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 CATALAN MAP OF ABOUT 1480 61 one set of characteristics, another with the other set, and might depict the region accordingly. This is the more probable because the region was peculiarly exposed to accidental or intentional discovery from the west of the British islands and is known, in fact, to have been the first to be reached therefrom of all North America in times of historic record. It must not be supposed that Brazil was always thought of as relatively near Europe. Nicolay in I56O 39 (Fig. 6) and Zaltieri in I566 40 prepared maps which show a Brazil Island in distinctly American waters, practically forming part of the archipelago into which Newfoundland was supposed to be divided, or at least lying between it and the Grand Banks. These presentations no doubt may have been suggested by American discoveries and later theories, especially as no navigator had been able to find Brazil at any point nearer Europe; but again they may be at least partly due to surviving early traditions of the great distance westward at which this island lay. The Brazil of Nicolay and Zaltieri is, to be sure, a very small affair; but their maps were made about two and a half centuries after the earliest one which shows this island ample time for many misconceptions to creep in. Their only value is in their illustration of locality. THE CATALAN MAP OF ABOUT 1480 More important in every way is a Catalan map (Fig. 7) pre- served in Milan and reproduced by Nordenskiold in I892, 41 but since copied partly by Nansen, by Westropp, and by others. It belongs to the fifteenth century perhaps about 1480 and deserves clearly to rank as the only map before Columbus, thus far reported, which shows a part of North America other than Greenland. The latter had long before appeared in the well- known map of Claudius Clavus, I427 43 (Fig. 16), no doubt on " A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus, PI. 27. 40 Kretschmer, atlas, PI. 19, map 3. 41 A. E. Nordenskiold: Bidrag till Nordens aldsta Kartografi, Stockholm, 1892, PI. 5. Also (reduced) in Nansen's "In Northern Mists," Vol. 2, p. 280, and in T. J. Westropp's "Brasil," PI. 20, facing p. 260. A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus, p. 90; also discussed by Joseph Fischer: The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America, With Special Relation to Their Early Cartographical Representation, transl. by B. H. Soulsby, and London, 1903.