest means of testing their conclusions, the diversely dependable records and maps those explorers brought back. It is no wonder they so often tried to make place for all the possibilities, thus entailing the duplications, anachronisms, vestigial survivals, and other anomalies, all further warped by their own prepossessions, which so greatly perplex later students. Continuing our analysis of the nomenclature of the Cosa map, we have next to note that well within the country, north of Co. de usarte, appears on Jomard an imperfect inscription, which Kohl interprets as CITRA SETEMB, though Harrisse makes it the much less likely ECTRA SE TERRA (Discovery, 414). Its significance, however, is I think quite clear, as a mutilation or corruption of the Spanish Citade septe, meaning "the seven cities," which was one of the mythical islands in the ocean then thoroughly believed in, and for which Cabot sought. The name, in Latin form, septem civitates, appears on one of the Egerton maps of about 1508 (in Stevenson's Atlas earlier cited) on the mainland west of this region, and the Soncino dispatch says (Biggar, 15-6) that Cabot had "discovered the Seven Cities" ("Septe Citade"). Of course he had merely discovered land where the island of the Seven cities was supposed to be. The extent of the corruption of this evident name shows how great must be the corruption of other words on the Cosa map. We return now to the phrase MAR DESCUBIERTA POR INGLESE, of which, undoubtedly, a terminal s has vanished in the colouring of the land. It means of course "sea discovered by the English." In view of the foregoing identifications there can be no doubt of its identity; for, although the words are crowded to the left (seemingly in order to leave room for the names on the right), they can apply only to the sea which lies in the angle between the converging coasts of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island, with an apex in our Cabot Strait. It is precisely here, indeed, in our Cabot Strait itself, that Alfonse's map, of 1545, has ENTREE DES BRETONS. The exact words of Cosa do not 35
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reappear, but on the very next map that places any inscription in this region, viz., the well-known anonymous Portuguese "Kunstmann IV" of 1516-20 (Harrisse, PI. VIII, Stevenson, No. 5) the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is clearly shown, and opposite its western side occurs the inscription TERRA Q FOY DESCUBERTA POR BERTOMES, which of course means "land which was discovered by bretons." On another Portuguese map of little later date, showing this region more fully and accurately (the Miller 1 of Harrisse, PI. VII, and Reinel of 1516 in Denucé's Origines de la Cartographie Portugaise, of 1908) the unmistakable projecting angle of Cape Breton is named C. DO BRETOES, that is, "Cape of the Bretons." All subsequent detailed maps of this region have either TERRE DE BRETONS, with diverse minor variants of spelling, for the country west of the St. Lawrence entrance, or CAP DE BRETON or C. DE TERRE DUS BRETOYS (Mercator, of 1541) or equivalent for the cape at the angle there, in a completely unbroken succession down to the Cape Breton of our modern maps and familiar usage. Thus our modern place-name Cape Breton goes back directly to the Portuguese map of 1516-20, or its prototype, and it is clearly to the use of the word Bretons ("bertomes") on such maps that we owe our current and universal belief that Cape Breton originated in the presence of French fishermen from Brittany thereabouts early in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless this view seems clearly to be erroneous, as the following data show. If we compare Cosa's MAR DESCUBIERTA POR INGLESE(S) and the 1516-20 Portuguese TERRA Q FOY DESCUBERTA POR BERTOMES, applied in the same geographical position, it becomes evident that the two differ essentially only in the substitution of "land" for "sea," and especially of BERTOMES for INGLESE (s). In view of the known close connections between Portuguese and Spanish cartography, we can hardly doubt that a connection exists between the two nearly identical inscriptions, and that by BERTOMES the Portuguese map of 1516-20 means the same thing as does Cosa by INGLESE(S). It is, indeed, a fact, shown conclusively by citations in the Oxford Dictionary, that at the period concerned, the English were called, among themselves at least, Bretons, Brytons, or Bretones, the familiar form Briton becoming prevalent later,—a subject, by the way, deserving special investigation in this connection. Furthermore, this conclusion that the English and Bretons of these maps were the same people receives striking confirmation from another source, viz., the Rome Ptolemy of 1508, wherein is published the important Ruysch map with full commentary by Marcus Beneventanus, both in Latin. As Harrisse so 36
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fully shows (Terre-neuve, 60), Beneventanus, in speaking of the lands beyond the western ocean refers to the accounts given of them by Columbus, the Portuguese, and the Bretons, adding as to the latter, "whom we now call English" (atque Brittanorum quos Anglos nunc dicimus), while later he uses this same word (Brittannorum) for those who were co-discoverers with the Portuguese in the Newfoundland region. As Beneventanus derived his information for our region from Ruysch, who had been there himself with the Bristol men in their post-Cabot voyages, (though not with the Cabots), there can be hardly any question that the Bretons here meant were English, not French. Harrisse indeed, himself suggests (59) that the island named barbatos in. on the Latin Ruysch map (Fig. 11) (a word quite unintelligible in this form), is an engraver's corruption of Britanno(mm), as, indeed, may be true, since the island in question seems unmistakeably our LangladeMiquelon, formerly called, as we have seen, Terra England, in evident survival of Cabot's first voyage. Harrisse adds (60), that these facts seem to show an early voyage here of the English ; but as Fig. 11. Tracing from Harrisse he held to the view that the Cabot photo-enlargement, reduced to voyages were limited to the outer coasts original size, of the Ruysch of of Newfoundland and Labrador, and 1508. accepted the current idea that the name Cape Breton originated in early voyages of the French Breton fishermen to the vicinity of that island, he controverts this evidence elaborately, but as it seems to me quite inconclusively. Furthermore, he calls attention to the amply-proven voyages of English from Bristol to the Newfoundland region in 1500, 1502, and 1504, while the very earliest record he can find of any voyages of Bretons from Brittany to the same region dates only from 1510 (xxxiv). He speaks of the unfortunate absence of records of early voyages to Newfoundland in the archives of Brittany, "for reasons of which we are ignorant," ignoring the reasonable inference that there were no such voyages. Thus, the collective evidence seems clearly to show that while our name Cape Breton goes directly back to the bertomes of the early Portuguese maps, that word meant at the time the English and not the French Bretons, and referred to the region which Cabot and his Bristol Englishmen discovered on the voyage of 1497. Therefore our Cape Breton would mean "Cape of the English," and would be a direct survival and memorial of the Cabot voyage. It is not, however, 37
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necessarily older as a place-name than Cape St. George and others in Newfoundland, since, on the foregoing evidence, the form Cape Breton came later, as an evolution from an originally descriptive phrase. It is not at all difficult to see how the mistaken attribution of the word to the French instead of the English Bretons arose. The Cabot voyage occurred at about the time the English themselves were dropping their name Bretons in favour of English, leaving the word to the Bretons of Brittany; and as the voyages of the Cabots were almost unknown in detail and toon forgotten, it was natural that the persisting word Bretons of the maps and speech of the sailors would come to be taken as meaning the French Bretons, themselves great voyagers of the time, thus originating a popular explanation of the word as due to early Breton French discovery and resort there. This idea seems first to appear in the Ramusio of 1556, in a discourse on the discoveries of the French, written, (as shown by internal evidence) in 1539, where it is stated that thirty-five years earlier (i.e., in 1504) the Bretons and Normans commenced their navigation to these (i.e., our) parts. From this source, no doubt, was drawn the cross, surmounted by fleur-de-lys, on the Gastaldi map (Fig. 10) near C. de raz, and the inscription on the great Mercator map of 1569, (translation in Crouse In Quest of the Western Ocean, 1928, 65) which reads,—"In the year 1504 the first Bretons came to the shores of New France about the harbours of the Gulf of St. Lawrence," repeated on the influential Coronelli map of 1689 in connection with Newfoundland,—as "Elle fut fréquentée par les François de Bretagne et de Normandie l'an 1504." For this statement, there is no direct evidence whatever (though Bristol Bretons were there in that year), but it is small wonder that with such seeming authority the statement as to the French Bretons re-appears endlessly down to the present. Before leaving the Cosa-Cabot place-nomenclature we may well take note of some other data which may help to elucidate this subject. In Peckham's well-known True Report, of 1583, showing close knowledge of Newfoundland, we read, "there is a faire haven in Newfoundland, knowen, and called untill this day by the name of Sancius haven," the name being here linked with that of Sancius, son of John Cabot, who was included with his father, and his two brothers Lewis and Sebastian, in the Letters-Patent for this voyage (Hakluyt, ed. of 1904, VIII, 109). It has been surmised that the haven here meant is Placentia Bay, but the history of that word (which goes back on maps to the Vallard of 1547 as Ille de plaisance, with nowhere a trace of a form plasansius) yields no support to the idea, which probably rests only in folk-etymology, the name being in reality a transference 38
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from Europe, as are some others in this region. Nevertheless the idea that Cabot may have named places for himself and three sons, Sancius, Lewis, and Sebastian,—is inherently not improbable; and such names might well appear, by custom of the time, semi-disguised as saints' names resembling theirs. Herein may conceivably rest the explanation of the St. John of Fortune Bay, St. Luzia, and even of fastanatre or sastanatre (Sebastian terre?), though it is all very uncertain. How wonderfully would the not impossible discovery of a Cabot map illuminate these matters! At least the names of the Burgundian and of the barber from Castiglione, to whom Cabot gave islands (Biggar, 21), ought somewhere to appear. Moreover, as a (naturalized) Venetian, Cabot might well have given names associated with that country, and possibly the J. marco of the nearly contemporary Oliveriana map stands for St. Mark, and even the 5/. Theodore, on old maps for a river near White Bear Bay, may recall the old patron saint of Venice; and St. Lawrence, for harbours near his Cabo de ynglaterra, might be thought to commemorate the patron saint of his native Genoa, for the claim of members of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition that they gave it in 1583 (Hakluyt, ed. of 1904, VIII, 88), is false, since it is on Le Testu of 1555. Not all names given by Cabot, and passed along by his crew, would appear on Cosa. Other names, by the way, on the east coast of Newfoundland (e.g. Cabot Islands, an alternative for Stinking Islands near Cape Bonavista, according to the Pilot, p. 527), together with those on the Gastaldi map already mentioned, the Oliveriana, mentioned below, and some others suggested by Prowse (Geographical Journal, IX, 1897, 616) may well be survivals from the second Cabot voyage, of 1498. From this voyage may also have originated the Cross Island and Port I'Anglois, near La Have, Nova Scotia, on post-Champlain maps. The end of these studies is not yet. As to the name Newfoundland, its evolution is easily followed. Its first trace appears in the phrase "to hym that founde the new Isle (Biggar, 12), in a Privy Purse entry, of Aug. 10, 1497, the word Isle expressing, presumably, the belief that it was one of the islands in the Atlantic (mostly imaginary) shown on globes and maps of the time. Cabot, however, believed he had found mainland leading towards Asia (Biggar, 14, 20), which fact probably explains the first use of "land" in the phrase "the londe and Isles of late founde by the seid John" of the second Letters-Patent of Feb. 3, 1498 (23), said to follow "tenour" suggested by him. The name appears first as "the newe founde Launde" in an entry of Sept. 30, 1502, and this descriptive phrase completes its evolution into full rank as a place-name on the 39
