During his research for a new book about the mapping of North America, due for publication this summer, the author has unearthed a number of unusual items, not least this unrecorded collection of maps of the North American continent.

Bermuda. The previously unlocated first known printed map of the island. (All photographs by courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California)

André Thévet was a Franciscan monk who travelled Europe extensively in the sixteenth century.  Various works of geography were written by him, the first being the Cosmographie de Levant published in Lyon, 1554, describing his travels in the eastern Mediterranean during 1549 - 52. In 1555 he travelled as chaplain on a voyage to the present-day site of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; shortly after he became ill and returned to France. Despite that short visit he published Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (Paris, 1557) describing his voyage and his inferred return via the North American coast (the latter is highly disputed). The experiences he recalls of the New World have attracted much criticism of their accuracy from both his contemporaries and recent historians. Despite this the King of France, Francis II, bestowed on him the honour of Royal Cosmographer in 1558. For the popular two-volume Cosmographie Universelle of 1575 describing the whole world, he produced some thirty-five maps, four of which were of the known continents.

 
Belle Isle is a small island off the northern tip of Newfoundland. This name first appears on the Nicholas Vallard world map, dated 1547, also now residing in the Huntington Library.

Thévet's next main project was to be an immense work entitled Le Grand Insulaire describing the islands of the world. Known as Isolari such works had become fashionable in the sixteenth century at the hands of cartographers such as Benedetto Bordone and Tomaso Porcacchi [1]. Thevet's work, however, was considerably larger and survives today in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris [2]. Why the work remained unpublished is not known but there are many possible reasons including ill health, political turmoil, or even Thévet's own perennial lack of funds. The two folio volumes contain about 600 leaves of manuscript text describing the world's major islands, while a map appears to have been intended for each chapter. According to Lestringant, whose study of the work is the most comprehensive available, [3] 266 manuscript maps are believed to have been produced of which only 145 have survived. His intention to publish can be seen by the survival of eighty-four engraved maps, including one on the title-page. The majority of these are found within the manuscript itself, a small number reside elsewhere in the Bibliothèque Nationale in the collections of the cartographer Jean-Baptiste d'Anville and of Lallemant de Betz. Until recently only twelve of the eighty-four engraved maps were known to survive outside France; these once formed part of King George III's Collection and are now in the British Library Map Library.

Ile d'Anticosti. Jacques Cartier first visited this island in 1534 but without realising it was insular. The following year on August 13 Cartier saw it again when the truth dawned and he named it L'Isle de l'Assomption.

During a recent visit to the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, I discovered what I believe to be an unrecorded collection of nineteen of the engraved maps relating to the American continent.[4] Bound within a composite atlas attributed to Henricus Hondius, they are laid down two or three to the page. Twelve of these are not known to have survived elsewhere; thus they form an important discovery, as so few maps were engraved of America in the sixteenth century. [5] It appears that Thevet's Grand Insulaire was intended to contain about fifty maps of various islands of the American continent. The engraving style is simple but attractive and reputed by Destombes [6] to be the work of Thomas de Leu. Of those maps newly-found the most notable is of Bermuda which considerably pre-dates the first known printed map of the island by John Smith, 1624. [7] It does not bear much of a resemblance to reality, and is in fact drawn like many of Thevet's maps from the momentous twenty-one sheet 1569 world map of Gerard Mercator. [8] One interesting feature of the Bermuda map is the indication of a native population by depicting non- European vessels offshore, when in fact the island was unpopulated. Other hitherto missing maps are of the Bahamas and of Puerto Rico. The following lists only those found in the Huntington Library and gives cross-references to both Lestringant and to Robert Karrow's recent work. [9] Those twelve engraved maps identified with an asterisk were not known to have survived until this recent discovery.

The location of this island is not certain but it is believed to be on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence near Newfoundland.

References:

1. The earliest of these was by Bartolomeo dalli Sonnetti (Venice c.1485). Bordone's Libro de tutte l'isole del monde was first published in Venice in 1528, and Porcacchi's L'Isole piu famose del mondo in Venice, 1572.
2. Bibliothèque Nationale, MS.fr.15452 and 15453
3. Frank Lestringant, "André Thévet" in Mireille Pastoureau, Les atlas francais XV1e -XVIIe siecles (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale,1984) pp.481-95.
4. Huntington 109496.
5. The author's forthcoming book, describing all the known printed maps relating to North America, lists only 132 before 1600.
6. Marcel Destombes, André Thévet (1504 - 1592) et sa contribution a la cartographie et a l'oceanographie, Royal Society of Edinburgh Proceedings 72B pp.123 - 31.
7. Margaret Palmer, The mapping of Bermuda, 3rd edition by R.V. Tooley (London: Holland Press, 1983) pp.24-5 and pl. XXIII.
8. Rodney W. Shirley, The mapping of the world no.119 (London: New Holland, 1993).
9. Robert W. Karrow Jr., Mapmakers of the sixteenth century and their maps (Winnetka, Illinois: Speculum Orbis Press, 1993) pp.529 - 46.
10. Illustrated in Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, André Thévet's North America: a sixteenth-century view (Kingston, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986).
11. As Reference 7.

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COPYRIGHT September 1996 Philip D. Burden, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.

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This definitive work has since its publication in 1996 become the standard source of reference material on the subject. The book comprehensively describes for the first time all known, and many previously unrecorded, printed maps depicting any part of North America. Each one is accompanied by an illustration.

Arranged chronologically, the work is complemented by a full bibliography, and various appendices and charts including a title index and a list of first depictions in maps. The first volume covered the beginning to the year 1670. The second volume due for publication early in 2007 covers the period from 1671 to 1700, a very busy period in the cartographic history of North America. The Mapping of North America was a finalist in the ILAB international Bibliography Prize in 1998.

Title :	The Mapping of North America
Author :	Philip D. Burden
Volumes :	2
Pages :	Vol. I 608, Vol. II  612
Illustrations :	Vol. I 839, Vol. II 770