London: (n.p.) 1625.

(North part of America Conteyning Newfoundland, new England, Virginia, Flordia, new Spaine, and Nova Francia wth ye riche Isles of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and Port Ricco, on the South, and upon ye West the large and goodly Island of California) In 1622, Henry Briggs drafted A Treatise on the North-West Passage to the South Sea (London) that would alter the course of California mapping for nearly one hundred years. The summation of his Treatise was drawn from a map he had seen in London that had been “brought out of Holland.” Technically, the first ever printed cartographic representation of California as an Island was the title page vignette for works published by Michiel Colijn in 1622. It is assumed that Colijn drew from the same manuscript map to which Briggs refers in his treatise. This vignette was not widely distributed and it was not until 1624 that the most often recognized “first map” of California as an island was produced by Abraham Goos in West Indische Speighel. The year following, Briggs produced a California Island map to accompany the Samuel Purchas reprint of his famous 1622 treaty. At the very least, this Briggs map was the first English map to show California as an Island. From this point, however, the Goos / Briggs primacy is debated. More recent evidence today is showing that Goos’ map was more likely based upon an earlier printing of Briggs’ map. If this is the case, then the Briggs map of America and the California Island is also the first map to name Hudson Bay, Fretum Hudson, Hudsons R., Cape Cod and De la war Bay. In either case, the Goos / Briggs maps together firmly re-established an erroneous cartographic myth that would tantalize explorers and mapmakers alike for nearly one hundred years to come. (Polk, pp. 284-288; Burden, p. 265) This map is still in its original black and white, and is archivally framed. Prior to the writing of his treatise, Henry Briggs (1561-1630) was a noted English mathematician who published tables of Napier’s logarithm converting them into common Briggesian logarithms. It was in fact Briggs’ contribution to mathematics that was most responsible for scientists’ gradual acceptance of logarithms. fn/--.

ISBN: none.

[Item #MAP00073]