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Latin map of Ruysch of 1508, where it appears, applied as now, in the form Terra nova. It was not long thereafter before the French were calling it Terre-neuve, and the English Newfoundland. In face of the abundance and consistency of the evidence, albeit nearly all circumstantial, revealed by the foregoing analyses, concurring to show that Cosa's named coast represents the south coast of Newfoundland and Cape Breton and that this was the region explored by Cabot on his first voyage, it is needless to attempt any detailed examination of the competing theories, for even the least study thereof shows what hopeless difficulties and anomalies attend the effort to identify on the ground the details of Cosa's map in relation to the records of Cabot's first voyage. One reservation must, however, be made, and that concerns Prowse's argument that the western part of Cosa's named coast, from the third to the fifth flags, represents the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as to which more anon. For completeness, we must make further comment upon known maps which show distinctive detail connected with our immediate subject. First of these maps is the Contarini of 1506, (Fig. 12), now available in the fine annotated reproduction issued by the British Museum in 1926. For our region (which is connected with Asia), it seems to combine a Cosa-like general outline with data from the Cortereal voyages, for the two names on the map should certainly be theirs. Being engraved (the first for this region), it was naturally followed by others, though crudely, in the Fig. 12. Tracing, a little reduced, from the British Museum photo, of Contarini of way of the times, e.g., by Mag1506. giolo of 1511, and Roselli later, as reproduced by Harrisse. The Ruysch map of 1508 (Fig. 11), mentioned earlier at some length, while of the same general type as Contarini, gives for the Newfoundland Cape Breton region a representation which is wholly independent of, and far superior to, any earlier known, nor is it (perhaps for the former reason), followed by any others, even though accessible to all in the published Ptolemy of 1508. It lays down clearly the Strait of Belleisle and our Cabot Strait with part of the 40
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Gulf of St. Lawrence, as also Placentia Bay in its true guise as a bay, not a sound. The nomenclature of the east coast of Terra Nova does not here concern us except for its C. DE PORTOGESI, which has been taken for Cape Race, but which I agree with Prowse in making a cape farther north, no doubt the one called Cap des Portugais, near St. Johns on the Buache map of 1736 (Harrisse, Terre-neuve, PI. XXVI.) Its BARBATOS IN. (ínsula) is clearly our Miquelon-Langley, but Harrisse's already-mentioned idea that the name is an engraver's slip for Britannum seems less probable than that it is an error for some form of barbarus, "a savage," referring to the resort there of Beothuks, or Red Indians, and perhaps the place where Cabot found his traces of native inhabitants. Although Howley in his fine monograph on that race does not record evidence of their presence there, he does so for other places on the south coast of Newfoundland, and it is wholly likely they resorted to this attractive and accessible island. As to BIGGETU, which Biggar (Voyages, of 1903, 527) identifies with Scatari, and makes mean "woody island" from a late Latin word for wood, one likes to think it connected with bigae (adjective Mgatus) meaning a pair of horses yoked by a crossbar, in description of the shape of Cape Breton Island, as composed of two great lobes separated by the Bras d'or lake system, but held together by a narrow neck at St. Peters; though this is no doubt pure fantasy. Of the same year is the remarkable "Egerton" map of 1508 (Fig. 13), finely reproduced in Stevenson's aforecited Atlas ofPortolan Charts (and Harrisse's Terre-neuve, 70). It is based clearly on Cortereal sources for the east coast of Newfoundland, though bearing the Cabot name Fig. 13 Tracing, reduced to one-half, TERRA DE LOS BACHALAOS, the from a Stevenson photo, of the " Egerton " earliest appearance of that im- of 1508. portant name. To the northward is Davis Strait, and beyond it TERRA DE LABRADOS (our Greenland) all derived from the Cabots. West of Terra de los bachalaos runs northwest a great bay, which seems clearly Cabot's sound of s : grigor, our Placentia Bay, as shown by the presence of a short piece of the south coast of Newfoundland at the eastward ; by the two great rivers on the west answering to the waterways shown by Cosa ; and by the general resemblance of the coast to the westward to that on Cosa's map. Thus this map, like the Gastaldi, seems to reflect some direct 41
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influence of Cosa. The great size of the sound and its closure to a bay may well represent some attempt to identify it with a rumoured Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Fig. 14 Tracing, from a Prowse Ms. outline from original, reduced below onehalf, with names from the Harrisse photo-copy, of the "Oliveriana" or "Pesara" of very early sixteenth century.
There remains the very early aberrant and puzzling "Oliveriana" or "Pesaro," map (Fig. 14), best known from Harrisse's Terre-neuve, PI. IV. At first sight its coast line suggests Cosa, but comparison shows wide differences, while various features recall the pre-Cosan maps of the eastern extension of Asia, whereof several are known. With none of these does it match exactly (that never happens in maps of the period), though the match might be closer had we the lost Toscanelli map; but in general outline and position of the rivers there is marked resemblance to the east-Asian extension as shown on the Doppelmeyr, Ghillany, and Ravenstein reproductions of the Behaim globe of 1492. The probability that it came from that source is increased by the fact that the shape of the ínsula de labrador is very closely like that assigned the mythical Atlantic island of the seven cities on some pre-Cosan maps, though the island of GROGAY is an addition, as is also the land, partially shown in the upper right-hand corner of Fig. 14, obviously representing our Greenland. The names, including several on Greenland omitted from our cut, are all more or less obviously associated with the Cabots though they occur in anomalous order and position. Thus, LASERNA may well be the Usarte of Cosa ; CAUO DEL MARCO may be Cape of St. Mark; BAIA VENTURA, (or BONAVENTURA) bonaventure, may survive as Fortune Bay ; TERRA DE CORTE may be Cortereal, meaning Land of the Cortereals, marking their western limit and the eastern of Cabots' first exploration ; PONTA DEL PA may 42
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be ponta del padrao, cape of the territorial mark; while GROGAY though applied to an island which would seem intended for isla de trenidat (Miquelon-Langlade), may be Cosa's s: GRIGOR misplaced. The next four names BACOLAOS, BOSAS, (rosasr) and LASPERA (our Cape Spear) are all recognizable, but should stand on the east not the south coast. As to BAIA DE RAS (or cos, as Harrisse makes it), that may be rosas, not race. Taken as a whole, this map seems to represent the attempt of an unknown early cartographer to embody somewhat uncertain information about Cabot places and names on a map, which, in absence of Cabot's, he compiled from the sources above-mentioned.
ADDENDUM. As this paper is in press, there has appeard J. A. Williamson's Voyages of the Cabots (London, Argonaut Press, 1929), a sumptuous monograph on its subject, admirably documented and illustrated, and critically balanced in discussion. Its frontispiece is a superb reduced copy of Jomard's reproduction of the Cosa map, though the plate of the "named coast" is a further-degenerated copy of Kretschmer. He places C. de ynglaterra on Cape Breton Island, C. s: Jorge at Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, and Cauo descubierto on the Maine Coast near Penobscot (essentially the aforementioned theory of Weise), where he makes the first Cabot voyage close. The second voyage he makes cover the same ground and extend beyond, with the fifth flag at Cape Cod, to the mouth of the Delaware. He elaborates the claim, first advanced by Winship in 1900, for a voyage of 1508-9 by Sebastian Cabot in search of a northwest passage and extending to Hudson Bay, a conclusion which seems well grounded. It is supported, indeed, by the "Egerton" map of 1508 (our Fig. 13, if that map belongs, as it may, in 1509), and by the j'return arcticum of the Mercator map of 1538 (our Fig. 9) a feature presumably communicated to Mercator by Sebastian Cabot along with the Insules Corterealis, as noted on an earlier page of this paper. The author also holds that Cosa, for certain diplomatic reasons, purposely placed the Spanish West Indies too high, and that Cabot placed his named coast west of Bristol because his charter did not authorize him to explore south of it (the "eastern, western and northern sea")—a point not conclusive in view of a wording later in the same sentence of the charter. Williamson's identification of the Cosa named coast (the only matter here at issue) seems to me quite indefensible in comparison with that elaborated in this paper, supported as the latter view is by its abundance of consistent new local data. But that is for others to decide. 43
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SECTION II, 1930.
[135]
TRANS. R.S.C.
Crucial Maps in the early Cartography and Place-nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, II By W. F. GANONG, A.M., Ph.D. Corresponding Member, R.S.C. (Read by title at May Meeting, 1930) In the preceding paper, No. 1, under this title, published in the Society's Transactions for 1929, it was stated that the early cartography (to 1600) of the Atlantic Coast of British America centers historically in three regions, whereof the southernmost includes the south coast of Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, the east coast of Nova Scotia, and the mainland beyond to a natural limit at the Penobscot in Maine. It was further stated that the cartography of this region for the period is dominated and chiefly determined by four official voyages of exploration, with resultant types of maps whereof all of the many others are but variant and fancifully-elaborated compilations. The first of these types, the Cosa of 1500, believed to represent the first Cabot voyage, was there critically analyzed and discussed, and it is the purpose of the present paper to continue the subject by a like discussion of the second of the type maps, which, involving certain ones between 1520 and 1530, culminate in the Homem maps after the middle of the century, this type resting on the Fagundes voyages. In a possible third paper I hope to extend the study in like manner to the remaining maps of the century, excepting the aberrant Italian series, an account of which will complete this outline of the Cartography for this region and period. 2. The third decade and Homem maps, and the Fagundes Voyages About 1520 the earlier indefinite maps of our region gave place to a series which laid down a definite recognizable topography from Cape Race to beyond Cape Breton Island, and which presented a score of place-names, of evident Portuguese origin, whereof nearly half have survived. Further, on a later homogeneous group of maps by the eminent Portuguese cartographers Lopo and Diogo Homem there appear, for the Nova Scotia coast from Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy and beyond, certain distinctive features, including Portuguese-French place-names that have survived, indicative of local knowledge, and all suggestive of a derivation from a later extension of the first source of information. Such data could only have been 45
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supplied by an actual exploration made about 1520 by a Portuguese expedition, supplemented by further later observations from the same or a similar source. The only explorer known to have visited our region at that time was the Portuguese Joam Alvares Fagundes, who in 1520 or a little earlier, explored under official authorization of the King of Portugal the region between Cape Race and Cape Breton; while furthermore this exploration was later followed by attempts of his to settle Cape Breton Island. The rational a priori inference that the Fagundes voyage and settlement was the source of the data for the third decade and Homem maps proves to be confirmed and extended by the intensive analysis of the data, especially in relation to the local setting, as follows. We consider first the Fagundes data. Our knowledge of a Fagundes voyage rests substantially on a single document, but that apparently of unimpeachable authenticity. It was first printed in de Bettencourt's Descobrimentos. . . .dos Portuguezes, Lisbon, 1881-2, from an original preserved in Portugal, and is accessible, in original and translation, in Biggar's Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1911, 127-131. It consists of a duly authenticated copy made before a notary in Vianna, Portugal, on May 22, 1521, of a confirmation of Letters Patent from King Emmanuel to Fagundes dated March 13 the same year. The essential parts thereof here follow, in the words of Biggar's translation, to which I have added in parentheses the spelling of geographical names taken directly from de Bettencourt, in whose copy, by the way, punctuation is almost wanting. "King Emmanuel, by the grace of God, king of Portugal. . . . "To as many as shall see these our letters we make known, that we "have granted to John (Joam) Alvarez Fagundes, nobleman of our "court, a charter of ours in which it is stated that, thinking it to be to "God's service and our own, and in order to show him favour, it is "our pleasure, should he set off to discover lands, to give and grant "him the governorship of all those islands and lands he may discover " . . . .And that this grant should not include nor embrace the first "land of Brazil from north to south, but towards the north, as we read "in the same charter; by virtue of which charter he set off to discover "lands and islands in the region therein stated, and he now proves "to us by witnesses worthy of credence, that he has found the following "lands and islands, namely: the land said to be mainland which "stretches from the line of demarcation with Castille, which is con"tiguous in the south with our boundary, as far as the land that the "Corte Reals discovered, which is in the north: the three islands in 46
