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In Portugal even today people continue to use the gourd bottles with water or wine when they go to the mountains or to the fields to do their agricultural work. |
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St.
John’s Harbor has the Shape of a Gourd! |
It was the Portuguese discoverers who first drew it in the shape of a gourd, on a old map dated 1506, which is now preserved in Germany!
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In Portugal even today people continue to use the gourd bottles with water or wine when they go to the mountains or to the fields to do their agricultural work. |
On August 5, 2003, I received an e-mail from Lucy van Beek, Producer of the Paladin Invision Television, from London, England, with pertinent questions in preparation for my interview for their TV camera, at the Dighton Rock Museum, on August 15th, 2003.
“Dear Manuel:
“There
is one last thing that I wanted to ask you. In your book ‘Portuguese
Pilgrims’ there are three maps: Reinel’s Chart of 1522;
Reinel’s Chart of 1519 and also Diogo Ribeiro’s Planisphere of 1529.
Do you have any reproductions of these maps at all in your study, and if so is
it possible for us to read the names “Land of Corte Realis” off them? Also
have you heard of the Kunstmann Atlas of 1571? And if so do you have a copy?
Apparently it mentions that there is a bay called “Joao Vaz”
or
“river
de Joao Vaz”
Lucy”
Obviously this TV team from London wants to see the real documents!
My answer to Lucy was that I had all the maps she asked for, except the Kunstmann’s map. I confessed to her that I never heard of it, but I promised her that I was going to look for it. And so I did.
I know, from personal experience of the past forty years, that when I need to find any information about an old map, I go first to the Monumenta Cartographica Henriquina. I have the entire collection of seven volumes, plus the collection of color maps, in my Library-Museum in Cavião, Vale de Cambra. But here in America, now, where could I go to examine the Monumenta? I decided to go to the John Carter Brown Library, located in Providence, Rhode Island, which is considered the best in U. S. A. for old cartography.
I have been an Associate Member of the John Carter Brown Library, in Providence, for forty years. So I decided to go to John Carter Brown Library and review the huge volumes of the Monumenta Cartographica Henriquina. In this library exists the entire collection which is numbered 13th, as a gift from the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Oliveira Salazar, in 1960.
I spent three days at the John Carter Brown Library where I was very well received and treated by all the personnel.
(1) The Kunstmann Map
With alertness and perseverance I found the Kunstmann Map! Eureka! Here is the description of the map as it appears on the Monumenta Cartographica Henriquina published in Portugal, in 1960:
“Most of this collection was assembled by the humanist Konrad Peutinger (1465-1547) and the German Printer Valentim Fernandes Alemão, who were established in Lisbon. In 1715 Ignaz Peutinger presented the library which had been assembled by his ancestor to the Jesuits at Augsburg; then, when it was divided up at the beginning of the nineteenth century, part of it remained at Augsburg and the rest went to Munich. It does not necessarily follow, however, that all the early Portuguese material in the Staatsbibliothek was collected by Peutinger; for instance, the Vaz Dourado Atlas of a later date, was certainly not his. But this anonymous chart of c. 1506 was probably one of those purchased in Lisbon for the collection of the Augsburg humanist.”
“It is usually known as “Kunstmann III”, because its western part was first reproduced in 1859, in a coloured facsimile with the serial number III, in the famous Atlas of the learned German priest and historian Friedrich Kunstmann, who lived in Lisbon for some years. There can be no doubt whatsoever that it is genuinely Portuguese. “
“The
parchment on which this chart was drawn measured roughly 87 X 117 cm,
at its largest dimensions, and represented the Black Sea, the
Mediterranean, Europe , the western half of
Africa and the Atlantic with part of Greenland , Terra Nova and the coast
of Brazil”.
“ It is also remarkable that this chart, which in our opinion chronologically follows that of c. 1504 signed by Pedro Reinel (Plate 8), is the second to show a scale of latitudes, from the equator to 68 degrees North. It is also the second, after Reinel’s of c. 1504, to present the new type of compass rose with the lily indicating the north which, as noted by Heinrich Winter ‘was introduced by the Portuguese and became international’ “
Here is the Kunstmann’s a map, made by a Portuguese cartographer in Lisbon, preserved in a Germany library, showing in 1506, the land of future Canada, as the Land of or “Terra de cortte Riall”.
Fig. No. 1- Kunstmann’s map of 1506
(1) Points to Terra de cortte Riall or Land of Corte Real
(2) Points to figure of 8 or gourd bottle harbor
(3) Points to the lines of latitudes
(4) Points to the lily flower indicating the North
Now let us take a close look at this map. Please pay particular attention to the bay drawn in the form of a figure of 8 à like a gourd bottle!
Please, note that this Kunstmann map is a copy of the Pedro Reinel’s map dated 1504 as stated above on the Monumenta Geographica Henriquina. The use of the compass of rose for the first time on the maps by the Portuguese cartographers is important, because the lily flower was the symbol of King John II and became part of the ornamental crown of the Portuguese kings afterwards.
Now let us compare the "two bays connected by a bottle neck", in the shape like a figure of 8, or a gourd bottle, drawn on the 1506 map ------> with the figure of 8 or gourd bottle of today’s St. John’s Harbor in Newfoundland!
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Fig. No. 2 -- I visited St. John’s Newfoundland, with my wife and our two sons, on July of 1974, and I will never forget the striking appearance of the St. John’s Harbor like a gourd bottle.
Take a deep breath and look again at the comparison! It is simply amazing to know that in Lisbon, Portugal, a cartographer had obtained enough and clear information, that early, in 1506, to be able to drawn the St. Johns Harbour gourd bottle shape, as it has today!!!
