North America By the time of the map's creation, European voyages had landed across the Atlantic Ocean. Christopher Columbus had completed his
first three voyages to a land that he called both Cuba and Asia.
John Cabot had completed three voyages from
Bristol under
Henry VII of England. Very little was known about Cabot's third voyage, including whether Cabot ever returned to England. While sailing to Greenland, known but little understood by contemporary Europeans,
João Fernandes Lavrador made landfall on a nearby coast.
Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother
Miguel, members of the Portuguese royal household, sailed West under
Manuel I of Portugal to find a Northwest Passage to Asia.
Newfoundland, visited in 1500 and 1501 by the Corte-Real brothers, is labeled as
Terra del Rey de Portuguall on the Cantino map. The map features a peculiar landmass roughly in the location of North America. Several theories offer potential explanations for this land that terminates in a peninsula, labeled "
C. do fim do abrill" or "Cape of the end of April", pointing towards the Caribbean. It has been linked to Asia, the Yucatan, Florida, and Cuba. The area includes a few defined cartographic details and names seemingly connected to the voyages of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real. Other maps depicting the same land include the
Caverio map, the maps of
Martin Waldseemüller, and the
Johannes Schöner globes. These describe the land variously as
Terra ultra incognita ("Land beyond unknown"),
Vlterius incognita terra ("Land further beyond unknown"),
Terra de Cvba ("Land of Cuba"),
Parias (a native place name from
Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci), and
Asie partis ("Part of Asia").
South America The Brazilian coast was certainly the last to be added and reached its present form in three phases: to the first belong an initial coastline running southeast from
Golfo fremosso to
Cabo Sam Jorge, and from there, to the north of
Porto Seguro, continuing further south to the tip of the landmass. An inscription off Porto Seguro records the discovery and naming of Vera Cruz, as Brazil was initially called: Porto Seguro. Vera Cruz, so called by this name, was found by Pedro Alvares Cabral, a gentleman of the household of the King of Portugal, which he discovered in going as commander of fourteen ships that the King sent to Calicut and, on the way to India, he came across this land here, which he thought to be mainland [terra firma], in which many people are observed, men and women, to walk about as naked as their mothers bore them: they are relatively fair-skinned than reddish brown and have very slick hair. This land was discovered in 1500. Only a relatively small portion of the coast, between the flag near the
Vera cruz inscription and the northern side of the
baia de todos os santos, would have been surveyed in 1500 by the fleet of
Pedro Álvares Cabral.
Greenland The European
rediscovery of
Greenland is thought to have been made by
João Fernandes Lavrador and Pedro de Barcelos between 1495 and 1498. The place was also visited by
Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), during the English expedition of 1498. However, the island's depiction on the map suggests that it was based on information gathered by the Portuguese mission of Labrador and Barcelos.
Newfoundland was probably visited by an English expedition in 1497–98, and then visited by the Portuguese explorer
Gaspar Corte-Real in 1500 and 1501. The map clarifies that the land was discovered and charted for King
Manuel I of Portugal by
Gaspar Corte-Real. ==See also==