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"Watering-place bay on the coast running north-east and south-west "(tres ilhas na baya d auguoada): and the islands named by him "Fagundes are these, namely: St. John (sam Joam), St. Peter (sam "Pedro), St. Anna (santa ana), and St. Antonio (santo antonió): the "islands of St. Panteliom's archipelago, with Pitiguoem island (ilhas do "arçepelleguo de sam panteliom com a ilha de püiguoeni) : the islands of "the Archipelago of the 11,000 Virgins (arçepelleguo das honze mill "virgeens) : the island of Santa Cruz (santa cruz), which lies at the foot "of the bank, and another island also named St. Anna (santa ana), "which was sighted but not put upon record ; of which lands and islands "we give and grant him the governorship in the same form and manner "that we have granted the governorship of our islands of Madeira "and the rest. . . .these our letters to the said John Alvarez Fagundez "and his successors. . . .for such is our pleasure, in view of his "services and of how at his own expense and cost he discovered the "said lands and islands and spent therein much of his wealth. And in "confirmation of all we command these letters signed by us and sealed "with our hanging seal to be delivered to him. Given in our very "noble and always loyal city of Lisbon on 13 March. Emmanuel "de Fonseca made this in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1521." Unfortunately the date of the original charter to Fagundes is not here stated, nor is the charter itself known, but it could not have been later than the early part of 1520, the latest summer in which Fagundes' voyage could have been made; and both may have been some time earlier. But the document does show that Fagundes, in the year 1520 or earlier, did explore, and give place-names, in a region between that visited by the Cortereals (i.e., Labrador and the east coast of Newfoundland), and the line of demarcation between the Portuguese and Spanish territories. The position of this line on the land had never been determined, and was so indefinite as to leave large leeway for exploration in its general vicinity. Everything in the document would therefore point to an exploration by Fagundes west and south of Cape Race,—or at least of Placentia Bay, where the Cortereals ended their mapping, as shown, with a reason therefor, in the preceding paper (pp. 163-4). We turn now to ask what cartographical evidence of such a voyage appears on the maps of the time. Here, as throughout, the reader can better follow the argument by keeping before him the modern map (Fig. 33) at the end of this paper. The first trace thereof is shown by the Reinel map (Fig. 15, these numbers continuing the sequence from the preceding paper), which Kohl (Discovery, No. IX) ascribed to about 1505, and Harrisse 47
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(Découverte. . . .Terre-neuve, PI. V) to after 1504, but which surely belongs much later. As comparison will show, this map closely follows "Cantino", (Fig. 8) for the east coast of Newfoundland and around to Placentia Bay; but then begins a representation of the south coast of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island which, despite omission of all place-names except /. sam iohâ (a seemingly conventional cartographical, not an actual observational, presentation of Cabot's I. St. John) and y santa cruz (beyond limits of our cut), answers so closely to that of the maps next considered as to leave no question of their identity. Moreover the topography ends at the west with a Portuguese flag, omitted from our Fig. 15 because following Harrisse's photo-reproduction which does not extend so far, though present in Kohl's copy. These flags of course indicate a Portuguese voyage. Very similar is the "Munich" map of 1516-20.
Fig. IS. Tracing from the Harrisse photo-copy of the Reincl map of 150420.
Although Reinel followed the "Cantino" as far as it went (i.e., to Placentia Bay), adding the remainder from the new source, there is ample indication that this new source showed also a new sketch-survey from Cape Race to Placentia Bay, including a new and important representation of that Bay. This complete topography first appears on the "Miller" map (Fig. 16), the relation whereof to Reinel, except for its new representation of Placentia Bay and the coast to Cape Race, is evident, extending even to the presence of the Portuguese arms at its western end (omitted from our Fig. 16 which does not extend quite so far). Harrisse (Découverte, PI. VII) dates this map about 1520, though Denucé (Origines de la cartographie portugaise, 1908), who gives a clearer though smaller photo-reproduction than Harrisse's, thinks it belongs about 1516, and is also by Reinel. This "Miller" map, happily, bears a number of place-names, the very first 48
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to appear, so far as yet known (excepting of course Cosa), for the region from Cape Race to beyond Cape Breton ; but of these more in a moment. The very same topography, without or with place-names, appears on a number of closely following maps, first on the fine "Castiglione" of about 1525 (Stokes, Iconography, PI. 8, our Fig. 17), where it stands out in heavy lines as a previously observed region contrasting sharply with the light lines showing the Gomez topography, here for the first time appearing: second, on the fine series of
Fig. 16. Tracing, a little reduced, from the Harrisse, checked from the Denucé, photo-copies of the "Miller", or Reinel, map of about 1521. (The seeming islands south of Newfoundland are blots in the original.)
Ribero-type Spanish maps showing the Gomez voyage, whereof the one showing the most place-names forms our Fig. 18: and third on the Maggiolo of 1527 (Fig. 19) and the Verrazano of 1529 (Fig. 20), though the latter has some different place-names on the south coast of Newfoundland. The same topography and place-names also persist more or less on some later maps, but modified by an overlay of new data, which we consider below. 49
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Comparison of this series of maps involves a point which belongs properly in our next paper but may be briefly noted here. In the Maggiolo and Verrazano maps, in comparison with the Reinel and "Miller", the topography of the Newfoundland and Cape Breton coasts is made to converge towards our Cabot strait, which becomes, greatly narrowed; while on the Ribero-type maps, though the topography is not otherwise disturbed, the two coasts are extended in open curves to meet, reducing our Cabot Strait to a river, or obliterating it Fig. 17. Tracing from the Stokes photo-copy of the "Castiglione" map of about 1525.
altogether. This closure of Cabot Strait by an artificial cartographical convention reaches its extreme in the well-known Viegas and "Riccardiana" maps, which seem to represent nothing other than cartographical compilations embodying the Harleian topography of the south coast of Newfoundland with a somewhat exaggerated Riberotype obliteration of Cabot Strait by a curving line, the whole embellished by addition of some new fanciful names and the floating I. St.
Fig. 18. Tracing from the Stokes photo-copy of the Ribero map of 1529.
John—a subject to which we return in connection with those maps in the next paper. This progressive closing of Cabot Strait is most rationally explained as a result of a growing doubt among the professional cartographers as to the existence here of a broad strait opening into a great bay, a conclusion strongly supported by the fact that Cartier, who on his first voyage entered and left the Gulf by the Strait of Belleisle, records, as if the opposite was considered true, that he was inclined to think that a passage existed between Newfoundland 50
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and Cape Breton Island (Biggar, Voyages of Jacques Cartier, 34-5). One other cartographical source is closely linked with these maps, even though, as falling after the voyage of Gomez in 1525-6, embodying some later overlay. It consists of the Padrón Real, or great chart, made in 1536 by the Spanish official cartographer Alonzo de Chaves.
Fig. 19. Tracing from the Stevenson photo-copy of the Maggiolo map of 1527.
This chart itself is lost, and a Ms. description of the east coast by Chaves himself, presumably including material identical with that on his chart, mentioned by Stokes (Iconography, II, 39) as recently discovered by Dr. Wieder, is not yet available for our immediate region. But in the Historia. . . .de las Indias (written about 1537,
Fig. 20. Tracing from the Stevenson photo-copy of the Verrazano map of 1529.
though not published until 1852) by the scholarly historian Oviedo, is contained a full description of the Chaves chart, prepared, as Oviedo tells us, with a copy of the chart before him. The part of interest to us (II, 148-50, with reprint and French translation in Harrisse, 112-115) begins at the south with Cape 51
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Breton, and contains the names (omitting directions and distances of the places), shown in the last column of the table which follows. Moreover these data are supported and supplemented from a closelyallied source, viz. the Islario of the Spanish cartographer Alonzo de Santa Cruz (who was associated with Chaves in the preparation of the Padrón Real), finished in Ms. about 1541, and first printed in a fine edition of 1908 by F. R. v. Wieser, though there is an earlier reprint of our part with French translation by Harrisse (118-121), and a reprint with English translation from another slightly variant Ms. of the Islario by Biggar, (Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 183-194). Santa Cruz gives most of the names mentioned by Oviedo, and fortunately adds a map of our region, whereof the relevant part is here reproduced
Fig. 21. Tracing, reduced nearly to one-half, from the Wieser copy of the Santa Crus map of about 1541.
in rather crude tracing (as our Fig. 21) from Wieser's work; while a few of the names appear also on Santa Cruz's world map, reproduced by Dahlgren (Stockholm, 1892). Santa Cruz's map (Fig. 21), which no doubt closely followed Chaves, is very imperfect, especially as to topography, for a reason stated by Oviedo when he said that Chaves could not have been well informed on the delineation which should be made of the region, there being great discrepancies between the portulanos (cartas de navegar) and the maps of the cartographers (¿0s cosmographos) ; while Santa Cruz speaks of the many portolanos (cartas de navegar) made since the country was discovered—portolanos, alack, now mostly lost to us, with an exception in our Fig 29. 52
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The place-names given by Oviedo and by Santa Cruz are largely the same, and in several cases agree with those of the earlier group of maps though not always in the same positions; and there are some marked discrepancies between the text and the map of Santa Cruz— all in conformity with, as it is a conspicuous illustration of, the absence of care for details prevalent in the cartography of that time. We analyze now the place-nomenclature of the afore-mentioned maps, from Cape Race around to Cape Breton. To facilitate comparison the names are arranged in the following table, which is meticulously written by hand and embodied in a photo-cut to obviate difficulties and possible errors of type-setting. It will be observed that the forms of the names are chiefly Portuguese in the "Miller", Italian in the Maggiolo and Verrazano, and Spanish in the Ribero and Chaves-Oviedo, columns, conformably to the nationality of those cartographers. ^iifCer' fa. Kid
tSîaggioJa íf¿7
(f.yérrazano
/«?
C. rasso
C.RCLSO Cflûso ylhasdeJoha estevëz p 3e cri/x pí da cruz
R.gramde C.dat XI virg(i)s omze my!! virges p ¡am polos
unziMil Vilaines 0. áe S. Paulo
R.das y)ha(s) c.fremoso
¡rentoso
nardo R.desamtiago
c. grosso Santiago
Rio ie S.pavlo c. de bertom 15 de S Joan
¿Aal/CS-Orie3o jyJí C.Rosso
c de Espera C de ¿anctfablo C.destiago C. 3e Santta Maria
Once mil! ViVgrnfi Cantoa. farana angra, pi ai a.
