The unauthentic character of this map, and the manner in which its representation of the Verrazzano discoveries was produced, distinctly appear in its method of construction.  Cape Breton and Terra Nova are represented as they are laid down on the charts of Pedro Reinel and the anonymous cartographer,—­reproduced on the first and fourth sheets of the Munich atlas and unquestionably belonging to the period anterior to the discovery of the continuity of the land from Florida to Cape Breton.  They bear the names which are found on those maps, importing their discovery thus early by the Bretons and Portuguese.  In the south, the designation of Florida as a Spanish discovery, with its southerly coast running along the parallel of thirty-three and a half of north latitude, eight degrees north of its actual position, is precisely the same it as it is shown on the anonymous Portuguese chart just mentioned.  These representations of the country, in the north and the south, were thus adopted as the basis of this map.  But as there were not seven hundred leagues of coast between latitude 38 Degrees and Cape Breton, which is the distance it indicates as having been explored by Verrazzano, that extent could be obtained only, either by changing the latitude of Florida or Cape Breton, or prolonging the coast longitudinally, or both.  The latitude of the northerly limit of Florida having been preserved for the commencement of the discoveries, Cape Breton had therefore to be changed and was accordingly carried five degrees and a half further north and placed in latitude 51-1/2 instead of 46, and by consequence the whole line of coast was thrown several degrees in that direction, as is proven by the position of the island of Louise, which thus falls in 46 Degrees N. instead of 41 Degrees, the latitude assigned to it in the letter.  Nothing could more conclusively show the factitious origin of this delineation and its worthlessness as an exposition of the Verrazzano discovery.

Some importance, however, attaches to this map in its assisting us to fix approximately the time of the fabrication of the Verrazzano letter.  If it were constructed in 1529, as some would infer, with the portions relating to the discovery upon it, then it is the earliest recognition of the claim to this discovery yet produced, irrespective of the letter.  But it is by no means certain that it was originally made in that year.  Nothing appears on the map itself giving that date in terms; but it is left to be inferred exclusively from the language of the legend, which states that the discovery was made five years ago, without any indication, either in the legend itself or elsewhere on the map, to what time that period relates; and leaving the discovery, therefore, to be ascertained from extraneous sources.  If the discovery be assumed to have been made in 1524, then indeed the map, according to the legend, would have been constructed in 1529.  But no person,