Maps out

Usage examples of charts.

The collection of six sailing charts bears the title Portulan dresse entre les annees 1524 a 1530 par Francisco Rodriguez, pilote portugais qui a fait le voyage aux Moluques.

These portolanos or sailing charts are of great interest to the Australasian student, not only because they depict for the first time the Molucca Islands, but also because Java, Bali, Lomboc and Sumbawa are set down on them as distinct and separate islands, whereas on a class of maps a little later in date, on which the Australian Continent is represented, some of those islands are indicated as forming part of the northern shores of Australia.

The old charts we have referred to preclude the possibility of a discovery by him of the western and eastern shores.

As to the northern and southern coasts, which are not given on the said charts, there is much incertitude.

Many cartographers of the renascence, whose charts indeed we cannot read unless we reverse them, must have followed Asiatic cartographical methods, and this perhaps through copying local charts obtained in the countries visited by them.

Those who had to make out his descriptions and locate on charts the various places he described did not interpret him that way.

Rawdon Brown, is now in the Department of Maps and Charts in the British Museum.

Dauphin and similar charts wherein the Australian coasts are so remarkably well delineated, we have now to mention in connection with the present globe some of its most curious and extraordinary features--features which will show that the Dauphin and similar charts were not entirely due to Portuguese and Spanish surveys.

It was no doubt an Arabian chart, unless the Javanese and Malays had charts of their own, which is a difficult point to settle, and which involves also the possibility of Chinese charts having been used.

It was also like this chart and other charts of the period in being all marked with lines perpendicular and across.

As we have frequently proved, none of the Lusitanian charts known commit that extraordinary mistake, which may be considered as the touchstone of Lusitano-Germanic maps.

West Australian coasts and connected with the duplicate Malay Peninsula on earlier charts, is now separated from the continental bogus prolongation and assumes a greater likeness to the real Sumatra, although retaining its erroneous position, its southern parts being traversed by the tropic of Capricorn.

Portuguese, not Spanish origin--is that it shows signs of having been compiled, in parts, of Moorish or Arabian charts or descriptions.

Those indications have been gathered from the verbal recitals of some trading seamen of the Indian Ocean, and especially from the charts of those seamen, found in Moorish vessels seized by the Portuguese, who were masters of these seas as soon as they appeared upon them.

He is the author of a set of sailing charts, drafted no doubt during that memorable voyage.