CdeS.paîos
^''pi'^rdenwhaslsUs i f.eSunctTelmo "embobamiento" C, (,iue$so
balafti Jiincte\laanni Rio cli sawtant" baia
terra de muyte gemte Tira de mi/ifas génie cgroiso J(o. ie sam pablo celos bretoês
J?i£era /sil
c. de bretton
tira le bie tones
r-deJJOí Bocas
Cdíl breton C Breton {•de àanct Johan
TLRA FRÍGIDA
C. RASO, our Cape Race, belongs of course to the earlier cartography of the east coast of Newfoundland, and is only included here as a boundary key word to the region we are discussing. YLHAS DE JOHA ESTEvIs, that is, John Estevcns Islands, is on the "Miller" map east of south of Cape Race, showing in our cut (Fig. 16) 53
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though its name is excluded. There are in fact no such islands there, but they may well represent a misplaced Sable Island, even though they persisted upon some maps after Sable Island was correctly added. Of Joham Estevens we know only what Santa Cruz says in his Islario of 1541 (Harrisse, 119-20) that he was a pilot who discovered this island in going to fish in these parts; but we cannot help asking whether the name may not represent some error for Joam Alvares (Fagundes). Po. DA CRUZ, that is, Port of the Cross, was apparently applied to Trepassey Bay, where it seems to have survived into French times as the C. DE CROIX, just east of our Cape Pine, on the de Courcelle map of 1675 (Harrisse, PI. XXIII), though now vanished. The name may have connection with the y. santa cruz already noted as on the Reinel map. It must be the PORT SAINCT CHRISTOFLE of Alfonse. In the Chaves-Oviedo column, and on the Santa Cruz map (Fig. 21) is a C. DE ESPERA, which must surely be transposed from the east coast, where it survives as Cape Spear. The C. DE SANCT PABLO, that is, St. Paul, may survive in the Powles Peninsula and Head on the west side of Trepassey Bay. The C. (and B.) DE SANCTA MARIA, which still survive in the form Saint Mary, is on the D. Homem map of 1568, and seems, for a reason noted below, to be a Fagundes name, though not on the preceding maps. Santa Cruz makes the name apply to a shoal (baxa), and so it appears on later maps, surviving on our charts as St. Mary's Cays, whence apparently the name was extended to Cape and Bay. C. gordo (of Fig. 21) I do not understand, unless a corrupted palos of "Miller"; and it seems not to reappear. The TIERA DE BRETONES is BAYA DE LOS BRETONES in the text of Santa Cruz, who describes it as a great gulf here formed by the sea;— very clearly the same ante-bay to Cabot Strait which was called mar descubierta por inglese(s) on the Cosa map, and later Entrée des Bretons by Alfonse. This bay has not even yet a name, but this paper may suggest one. C. DESTIAGO, that is, C. DE ST. IAGO, (i.e., St. James) on the Spanish map of Ribero, seems applied to C. St. Mary, though it appears on the Santa Cruz map (outside the limits of our cut) as if alternative to Cape Race. R. GRAMDE, meaning Grand River, reappears as grande on the D. Homem map of 1558 (Fig. 26) but then vanished. It seems to have applied to Placentia Bay, whereof more below. C. DAS XI VIRG(Ē)S, at the south end of the Burin peninsula, but not reappearing, evidently indicated the prominent cape nearest the islands of the following group. 54
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OMZE MYLL ViRGES, that is the Eleven Thousand Virgins, was said by Santa Cruz (Harrisse, 119) to apply to three islands (apparently large) in form of a triangle, with the islets around them, clearly the St. Pierre, Miquelon-Langley group. The name, doubtless through its poetic appeal, survives upon later maps, with the islands magnified in number, moved variously about, and even cpmbined with those of St. Pantelioms Archipelago, whereof more below. Finally, on subsequent French maps, it settles down, west of Fortune Bay as VIERGES, which seems clearly to survive in our Burgeo Islands. Presumably the Virgin Rocks on the Grand Bank, in Placentia Bay, and elsewhere in Newfoundland owe their names by suggestion, rather than by inheritance, from this group. p. SAM PALOS, that is, St. Paul, seems applied to the southern end of the Burin Peninsula. It did not long survive, but as s. PEDRO soon appeared in that vicinity, it seems likely the name was originally the combination Peter-Paul, whereof the first part has survived in the island of St. Pierre, of the St. Pierre-Miquelon group. ARCIPIELAGO, of Ribero, seems to indicate the Archipelago of St. Panteliom, as noted below, and does not recur. R. DAS YLHA(S), meaning River of Islands, apparently identical with the R. DE MUCHAS ISLAS of Chaves-Oviedo, was applied very probably to White Bear Bay, where it is appropriate. It survived apparently into French times, for this Bay is designated B. (OR R.) DES ISLES on a map of 1682 (Harrisse, PI. XXV). i. DE SANCT TELMO of Chaves-Oviedo, SANCTA ELMO and SANTELMO of Santa Cruz, is explained by the latter (Harrisse, 120) as so named by certain Breton fishermen, who said that on a stormy night they saw there many burning lights called St. Elmo's (fire), who is said to appear in that form. The name does not recur, but it evidently applied to some island towards Cape Ray, where local tradition may reserve some story. C. FREMOSO, meaning Fine Cape, evidently belonged near or at Cape Ray, though the name, after persisting for a time on maps, has anished. It will be noticed that the Verrazano map (Fig. 20) has on the western part of this coast an entirely different set of names. They look like descriptive terms, recalling the Cosa map, which the topography a little resembles (Figs. 4, 5, 6, of the preceding paper) ; but their significance is apparently quite different, as will be noted below. Beyond c. fremoso the "Miller" map shows the broad opening of Cabot Strait, called by Oviedo-Chaves an EMBOCAMIENTO (outlet) 55
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twenty leagues wide, though closed, or nearly, as we have noted, on the other maps. BAIA DI SANCTE loANNi, that is Bay of St. John, on Verrazano, seems meant to apply to Cabot Strait itself, though ending inexplicably in a river. A possible reason for this feature, which the Santa Cruz map makes much larger, will appear below. Then follow the names on Cape Breton Island. NARDO on the "Miller" may be some error for grosso though perhaps a different word, but c. GROSSO of Maggiolo, meaning Big Cape, must belong to our Cape North, which the name fits as to both position and aspect. This would be the peninsular cape, with islands (St. Paul) on the northeast, on the Reinel map : the C. GRUESSO of the Spanish Chaves-Oviedo and the Santa Cruz map : and the c. DO GOLFO of some later maps, though the name soon vanished. As to our name I. St. Paul, see further below. R. DE SANTIAGO, that is, River of St. James, made SANTANTO, that is, St. Antonio, on Verrazano, should from its position apply to Aspy River, though it does not recur. TERRA DE MUYTA GEMTE, meaning Land of Many People, is of course a descriptive phrase rather than a place-name proper, though it persists, more or less corrupted, on a few later maps. It could only apply to the region of the Bras d'Or system, around whose rich and charming waters the Micmac Indians must have made then, as they do now, their chief resorts. The Santa Cruz map has it by error too far north, even beyond Cape North. It must be precisely this Bras d'Or system which Oviedo-Chaves describe and Santa Cruz places on his map, as RIO DO Dos BOCAS, meaning River of Two Mouths ; for the position is unmistakable and the system presents the remarkable feature of two outlets, separated by the elongated Boularderie Island. The later Freiré map has both phrases in juxtaposition, as they should be. c. GROSSO, of Verrazano, I take to be a simple transposition from north of his Rio de san tanto; for certainly no cape worthy the name occurs where he places it. Ro. DE SAM PABLO, and PAULO, meaning River of St. Paul, would seem from its position to apply to Sydney Harbour (Spanish Bay), but soon vanished without trace. Later maps have next south of it a SAM PEDRO, which I strongly suspect was an addition of the cartographers under suggestion of completion of the familiar pair, St. Peter and St. Paul. c. DOS BRETOES appears for the first time as a place-name on this map of Miller's, and has survived, with many variants, to the present. 56
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The variants on these maps, and others that followed them, are quite consistent with the origin ascribed to this name in the preceding paper, (pp. 167-70), viz. that it originally meant English Bretons, not French Bretons. IA. DE S. JOAN of Maggiolo is of course identical with that in this position on Reinel, the same being obliterated from "Miller" by the presence of a Portuguese emblem. TERA (or TERRA) FRÍGIDA meaning Cold Land, of the "Miller" map, where it seems meant for the name of the region explored by Fagundes, I do not understand, though it links well with references to the cold experienced by the later Portuguese settlers there. There are two other names which though appearing somewhat later may belong with this series. One is a R. DE SOLHAS (River of Soles) applied as the northernmost name on Cape Breton Island on the two Le Testu maps: on a fine anonymous map of about 1550: and on the coast where it turns east to obliterate Cabot Strait in the Viegas and "Riccardiana" maps; and the fact that on the two latter it stands just north of C. DO GOLFO, seemingly an equivalent of C. GROSSO, would make it represent Salmon River, just west of Cape North. The other name, on maps of the time for a river or bay placed well up the coast of Cape Breton Island, is spelled variously FUDOS, FUMDOS, FUMIDES, PUMOS, meaning Smokes. The position of the word conforms so closely to that of the place called ENFUMÉ, of identical meaning, on maps of the French period as to leave scant doubt of their identity. As well known, ENFUMÉ takes its name from high grayish bare banks in the abrupt elevated land south of Ingonish, banks formerly known to the French as the "falaises", that is the "veils", of Cape Enfumé, and presenting from a distance a striking resemblance to columns or clouds of smoke. The name Cape Enfumé survives translated as our Cape Smoke, or Smoky, which is thus one of the oldest existent place-names in Cape Breton Island. This word presumably originated in local usage, but may have been introduced to cartographers by Gomez, who, as Santa Cruz tells us (Harrisse, 120-1), had been in this vicinity (though there is no other evidence for it), and in passing YSLA DE SANCT JOAN (our Cape Breton Island, though wrongly placed by Santa Cruz, and following cartographers) "saw many smokes and signs that it was inhabited". No doubt other features of the Santa Cruz map (Fig. 21) and perhaps some of its names, derive from Gomez, whereof more in the next paper. Summarizing, now, the results of our analysis of the first four, and in part the fifth, of the just-discussed maps, it is evident that as a whole they form a homogeneous group derived from a single source. 57
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It is true, they present many differences of detail both topographical and nomenclatorial, but these are no greater than was usual at the time, when (apart from changes due to difference of language), sketchy copying of topography, careless transcription of place-names, free transference thereof among rivers, ports, bays, islands, &c., warping of data conformably to favoured ideas or stylistic drawing, were prevalent among cartographers, whose object was to produce not so much guides to navigation, as handsome delineations for the walls of wealthy patrons of geography. Another feature of difference among maps of our group, viz., the fact that while some names are more or less common to all while others appear sporadically, has easy explanation. For it is to be remembered that these maps are mostly fragments from world maps, and hence represent our region on a scale too small to admit the presence of many names. Everything would indicate that their makers must have drawn from a much larger-scale original whereon all of these names, and doubtless yet others, were present; and therefrom each cartographer would have drawn enough to fill conveniently his available space, choosing such ones as seemed to him most important or interesting, just as our map-makers do in like case at this day. Happily the existence of such a larger-scale original is not hypothetical only, for we actually possess one, of uncertain but early date, in the Freducci map, copied in our Fig. 22, while similar topography occurs in the Havre Catalan map (Harrisse, 130) and is followed by the "Salviati", forming No. 7 of the Stevenson series. But, alas and alack, they are completely bare of place-names in our region! This Freducci map I take it, derives directly from Fagundes, but presents only those parts of his topography (i.e., Placen tía Bay and the coast to beyond the St. Pierre-Miquelon group, with the east coast of Cape Breton) which seem to rest upon a survey, as attested by their general approximation to accuracy, amount of detail, similarity in the different maps, and comparative abundance of place-names; while it omits the remainder of the region (i.e., Newfoundland west of the St. Pierre-Miquelon group, with the south coast of Cape Breton and the mainland beyond), the opposite qualities whereof on the other maps indicate no attempt at survey, but merely a crude sketching from observation. Very likely such surveys were made in connection with the detailed search for sites for intended settlements, while the sketchily observed parts were hastily covered in order to complete the circuit of the territory comprised in the Fagundes grant. Thus all the circumstances of the topography and place-nomenclature of the maps just described are best explicable as result of an 58
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exploration about 1520, and that, as shown by the Portuguese emblems on two of the maps, under official Portuguese auspices, of the region between Cape Race and Cape Breton, or rather, the Strait of Canso. Fagundes is known to have made such an exploration in that region about that time, and there is no other who is even supposed to have done so. It is rational, therefore, to infer that these maps embody the Fagundes exploration. Furthermore this conclusion achieves direct support from the fact that his name appears on somewhat later maps, notably as c. FAGUNDO on the D. Homem map of 1568 for a cape on Cape Breton Island (next table of names): as i. FAGUNTAS
Fig. 22. Tracing, a little reduced, from the Kretschmer photo-copy of the Freducci map in an atlas of 1SS6.
