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Norumbega et Virginia.
Louvain, 1597. Engraving, 9” x 11.5” plus margins. CONDITION: Very good, no losses. The first state of this early map depicting eastern North America, from the first atlas devoted exclusively to the New World. Notable as just the second map to use the name ‘Virginia’ in its title, following the White-deBry map (1590), van Wytfliet’s map is an important document of European knowledge of the region prior to the discovery of geographic features like the Hudson River, Long Island or Cape Cod—the northern regions collectively known as ‘Norumbega.’ This fine map was published in 1597 in the first edition of Cornelis van Wytfliet’s landmark atlas of the Americas, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum. In later states, the year is removed from the title. It shows the coastline of eastern North America from the Outer Banks to Cape Breton. Published in the Spanish Netherlands and dedicated to King Philip III, the map is titled in Latin and labeled in Spanish, with Indigenous names for settlements. It includes a prominent compass rose and detailed hatching in the ocean. A large sailing ship with rowers is shown off the coast. An error appears in the border on the left: the 39th parallel is mislabeled as the 30th. This error persisted into later states of the map before eventually being corrected. Additionally, the latitude is misaligned, with the entire region being pushed north about five degrees of its actual location. Based on accounts from sixteenth-century French, English and Spanish expeditions to the Atlantic coast of North America, van Wytfliet’s map was produced before the early seventeenth-century explorations of New England and the mid-Atlantic by the English and Dutch. In spite of these omissions, the map is considered the most accurate to depict the region prior to Joannes de Laet’s Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium Et Virginia of 1630. The southern—Virginia—portion of the map is informed by recent discoveries, including Verrazzano (1524) and Raleigh (1585). Virginia here refers to a large territory along the Atlantic coast south of Chesapeake Bay, including the Carolinas. The Outer Banks are documented in detail, with recognizable names like Hatorask (Cape Hatteras), and the islands of Roanoac (Roanoke) and Croatoan. A tiny boat carrying two figures that appears in the waters between the two islands presumably alludes to either the lost English colony of Roanoke (founded 1585) or to Native American presence in the sound. Numerous palisaded Native villages are found along Pamlico and Albemarle sounds in present-day North Carolina. “Chesipooc Sinus” is recognizable as Chesapeake Bay, though its extent is not fully documented. North of Chesapeake Bay, the Norumbega portion of the map is highly speculative. A toponym of disputed origin, Norumbega was originally the name for a mythical fortified Native trading center that was broadly applied in the sixteenth century to the area later known as New England. Early travel accounts of the region described Norumbega as a territory of immense wealth with an opulent capital of the same name. While no such city was ever discovered, van Wytfliet included a large castle labeled ‘Norombega,’ shown at a confluence at the head of an inlet, which may be Penobscot Bay. Cornelis van Wytfliet (d. 1597) was a Flemish cartographer and Secretary of the General Council of Brabant, then a province in the Spanish Netherlands. Van Wytfliet published the first edition of his atlas Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum in Louvain in 1597, devoted to the “fourth part of the world,” as a post-Columbus supplement to Ptolemy’s Geography. The atlas contains nineteen regional maps of the New World, distinguishing it as the first separately-published atlas solely devoted to the Americas. Augmentum also provides a history of early voyages to the continents, including those of Columbus, John Cabot, Sebastian Cabot, Pizarro, Verrazano, Cartier, and Frobisher. REFERENCES: Burden 103; Cumming 19; Danforth 36; Koeman III: 219; Phillips 1140; Wooldridge, William C. Mapping Virginia (Charlottesville: UVA Press, 2012) p. 10; Gallup, Donald. “The First Separately Published Atlas Entirely Devoted to the Americas: Wytfliet’s Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. 76, No. 1 (1982), pp. 63–73; Verner, Coolie. “The First Maps of Virginia, 1590-1673,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 58, No. 1 (1950), pp. 3–15; “Charting New Netherlands, 1597-1682” at New Netherlands Institute online; “White-Debry Map of 1590” at National Parks Service online.
Item #9618
Price: $4,500.00
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