on the L. Homem map of 1554 (Fig. 24) and I. FACUNDA on the just-mentioned map of 1568, for Sable Island: as FACUNDA IL. DE JOAM ALVARES on the Dirckx map of 1599 for a group towards Cape Ray (Harrisse, 282-3), and as Y. FACUNDAS for a group misplaced towards Cape Race on the well-known Wytfliet map of 1597. Then there is the direct testimony of the Lázaro Luiz map of 1563 (Fig. 30), whereof more below. It is now our task to identify the places specifically mentioned in the earlier-cited letters patent of 1521 as named by Fagundes, always remembering that the copy of that document we possess is at thirdhand, with attendant possibility of clerical error. 59
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Several students have attempted this identification, notably de Bettencourt (very briefly) in his Descobrimentos of 1881-2 : G. Patterson in his work on The Portuguese on the North-East coast of America, in these Transactions, VIII, 1890, ii, p. 148; Harrisse in his Discovery of North America, 1892, 182-8, and more briefly in his Découverte. . . . Terre-neuve, 1900, 218-20: S. Ruge (very briefly) in his Enwickelung der Kartographie von Amerika, 1892, p. 23: Biggar, in his Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1911, xxii-iv: and L'Abbé Anthiaume in his Voyages de Découverte. . . .II, 1916, 67-9. The results of these studies are discordant and inconclusive, and it is now to be seen whether the following product of our more rigid analysis of the data, especially from the local side, has better success. At the outset we must note that if the conclusions thus far advanced are valid, then we must look for these places between Cape Race and Cape Breton, or rather, the vicinity of the Strait of Canso; and we can by no means include the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the farther coast of Nova Scotia, as some of the afore-mentioned students have done. Moreover, the letters patent show that Fagundes made his exploration under the King's "charter of ours wherein it is stated "that. . . .it is our pleasure, should he set off to discover lands, to "give and grant him the governorship of all those islands and lands "he may discover, in the same form and manner that the governors "of our islands of Madeira and the Azores have received their offices." Then, follows provision for the transmission of his privileges to his heirs, and "that this grant should not include nor embrace the first "land of Brazil from north to south" (the Portuguese territory in "South America) "but towards the north, as we read in the said "charter; by virtue of which charter he set off to discover lands and "islands in the region therein stated, and he now proves to us by "witnesses worthy of credence, that he has found the following lands "and islands, namely: the land said to be mainland which stretches "from the line of demarcation with Castille, which is contiguous in the "south with our boundary, as far as the land that the Corte Reals "discovered, which is in the north", and then as in the text on an earlier page of this paper. Now nothing could be clearer than that it was the King's intention to grant to Fagundes not some scattered insignificant islands along the coast, as had been assumed heretofore in discussions of the Fagundes voyages, but all the "lands and islands" he should discover between the line of demarcation with the Spanish possessions in the south and the lands granted the Cortereals in the north, the general intention being obviously to fill the then existing 60
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gap between those two bounds. All the language of the letters patent, with its reference to "lands and islands", and its provision for hereditary succession, indicates that the King meant to confer upon Fagundes no mean principality, but one comparable with that granted the Cortereals in Labrador and eastern Newfoundland, and those granted the governors of Madeira and the Azores. The lands and islands stated in the letters patent as discovered by Fagundes, and granted to him, are as follows. THE LAND SAID TO BE MAINLAND WHICH STRETCHES FROM THE LINE OF DEMARCATION WITH CASTILLE, WHICH IS CONTIGUOUS IN THE SOUTH WITH OUR BOUNDARY, AS FAR AS THE LAND THAT THE CORTE REALS
DISCOVERED, WHICH is IN THE NORTH, "the land said to be mainland" would of course be specifically the Nova Scotian coast beyond the Strait of Canso, where it is indicated for some distance on the Reinel and "Miller" maps (Figs. 15, 16). Fagundes, who apparently followed it no great distance, could have known it to be mainland from the fishermen then resorting to the region,—the source, presumably, of other information (and mis-information) on his maps. The very comprehensive form of the statement, however, seems designed to make official claim to all mainland between the line of demarcation and the land of the Cortereals, thus filling that gap as already suggested. The position of the latter was sufficiently well known, lying in Labrador and the eastern parts of Newfoundland as far as Placentia Bay, as already noted. The place of intersection of the line of demarcation with the North American coast was, however, then quite unknown; for although (as noted already in these Transactions, XXII, 1928, ii, 268-9), previously established by treaty between Spain and Portugal as a line to run north and south from a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde (not the Azores) Islands, its position in our region was then quite undeterminable, its location at Cabot Strait on Spanish maps following the voyage of Gomez in 1525-6 being obviously political, not geographical. There was therefore no reason why Fagundes should not extend his explorations in 1520 or earlier along the mainland of Nova Scotia. THE THREE ISLANDS IN WATERING-PLACE BAY (BAYA D AUGUOADA) ON THE COAST RUNNING NORTHEAST AND SOUTHWEST. We look first
to the maps for a BAYA D AUGUOADA in this region, and find on the somewhat later Harleian and Desceliers maps a P. AGNADA, placed east of R. grande, which, for reasons given below, must represent Country Harbour. These maps, as the next paper will show, are confused in this region, but there is little doubt, I think of the identity of these places. Now in all this region there is but a single bay 61
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wherein are three islands of noteworthy size, and that is the bay, named formerly Bay of Canso (including Chedabucto Bay), in the angle between Cape Breton Island and peninsular Nova Scotia; and therein occur the relatively large Madame, Janvrin, and Petitdegrat islands, an identification agreeing substantially with Biggar's. Here the "Miller" map shows three islands, though only as a crude sketch, though the Homem maps have it better, as we shall see. That this vicinity was actually a watering-place in early times is attested by Lescarbot, who tells us in his Histoire of 1609, in the explanation of his map, that when he was at the port of Canso, he had gone into the Bay of Canso with a ship seeking water there for the voyage home. There can be na doubt I believe of the correctness of this identification, these islands being large and important enough to merit mention. THE ISLANDS NAMED BY HIM FAGUNDES ARE THESE, NAMELY: ST. JOHN (SAM JOAM), ST. PETER (SAM PEDRO), ST. ANNA (SANTA ANA), AND ST. ANTONIO (SANTO ANTONIO). Here a first thought may be that these names include those of the three islands in Watering-place bay, and some support therefor may be found in the fact that in that bay is also a St. Peter's island (but very small), while Champlain's map of 1632 places a Cape St. Anthoine at the east end of the same bay. Herein, however, can rest only coincidence, for our list includes four names not three, and all considerations point to a different identity. If now, anticipating conclusions just following, we note that the remaining names and places of this Fagundes list apply certainly to smaller coastal islands or groups of them, and if we recall the considerations advanced a page or two earlier to the effect that it was clearly the intention of the King to grant Fagundes a large principality including by implication all of the lands and islands from near Cape Race to beyond Cape Breton (the Gulf of St. Lawrence being not yet known), then it becomes evident that in the four names in question must someway be included all the lands not included in the small coastal islands, else those lands are omitted from the grant, involving an obvious anomaly. In this light we have no trouble to find in Fagundes's Isle St. John (SAM JOAM) our Cape Breton Island, assumedly thus named by him under the impression that it was Cabot's Isle of that name, or as is more likely, under suggestion of that name in absence of knowledge of its location. It is true, we have no direct evidence that Fagundes knew this land was an island, even though our Reinel and Miller maps (Fig. 15, 16) and the Homem maps given below, show a partial Strait of Canso, but he could hardly have failed to learn the fact from local fishermen. We do, however, possess two pieces of indirect evidence to this effect. First Alfonse, 62
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in his Cosmographie of 1544, marks unmistakably on his map our Island of Cape Breton, which he calls Cap à Breton, and in his text (Biggar, Voyages of Jacques Cartier, 302) says that the cap des Bretons is an island called also sainct Jehan, though Biggar identifies this island, but wrongly as I think, as Scatari. The second piece of evidence consists in the presence on the Wolfenbiittel map of 1525-30 (Fig. 23) of an indubitable Cape Breton Island, but named Y: DE S: JUHAN, a feature which has much puzzled earlier students, but which finds consistent explanation in this interpretation. Furthermore, the Homem maps considered below, name the Strait of Canso R. DE SAM
JOHAM, and it may be not without significance that the Verrazano map (Fig. 20) places a BAIA DI SANCTI IOANNI at the northern end of Cape Breton Island.
Fig. 23. Tracing, reduced one-third, from the Stevenson photo-copy of the Wolfenbiittel map of 1525-30.
The territory remaining to be explained in terms of islands is the south coast of Newfoundland west of Placentia Bay,—for east of that was the land of the Cortereals, the Insulae Corterealis of the Mercator map of 1541 (Fig. 9). Of course, as we know, this land is all one mass, nor do any of the maps thus far considered in this paper show anything different. But the case is otherwise on the somewhat later Homem maps (Figs. 24-26), which, as we shall see, reflect so closely in many respects the Fagundes voyages. On those maps the territory in question is comprised in two islands with an elongated peninsula, together with two groups of smaller islands, which are the two Archipelagos next to be considered. First (continuing the sequence from west to east) is the smallest island, from its shape and position evidently our St. Pauls Island and indeed so named (as OILL, presumably a defective St. Paul on the L. Homem map) ; and in view of the frequency with which the name St. Peter and St Paul was formerly given, I take this for an abbreviation of that name which appears as the alternative St. Peter in the letters patent. The next island is much larger, and bounded at the east by an open passage at 63
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Fortune Bay, from which sequence it should be santa ana of the Fagundes list. In fact, midway of this coast on the Desceliers map of 1546 does appear an YE. SE. ANNE, which can hardly be coincidence, especially as the name did not survive. Here, however, is better evidence, viz. on this coast there appears on the Verrazano map (Fig. 20) an obscure name which can be read SAT or SNT (?) ANA, and is presumably this name. Finally there comes the Burin peninsula, an island on the L. Homem, though a peninsula on the D. Homem, maps; and that should bear by the sequence the name SANTO ANTONIO. Here again the Verrazano map comes to aid, for it bears just east of the preceding a word like CANTOA, which might well represent a corrupted or misprinted S. antona, i.e., ANTONIO; and the well-known Gutierrez map of 1562 has distinctly here P. DE s. ANTONIO. As to the Verrazano map, by the way, one cannot but speculate whether the word PLAIA, in the position of Cape Ray, may not represent the original of that name corrupted by later sailors with substitution of r for 1, plaia meaning a flat place, which Cape Ray is in contrast with the high country immediately behind; and if so, may ANGRA represent an original of Garia? That this coast was mistaken by Fagundes in 1520 for a line of large islands was natural enough in light of his data. It was one of the parts of his territory which, as noted already, seems to have been hastily observed without attempt at survey; and the presence there of the deep sound-like bays would tend to confirm the prepossession of the time that the Newfoundland region was all broken into islands. THE ISLANDS OF ST. PANTELIOM'S ARCHIPELAGO (ARÇEPELLEGUO DE SAM PANTELIOM), WITH PITIGUOEM ISLAND (ILHA DE PITIGUOEM). A clue to this group is provided by the word ARCIPIELAGO, rather far north and west for the "Virgins" group (next considered), on the Ribero map (Fig. 18) ; for in this position on the Homem maps (Figs. 24-26) is a rounded group of islands conventionally meant to represent, as it seems reasonable to assume, the many islands and island-like peninsulas scattered along the coast from Fortune Bay to about White Bear Bay. As to the name PANTELION or PANTELIOM, it seems not impossible that it survives, through French and English corruption, in La Hune Bay, prominent in that vicinity. Even to the island of PITIGUOEM (which de Bettencourt, p. 145, suggested as surviving in "Aspotagoen" Peninsula on the Nova Scotian coast), we have a clue. In a Ms. list of Micmac Indian names in Newfoundland given me by Father Pacifique, occurs the word PITOAGEN applied to Carroll's Hat, a hill near Grand le Pierre, which is the very head of Fortune Bay. The resemblance between these words, especially in light of the 64
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concurrence with the other evidence seems too close to be coincidence, especially when we recall that the Portuguese m is the n of other Latin tongues. As to the identity of the island, Fagundes's special mention whereof indicates some size and prominence, I have no direct evidence, and it may have been our Brunei, or more likely the great island-like peninsula between Fortune and Hermitage Bays, whereof there is some suggestion on the Homem maps. (See Addendum). THE
ISLANDS OF THE ARCHIPELAGO OF THE 11,000 VlRGINS
(ARÇEPELLEGUO DAS HONZE MILL VIRGEENS). As to this no doubt exists, for, as earlier noted, it represents the St. Pierre-MiquelonLangley group with the many small islands around it, including probably those at the end of the Burin Peninsula; and the name survives in our Burgeo. There is a Virgin Cove on Miquelon. THE ISLAND OF SANTA CRUZ (ILHA DE SANTA CRUZ) WHICH LIES AT THE FOOT OF THE BANK. This would be of course the island shown on the Reinel and the "Miller" maps, as noted already, representing probably Sable Island misplaced to the foot of the Grand Bank of Newfoundland. ANOTHER ISLAND ALSO NAMED ST. ANNA (SANTA ANA), WHICH WAS SIGHTED BUT NOT PUT UPON RECORD (i.e., not on the map?) As to this we have no clue, as it does not reappear; but the name may have been a temporary one for Sable Island, later named for Fagundes himself. It will be noticed that, on the foregoing interpretations, the places named by Fagundes, viz. the main land, and the islands of St. John, St. Paul, St. Anna, St. Antonio, collectively cover all of the territory from Placentia Bay to beyond the Strait of Canso, while the three Watering-bay islands, and the Archipelagos of St. Pantelion and the Eleven Thousand Virgins include all islands of any consequence in front of those coasts. It is surely a very effective arrangement to include all the territory. It will further be noted that the sequence of the place-names in the letters patent conforms exactly with the geography of the country. This could hardly be accident, and the correspondence iá strong support for the correctness of our conclusions, and at the same time evidence of careful intent in the letters patent. Again, the sequence implies that Fagundes followed in the same direction, from west to east, despite the general probability, and common assumption, that he went from east to west. Furthermore, as Harrisse (Discovery, 187), and also S. Ruge, have shown, the liturgical evidence is all in favor of a west to east course, to an even greater degree, indeed, than they thought, as the following more complete list indicates. Thus, aside 65
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from the special case of St. John, whose day is June 24, the Day of St. Peter and St. Paul is June 29: of St. Antonio (river) is July 13: of Ste. Anna is July 26: of St. Antonio ("island") is July 13 (out of sequence): of St. Pantaleon is July 27: of St. Pedro is August 1: of Santa Maria is Sept. 8: of Santa Cruz is Sept. 14. The day of eleven thousand Virgins is Oct. 21, but the fact has probably no significance, because the group may have been named in allusion to its many islets rather than for the day of discovery. Of course the closer observation with some survey, evident on the maps for the east coast of Cape Breton Island and the part from the St. Pierre group to beyond Placentia Bay, would require much more time than the general observation with crude sketching of the coast in the parts west of Cape Breton, and in the "islands" of Ste. Anna and St. Antonio; and the irregular spacing in the dates is in general consistent with this factor. On this basis Fagundes probably reached the coast west of Cape Breton Island in late May or early June, and passed Cape Race for home in late September. It is interesting to note that his route would thus have taken him over the same course and in the same direction as Cabot in 1497, as traced in the preceding paper. He must have seen all of Cabot's marks of possession, but of course would ignore them, as from Portugal's point of view the English had no rights whatever in that region, particularly as they had done nothing further with their discoveries. One further point in the Fagundes place-nomenclature calls for comment. The correspondence between most of the Fagundes names of the letters patent and the liturgical sequence is so close as to leave little doubt that he gave them because discovered or observed on the days of those saints. Here, however, is the interesting point, that those names have mostly not survived, the exceptions being the ones (The Virgins, and perhaps Isle St. Paul), which are out of sequence. On the other hand, many of the names on the maps afore-discussed and tabulated do survive. A reason for the difference is, however, not hard to find, viz., the surviving names had presumably originated already locally among the fishermen and others who were resorting to that region, and were naturally adopted by Fagundes, while the names given by him and recorded in letters patent and his maps, had no chance to achieve local use, the documents being quite unknown locally, and of no local weight if they had been. Indeed it may be taken as a general principle (operative in some measure even in our own day), that the only place-names that survived in early days were those which originated in local use. These in time found place on the maps, while purely official or cartographical names given by explorers, 66
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though passed along for a time from map to map, ultimately vanished. We shall find conspicuous illustration of this principle later in this, and especially in the next, paper. The case of the Cortereals and the Cabots is no real exception, for, unlike Fagundes, they were first in their fields; and the men they had with them, and who knew the names they gave, became the pilots to the first local folk, to whom they passed on those explorers' names. We come now to a crucial point in our study, involving, by the way, another parallelism, but of different sort, with Cabot; for just as the study of the Cabot voyages was long confused by the failure to recognize two, if not three, voyages instead of one, so with Fagundes the attempt of my predecessors to interpret all traces of his presence in this region in terms of one voyage has led to confusion and anomalies. Yet that Fagundes, or some substitute for him, made a second voyage to this region, resulting in additional discoveries embodied in existent maps, is I think indubitable, as attested by evidence that follows. The letters patent themselves, indeed, contain clear implication (in parts not afore-cited but in Biggar's full copy) that Fagundes's interest in the discovered lands centered in plans for settlement, though of course to the King his voyage had the import of establishing claim to that territory for the kingdom. That Fagundes, or someone acting for him and by his authority did pursue the attempt at settlement is established, inter alia, by another satisfactory document given by Biggar in original and translation in his Precursors, 195-7It consists of a Ms., still preserved in Portugal, by Francisco de Souza, who, as Patterson says (op. cit. 163) was in immediate connection with the discoveries of Fagundes, and desired to turn to advantage the governorship with which he had been invested. It was written in 1570, and reads thus:— "It will be 45 or 50 years ago that certain noblemen of Vianna" "(a town in Portugal) "associated themselves together and in view "of the information in their possession regarding the Codfish-land of "Newfoundland (TERRA NOVA DO BACALHAO) determined to settle "some part thereof, as in truth they did in a ship and a caravel, but "finding the region to which they were bound, very cold, they sailed "along the coast from east to west until they reached that running "northeast and southwest, and there they settled. And as they had "lost their ships, nothing further was heard of them, save from the "Basques who continue to visit that coast in search of the many "articles to be obtained there, who bring word of them and state that "they asked them to let us know how they were, and to take out 67
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"priests: for the natives are submissive and the soil very fertile and "good, as I have been more fully informed, and is well known to those "who sail thither. This is at cape Breton (CABO DO BRITÂO), at the "beginning of the coast that runs north, in a beautiful bay, where there "are many people and goods of much value and many nuts, chestnuts, "grapes and other fruits, whereby it is clear the soil is rich. And in "this company went also some families from the Azores islands whom "they took on board on their way out, as is well known. May our "Lord-in his mercy open a way by which to succour them. And my "purpose is to go to this coast, in the voyage I shall make to the "island of San Francisco (!LHA DE SÂo FRANCISCO), which can all be "done in one journey." This document, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired in detail, but it does establish the fact that a Portuguese settlement was made in Cape Breton Island between 1520 and 1525 in the territory just granted to Fagundes, and therefore undoubtedly under his authority if not his leadership. Indeed, as to this, the probabilities are so great that he was the moving spirit if not the actual commander of the expedition that we shall speak (though in sense of hypothesis), of its operations, and the cartographical consequences, as his. The remaining scraps of evidence, including some local archaeological items, bearing on the Portuguese occupation of Cape Breton Island are well given in Patterson's work aforecited, 163-171, which is based in a measure upon an earlier popular article on "Lost Colonies of Northmen and Portuguese" by R. G. Haliburton (son of the historian of Nova Scotia) in the Popular Science Monthly, XXVII, 1885, 40-57, though that author's conclusions far outrun the evidence. In brief, these scraps are the following:— Champlain, in his Voyages, under 1607, describes the Island, and says, "The Portuguese formerly attempted to settle upon this island, and passed a winter there: but the rigour of the season and the cold made them abandon their settlement", and he repeats the statement in his edition of 1632 (Champlain Society's edition, I, 468 and III, 418). Again, in describing Sable Island he speaks of "the bullocks and cows taken there over sixty years ago by the Portuguese", i.e., prior to 1613, and therefore before 1553 (op. cit. I, 235); and speaking of the same matter in his edition of 1632 (op. cit. Ill, 302) he says these animals were "saved from the wreck of a Spanish ship which was lost on its way to colonize Cape Breton Island". It was the use of the word Spanish in this passage which led R. G. Haliburton to elaborate a theory of a Spanish settlement at Sydney Harbour, though it seems sufficiently evident that Champlain here uses the word under sug68
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gestion of the fact that Portugal was then incorporated by conquest into Spain. That Portuguese, not Spanish proper, were here meant is proven by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who in connection with his voyage of 1583 (Hakluyt, ed. of 1904, VIII, 63) speaks of Sable Island, and adds "upon intelligence we had of a Portugal (during our abode in St. Johns) who was himselfe present, when the Portugais (above thirty years past)", i.e., before 1553, "did put into the same island both Neat and Swine", &c. Then Parkhurst in a letter to Hakluyt of 1578 (ed. of 1904, VIII, 15) mentions his desire "to make proofe whether it be true or no that I have read and heard of Frenchmen and Portugais to be in that river" (the St. Lawrence) "and about Cape Briton". The collective evidence seems to imply two distinct attempts by the Portuguese to settle Cape Breton Island, for a first is clearly embodied in the Lopo Homem map of 1554 as we shall see, and, occurring before that date, was no doubt the one of 1520-5 referred to by de Souza; while the one which placed the cattle upon Sable Island about 1553, would presumably be too late for incorporation of its results in that map. Here, however, is a possibility that may help to solve a local historical puzzle. In his Histoire of 1609, Lescarbot makes the wellknown, but nowhere confirmed, statement about the men of de la Roche being landed on Sable Island in 1598, where they remained for five years, "living on fish and on the milk of some cows carried thither some eighty years ago in the time of King Francis I, by the Baron de Leri and de St. Just, Viscount of Gueu, who, having a heart inclined to deeds of high enterprise, desired to form a settlement in those parts, and to lay the foundations of a French colony: but having been detained too long at sea by the duration of his voyage, he was constrained to disembark there his live stock, cows and pigs, for want of fresh water and pasture" (Champlain Society's edition, I, 45). Now it seems clear enough that the landing of the cattle here mentioned is identical with that recorded by Gilbert and by Champlain; and thus is suggested the possibility that the Baron de Leri is no fiction, but a tradition with some foundation. In this case, either as a Frenchman resident in Portugal or as a Portuguese whose name is disguised in French form, he was associated with the later Portuguese settlement in Cape Breton Island, Lescarbot being wrong as to the date; or else he was connected with the first attempt at settlement, Lescarbot being right in the date but wrong in connecting him with the landing of the cattle on Sable Island. Possibilities of this kind are worth mention as hints in further research or as clues to new items that turn up therein. 69
Fig. 24. Photo., from the Stokes photo, of the original, of the Lopo Homem map of 1554.
Fig. 25. Tracing from a photo-enlargement of the Lopo Homem map of 1554 (Fig. 24).
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It is not known when or how the Portuguese settlements ended, but Harrisse (Discovery, 188) tells us that a clause in the will of Fagundes's daughter, Dona Violante, wife of Joâo de Susa, indicates that the attempt at the colonizing of the country by the Portuguese did not prove profitable and was abandoned, probably at an early date. Patterson, (op. fit., 169) cites Do Canto, historian of the Azores, to the effect that the heirs of Fagundes sold out all their rights to the English, and cites R. G. Haliburton as hearing a tradition in Vianna to the same effect, the settlers being dissatisfied with the country in consequence of the cold. Patterson's confirmatory suggestions however, seem inconclusive, and the matter highly improbable. This repeated mention of the cold, by the way, in connection with those settlements recalls the legend Tera Frígida so prominent on the "Miller" map. (See Addendum). We resume now our study of the geographical materials, and begin with the map of 1554, by the capable Portuguese cartographer, Lopo Homem. This invaluable map, a manuscript world map in colours on vellum, beautifully drawn with the topography conventionalized in detail, and fortunately bearing both name of maker and date, was discovered shortly before 1916 by Dr. F. C. Wieder in the Museo degli Strumenti antichi at Florence, and was first made known to students by Phelps Stokes in his Iconography of Manhattan Island (Vol. II, 1916, pp. 39, 134, Plate 11), which reproduces, in a fine clear reduced copy, its northeast American part. A later reproduction much inferior, however, in legibility, is contained in Caraci's Tabulae Geographicae Vetustiores, I, 1926, Plates ii, iii. Mr. Stokes, with his wonted liberality, has given me a copy of his photograph direct from the original, and therefrom is made our half-tone cut (Fig. 24), illustrating its general features, as also our precise tracing (Fig. 25), which shows the details of its nomenclature. The importance of the Lopo Homem map is further attested from other sources. Thus Phelps Stokes (Iconography cited) shows that for the coast south of the Penobscot it reproduces with greater fidelity than any other known map the features of the lost Chaves map as described by Oviedo and in the recently-discovered Chaves Ms. he cites. Furthermore, in connection with the great advance this map marks in the representation of the Molucca Islands, it is stated by Abendanon (Geographical Journal, LIV, 1919, 349) that Lopo Homem had access to original Portuguese materials formerly gathered in the Casa da India at Lisbon, where as early as 1517 he had an exclusive privilege of drawing and improving maps. These originals are now 72
Fig. 26. Photo, from the original in the British Museum, of the D. Homem map of 1558.
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
irretrievably lost through a fire accompanying the Lisbon earthquake in 1775, much that survived being taken away by the French. Thus Homem had use of official Portuguese materials of the period not accessible to cartographers of other countries. The general aspect of this map will be not unfamiliar to students of our east-coast cartography, for its most distinctive features appear in two later, and equally beautiful maps by Diogo (not Diego) Homem, supposed to be a son of Lopo. Much the best known is that of 1558, of which Kohl gave a litho-reproduction in his Discovery of Maine of 1869 (Plate XXI), copied by others since then, notably by Patterson in his paper in these Transactions, VIII, 1891, ii, 151. Kohl's copy, however, is neither complete nor accurate in all details, and as this map supplements in some matters the Lopo Homem map, we here present a half-tone cut (Fig. 26) made direct from a clear photograph of the original in the British Museum. The second, much less known, Diogo Homem map of 1568, is reproduced in the Kartographischer Denkmaler, 1907, of Hantsch and Schmidt, direct from the original preserved in the Royal Library in Dresden. It is very like the map of 1558, but differs in some details noted in the following comparative table. The differences between these maps, as shown by analysis, are minor, but are such as to indicate that the Lopo Homem is not only the older of the three, but is also the nearest the original materials and most conformable to the local data, though it also seems evident that Diogo had access to the originals used by Lopo. It is therefore the type map of the group. For completion of the subject of the Homem maps we may note two others that are known. One is the general map accompanying the atlases in which the maps of 1558 and 1568 occur, and as it presents the topography in somewhat stronger differentiation than the larger maps, the best of the two (in the British Museum) is reproduced herewith in our Fig. 27. The other occurs on a greatly reduced re-drawn copper-plate 6 in the text of Lelewel's Géographie du Moyen Age, I, 1852, with names and topography closely like those of our Fig. 25. Its topography as in Fig. 27 is more sharply differentiated than in the other Homem maps, but, being a reduced copper-plate drawing is quite untrustworthy for details, as shown by the fact that a repetition of the coastal part, given higher on the same plate, differs considerably from the former. This coastal part, by the way, forms our Fig. 28. A Ms. atlas of about 1540 by D. Homem is reported from the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. Despite their great superiority to other contemporary maps, a superiority which will become amply evident in the following paper, 74
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165
the Homem maps were followed by only one other, so far as I can find. This is the Ortelius engraved world-map of 1564, in part reproduced in the Geographical Journal, LXII, 1928, Sept., (Fig. 32), though the Cape Breton Island part is used in John Dee's map of 1578-80 (Harrisse, PI. XXII and Hakluyt, ed. of 1904, VIII). There exists also an ancient portolan, of much interest in the obvious affiliation it shows with the Homem Cape Breton Island, in the Biblioteca nacional at Lisbon ; and from a photo-copy in the Karpinski Collection in the New York Public Library is traced our Fig. 29.
Fig. 27. Photo, from the general map in the D. Homem atlas of 1558 in the British Museum.
Thus the Homem maps form a family strikingly different from any group of the sixteenth century, with differences extending to details as the following analysis will show. For this purpose we may treat their distinctive features in order under the following heads:— A. Micmac Indian place-names in Cape Breton Island. B. Distinctive coastal topography and surviving place-names. C. First appearance of the Bay of Fundy. D. New features in the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence. These we consider in order. A.
Micmac Indian place-names in Cape Breton Island.
The most novel feature of the Homem maps (and the few that copy them), apart, perhaps, from the presence of the Bay of Fundy, 75
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
Fig. 28. Photo, enlarged four times, of one of the two Lelewel drawings of a Hoiiiein-like map.
Fig. 29. Tracing from the Karpinski photo-copy of an undated anonymous portolano in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. 76
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is the presence on the east coast of Cape Breton Island of a series of names, whereof most present a peculiar aspect recognizable as Micmac Indian. These names are here tabulated for comparison, (with European words added as key words); and the fact that the list is longest on the Lopo Homem map is further evidence of its greater nearness to the original materials. í.ilomem ISft-
mededet^va taesca magaracade peífagudi^iie ¿amenda, fc.doi ífrtoisl arg omis hr^tois
ïï.ffomem IIS» taesco ma¿ arcLcade pescagvdique Ce. dos berfôes) y.ora.cade (cap)
ÍI.Homem /S6i
Orttlivs Ktf
taesco m&garacadi peicayvdij,
ma^aracadf C- df peuago
íc. ¿oí bertoest y:ara.cadi
Xarocade
John J>ee H7e-ro
^ortolan date ?
íaesí-o macaracadí pescaqvaiqve (C de Sryton) (c.dosberto¡5) Xoroeade jtoracade Macaracade C ae Tescago
(C. {y undo) Arqomt'.
Unfortunately the Micmac place-names of this region are very inadequately known, but a number of them occur in the dictionaries and other works of the missionary Silas Rand, and also in manuscript lists generously supplied to me by Rev. Father Pacifique, the scholarly present missionary to those Indians, who is to publish them in continuation of his invaluable series on the Micmac Place-nomenclature of the Atlantic Provinces in the Bulletin de la Société de géographie de Quebec. With these aids we analyze these names as follows, beginning with one as to which there is no doubt. MAGARACADE is applied to an inlet which is both the largest represented on the east coast of our Cape Breton, and also the only one provided with a large island just inside its outlet,—facts which point to the Bras d'Or system. A Micmac Indian place-name associated with this system is well known. It first occurs as PAGUELOUACADI for a part of the Great Bras d'Or Lake in 1744 on the Bellin map of Cape Breton in the Histoire of Charlevoix. Now P and M in Micmac are well-nigh indistinguishable sounds, often confused by white hearers; and moreover the sound L in Indian words was often rendered as R by the French, and presumably other Latin peoples. With substitution of M for P, and of R for L, this word becomes MAGUEROUACADI (accented on the penult), the resemblance whereof to our MAGARACADE is evident. In the former word the Micmac roots are elaborately spelled out, but the Europeans usually condensed them, as evidenced by the fact that Rand (in his Micmac-English Dictionary, 185) gives the Micmac name as MOGLACADIK (meaning "brant goose 77
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
place"), which, with substitution of European R for the Micmac L, and with omission of the final locative k, (generally dropped by the French (as Paguelouacadie inciden tally shows), becomes MOGRACADIE. Father Pacifique (Ms.) renders the word as MOGOLAGATIG, for which the natural European equivalent would be MOGORACADI. All circumstances, allowing for change in a language through nearly four intervening centuries, would seem to leave no question as to the identity of our modern MOGRACADIE and MOGORACATI of Rand and Pacifique with the MAGARACADE of the Lopo Homem map. TAESCO is applied to the inlet with a double end next north of the Bras d'Or, which facts identify the place as the present St. Annes Bay and Harbour. No Micmac name there known has this form, but a certain possibility is at hand. The Micmac name for this place is given by Rand (Eng.-Micmac Diet., 250) as 'MCHAGADICHK (meaning unknown), while Father Pacifique (Ms.) gives the form MTJEGATITJG, and furthermore cites L'Abbé Maillard, one of the best of authorities, as writing before 1762 M'CHÉGADICHK (Bull. Soc. Géogr. de Québec, XVIII 1924, 42). Now while at first no resemblance between this name and our word appears, closer inspection suggests a possible relation between its final syllable -DICHK, -TITJG, and TAESC of our TAESCO, in which case it may be that the present final K or G is not a locative, but an integral part of the root, an additional locative syllable -OOK being dropped. On this basis TAESCO could represent the latter part of a name like 'MTCHEGATICHKOOK, with omission, as usually, of the final -K, a theory which seems probable though far from certain. MEDEDEQUA. This word is wholly Micmac in form, and indeed Father Pacifique tells me it can plainly mean "knocking", "rapping", "making a noise". The prefix MEDE—occurs in place-names applied to steep banks, inviting one to find a connection of our word with the well-known remarkable great light-coloured cliff banks just south of Cape Smoky, a place already described as originating the names fumos, Enfumé and Smoky. The roots of the word do not comport with this idea, however; and as the other names of this series on the Lopo Homem map are mostly applied to ports, we naturally think of the port at Ingonish. This name is no doubt of Micmac origin, appearing from the time of Champlain onward as Niganis, Niganish, and minor variants, applied to the Island and roadstead there, whence it has long been extended to the neighboring inlets of the coast. Our present form Ingonish, by the way, is modern, originating apparently in a simple misprint "Inganiche or Inganish", (In for Ni) in Haliburton's Nova-Scotia (1829, II, 233), one of several misprints 78
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which the great influence of that work has caused to be perpetuated. No known Micmac name in the vicinity resembles our word, but a certain possibility is suggested by a striking natural feature of the place, one of the very kind likely to originate an Indian place-name, viz., the presence here of two bays, much alike in size and form, closely parallel and separated only by a narrow elongated straight rocky ridge. Now the Micmac word for "double" is TEGWEGEAK (Rand, Eng.-Micmac Diet., 90), the TEGWE of which comes very close to the -DEQUA of our word, while Rand also gives (Micmac-Eng. Diet,, 92) MEDADOOGWAL as meaning "I place them a short distance apart, lying parallel". Herein, with allowance for lapse of time and different nationality of recorders, may perhaps rest the interpretation of our word, though the very hypothetical nature of the possible conclusion is not to be forgotten. At all events the data indicate how completely consistent is our word with a Micmac origin. PESCAGUDIQUE, next south of MAGARACADE, is applied to a large inlet which can be no other than Sydney Harbour (or Spanish Bay). Here again our word answers to none of the few Micmac place-names known in this vicinity, the PISCABOUECH for the arm of Great Bras d'Or Lake reaching towards Sydney Harbour on the Bellin map of 1744 being no doubt a different word. Our name, however, is again pure Micmac in form, and Father Pacifique tells me it could mean "dressing (meat) place". Further, Rand (Eng.-Micmac Diet., 91) gives as meaning "to dress food", the word WISKOOGWODEGA, which bears close resemblance to our PESCAGUDIQUE, especially as the prefix to the word for "drying things by hanging them up" is not wis, but BAS (op. cit., 93). Dressing (involving hanging) place for meat would be a wholly natural name for an Indian site, as evidenced by the fact that the Micmac name for Hantsport, N.S. according to Rand (op. cit., 128) is KAKAGWEK (involving some of the roots of our word) meaning "place of dried meat", while the name for the district from Canso to Halifax, taken no doubt from some place prominent in it, was ESKEGAWAAGE, meaning "the skin-dressing place" (Rand, First Reading Book in the Micmac Language, 81, and Micmac-Eng. Diet. 53, 181). We have no data for placing such a name in Sydney Harbour, but may point out that the aboriginal name for the site of Sydney, the principal place, there, is unknown, and our word might at least belong here. At all events these data suffice to show how purely Micmac this word may be, and intensive study among the Micmacs of the vicinity might solve this, as other words in our list. Somewhat different forms are given this word on other maps of this family, the Ortelius, for instance, converting it into a C. DE 79
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
PESCAGO, showing how easily corruptions occur on even the best maps of the time. Next south of pescagudique on the D. Homem maps occurs C. de Bretois, but by error, as noted below. XARACADE (or XORACADE), next south of pescagudique and separated therefrom by a nameless projecting cape-peninsula, is applied to a bay which can be only that into which flows Mira River. Now the Micmac name of this river, as discussed in detail in these Transactions, IX, 1915, ii, 426 is SOOLACADIE (Soolakade of Rand and Soolagatig of Father Pacifique), which appears in a document of 1713 as Choulacadie. The meaning is uncertain, but probably means "mussels place" in description of the great beds of those molluscs in the lower estuary of the Mira River, near where it enters the bay. With the usual substitution of the European R for the Micmac L this word becomes SOORACADIE, while the use of the letter x to render the sound expressed by c and CH would make it xooracadie, a form so close to our word from the Homem maps as to leave, I think, no doubt of their identity. On the map there is shown in this bay a peninsular island, which suggests that the name Scatari, for the chief island thereabouts, might be thought a great corruption of xoracade, but evidence to follow indicates another origin. c. dos bretois, as also bretois, s. amtonio, and G. buena, are of course European, and as such will be noted below, leaving as our last Indian name the following: ARGOMIS. At c. dos bertois, our Cape Breton, the coast on the L. Homem map swings (though less abruptly than it does in fact) southwest, and bears this name opposite the first cove there. This would be naturally our Baleine Cove, a place of some economic and historical importance, site of James Stuart's attempt at a colony and his expulsion by the French Captain Daniel, as narrated by Champlain. Its Micmac name is unknown, but, as the most important place next after Cape Breton, it might be ARGOMIS in the good Micmac form ALGOMIS. A Micmac place-name OOLUGOME is given by Rand (Ms. List of 1880) for Mill Creek on Elliot River, P.E.I., a word rendered by Father Pacifique as OLAGÔME, meaning "good spearing" (Bulletin, cited, XXIII, 1929, 42), wherewith may be compared Rand's ALKOOME, of similar meaning (Eng.-Micmac Diet., 246). Here, again, we have only a speculation, but a potentially good Micmac word. There is one other Indian word which may possibly belong with this series, though not appearing until the end of the century, (I find it first on a Bertius map of about 1600, Harrisse, 283), and that is 80
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INHIGO applied to St. Paul's Island. This is clearly the terminal portion of its Micmac name KTJHTUMUNEGOO, given by Rand, (First Reading Book, 99) as meaning "a round island", and often abbreviated by the Indians to MUNEGOO. The foregoing list calls for some comments as follows. First, it includes several place-names whereof some are certainly, and others are possibly or probably, still extant among the Micmac Indians of that region, dating back at least to 1554, and as we shall see, probably over thirty years earlier. They are therefore not only highly interesting in themselves, but also constitute the most ancient native Indian place-names recorded for any part of Canada, if not for a much wider territory. Second, their very existence on so ancient a map indicates for him who collected them a contact with the Indians far more lasting and intimate than was possible to the usual explorer of the sixteenth century, suggesting rather some contemporary settler there. Such settlers we know only in the group which followed Fagundes, as noted already. Third, for whatever reason collected and transmitted to Portugal where Lopo Homem found them, it is not to be supposed that they were in ordinary use as names of those places, which perforce would have borne, to first explorer and subsequent settlers alike, the designations of the usual European form already described. Very likely they were sent home on a map as a sample of the kind of place-names used by the natives of the country. B. Distinctive coastal topography and surviving place-names On these Homem maps the southern coast of Newfoundland, with the east and south coasts of Cape Breton Island are clearly derived from the data of the first Fagundes voyage, with some improvements interprable as resting in the second, or settlement, voyage. Thus the south coast of Newfoundland is somewhat more clearly differentiated than on the earlier group of maps, St. Marys Bay being in place, and the "islands" (of the letters patent) of St. Antonio, Ste. Anna, and S. Pedro (St. Paul) clearly shown, though unfortunately without those, or any other names. It is true, this same distinctive "island" topography appears on other maps dated earlier than Homem's, notably the Vallard of 1547, and the Desceliers of 1550 (but not the Desliens, Cabot, or "Harleian" which are simply modified Mercator of 1541 and Gastaldi) ; but that may mean only, something probable on general grounds, that the map of 1554 is not the first that Lopo 81
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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA
Homem made. Likewise the eastern and southern coasts of Cape Breton Island are more clearly defined than before, especially the latter, which also bears some additional place-names, while a northern coast is added. Beyond, all along the Nova Scotia coast to Cape Sable, the topography is a compromise between the Ribero type then prevalent, reflecting the voyage of Gomez in 1525-6, and new information from another source; while the place-nomenclature consists partly of the Gomez names (to be fully considered in the next paper), none of which have survived, and partly of new names, mostly unique Portuguese-French hybrids, many of which survive to this day. The interest of this new nomenclature, by the way, was first pointed out by Kohl, in his Discovery of Maine, (1869, 381-2), and was later elaborated, to somewhat fanciful degree, by Patterson, in his paper already cited as in these Transactions, (150-3, 172-3). The details we can best consider, however, on the basis of a comparative table of the place-names which follows. On the south coast of Newfoundland no names are present on the L. Homem; while of those on the map of 1558 only two are new, viz.: c. DE S. LEO (?), that is St. Lorenzo, (?) is applied to our Cape Pine, and is probably the St. Lawrence Harbours misplaced from the end of the Burin Peninsula. I suspect that PLACENTIA, which soon appears upon Portuguese maps also belongs to this series, but find no proof. BELIM, which surely survives in La Maline Bay and Lamalin Ledges at the south end of the Burin Peninsula (and, corrupted, in Allen's Island), may have been named for Belem, near Lisbon, where stands a statue of Prince Henry the Navigator. OILL would seem to be an imperfect form of paúl, applied to our St. Pauls Island, perhaps as alternative to PEDRO, as earlier noted. c. DOS BERTOIS (obvious slip for BRETOIS), is placed on the L. Homem exactly where stands our modern Cape Breton, but on the other maps (as c. DOS BERTOES, i.e., BERTOMES) is placed too high on the coast. c. FACUNDO, taking the place of the preceding on the 1568 map, and therefore applied to our Cape Breton, is evidently Fagundes, and may indicate his landfall. I. FAGUMTAS, and FACUNDA, applied unmistakably to Sable Island, can also be nothing other than Fagundes, the island perhaps being identical with the second SANTA ANA, Y. DE JOAM ESTEVENS, and Y. SANTA CRUZ, as earlier noted. The I. DE S. BRAMDAO of the L. Homem is of course the well-known 82
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mythical island of that name, but the I. DANAO GRACA, and why ABRO ILYS takes the place of I. SANTA CRUZ, I do not understand. BRETOIS, which stands next along the coast on our map, and next west of the ARGOMIS which we take for Baleine Cove, would seem to apply to the next inlet of importance, and that is Louisbourg Harbour. Now this Harbour, as shown in the preceding paper (p. 152) X
iïomem
ISS1
2>.}fomem /Sïl C. Raso p da crus C.de s fe R. grande bilim b.de S pauîo
Difamen
/fit
c.Raso c.áa crus C.de S maria.
0(11
c.dos be~rtôes c.dos bertois s.amtonio L.Sagvmtas
Cap
Kibeira At S.Joan baia. cap ¡e ales n.grant bt\i sabfom R.delsfo aïon b.3t i les
Ribera àes.Joam baia Cap.de Wes Ribera gram béa sabio Ribera deísta állom fa. ds i lies
c. àe í. Jaq,i/«s RifaeiTa dejardines baia petis
Cdp.d«.s.Jah