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Including Mythical Islands and the Island of California
Nice full color example of John Speed's landmark map of America, the first atlas map to depict California as an Island and to accurately depict the East Coast of North America.
The map was engraved by Abraham Goos, who drew upon his own map of North America of 1624 and the 1625 Briggs for his depiction of California. The Straits of Anian and hint of the Northwest Coastline also appear. The mythical islands of Brasil and Frisland still appear in the North Atlantic. The Plymouth colony in Massachusetts and Jamestown colony in Virginia are both shown.
The vignettes on the sides depict the native costumes of Greenland, Virginia, Florida, Mexico, New England, Peru, Brazil, Mochan and Magellanica. The 8 views across the top represent town plans for the largest cities in the New World. The inset depicts Greenland and Iceland. No sign of the Great Lakes. A number of sea monsters and sailing ships also decorate the map.
In 1662, the map was significantly updated, to includes a number of important new British Colonial names, including:
- Boston
- Connecticut
- Long Ile (Island)
- Maryland
- Carolina
- Albion
In addition, the area around Hudson Rio (Hudson River) was encircled, showing the Dutch colonial settlement in the region.
East of Greenland, Icaria Ile and Bus Ile are added, with the mythical Brasil Island left unaltered.
Bus Isle
Bus Island, also known as Buss or Busse Island, was a phantom landform reported in the North Atlantic during the Age of Exploration. It was supposedly discovered in September 1578 by sailors aboard the Emanuel of Bridgwater, a "busse" (a type of fishing vessel), during Martin Frobisher’s third expedition. The island was charted as lying between Ireland and the mythical Frisland at around 57° N. The confusion likely arose from navigational errors, with Frobisher mistaking Greenland for Frisland and Baffin Island for Greenland. Upon returning home, the crew of the Emanuel may have further miscalculated their position, interpreting optical effects near Greenland around 62° N as a new island.
In 1671, Thomas Shepard claimed to have mapped the island from the Golden Lion of Dunkirk, but as Atlantic navigation improved, doubts grew about its existence. The island’s size was gradually reduced on maps, and by 1745 it was renamed the “Sunken Land of Buss” due to the shallow waters in the supposed area. Despite persistent appearances on charts, its existence was definitively disproved by John Ross during his 1818 Arctic expedition aboard the Isabella, where no depth was found at 180 fathoms (330 meters). Nevertheless, the legend of Bus Island lingered into the 19th century, a testament to the persistence of navigational myths in early cartography.
Icaria Ile
The island of Icaria holds a curious place in the lore of early exploration, primarily due to its association with the enigmatic voyages of the Zeno brothers, Niccolò and Antonio, in the late 14th century. Although widely considered a mythical or misinterpreted discovery, the mention of Icaria in their controversial account, The Zeno Narrative, remains an intriguing example of the blurred lines between legend and early cartography.
The Zeno brothers were Venetian navigators who, according to the narrative published in 1558 by a descendant, traveled to the North Atlantic around 1380. The document, accompanied by a map, claims that the brothers reached various islands, including Iceland and Greenland, and charted lands previously unknown to European maps.
Over the next 3 centuries, the theories of Johann Reinhold Forster and John Dee regarding the legendary island of Icaria reveal an intriguing blend of myth, historical ambition, and speculative geography. Both figures sought to anchor British territorial claims in the North Atlantic, though their approaches and interpretations diverged in key ways. While Dee’s arguments drew on Arthurian legend to justify British sovereignty, Forster linked the island’s mysterious history to Scottish noble lineage and medieval explorations.
John Dee, a prominent Elizabethan scholar and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, played a central role in shaping British claims to the New World. In his research, Dee sought to prove that Britain’s rights to territories in the North Atlantic and beyond predated those of Spain and Portugal. He invoked Arthurian legends, arguing that King Arthur had conquered regions such as Iceland, Greenland, and even parts of America in the 6th century. Dee claimed that Arthur sent colonists to these northern lands, extending British influence over islands like Icaria, which Dee viewed as part of this larger network of Arthurian conquests. This historical narrative was intended to legitimize British claims to the entire eastern coast of North America, positioning them as heirs to a mythical British empire that predated Iberian claims.
In the late 18th century, the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster offered a different perspective on Icaria, rooted in historical geography rather than myth. Forster identified Icaria from the Zeno Narrative—a 14th-century account of North Atlantic exploration—as a misinterpreted or misplaced version of Kerry, Ireland. He further speculated that the legendary figure Zichmni, described in the narrative as a powerful ruler in the region, was actually Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. Forster believed that Sinclair’s maritime expeditions and connections to the Orkney Islands provided a historical basis for the Zeno narrative, making Icaria a real location tied to British and Scottish history.
Forster’s theory linked Icaria not to Arthurian legend, but to a legacy of medieval exploration and noble lineage. He argued that if Zichmni was indeed Sinclair, then the British presence in the North Atlantic was well-established by the 14th century, reinforcing Britain’s historical claims to these territories. Later researchers, such as Richard Henry Major, supported Forster’s identification of Icaria as a Celtic location, strengthening the notion of British influence in the region.
The popular misconception of California as an island can be found on European maps from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. From its first portrayal on a printed map by Diego Gutiérrez, in 1562, California was shown as part of North America by mapmakers, including Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. In the 1620s, however, it began to appear as an island in several sources. While most of these show the equivalent of the modern state of California separated from the continent, others, like a manuscript chart by Joao Teixeira Albernaz I (ca. 1632) now in the collection of the National Library of Brasil shows the entire western half of North Americas as an island.
The myth of California as an island was most likely the result of the travel account of Sebastian Vizcaino, who had been sent north up the shore of California in 1602. A Carmelite friar, Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, accompanied him. Ascension described the land as an island and around 1620 sketched maps to that effect. Normally, this information would have been reviewed and locked in the Spanish repository, the Casa de la Contratación. However, the manuscript maps were intercepted in the Atlantic by the Dutch, who took them to Amsterdam where they began to circulate. Ascensión also published descriptions of the insular geography in Juan Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana (1613) (with the island details curtailed somewhat) and in his own Relación breve of ca. 1620.
The first known maps to show California as an island were on the title pages of Antonio de Herrera’s Descripción de las Indias Occidentales (1622) and Jacob le Maire's Spieghel Der Australische Navigatie (1622). Two early examples of larger maps are those by Abraham Goos (1624) and another by Henry Briggs, which was included in Samuel Purchas’ Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). In addition to Briggs and Goos, prominent practitioners like Jan Jansson and Nicolas Sanson adopted the new island and the practice became commonplace. John Speed’s map (1626-7), based on Briggs’ work, is well known for being one of the first to depict an insular California.
The island of California became a fixture on mid- and late-seventeenth century maps. The island suggested possible links to the Northwest Passage, with rivers in the North American interior supposedly connecting to the sea between California and the mainland. Furthermore, Francis Drake had landed in northern California on his circumnavigation (1577-80) and an insular California suggested that Spanish power in the area could be questioned.
Not everyone was convinced, however. Father Eusebio Kino, after extensive travels in what is now California, Arizona, and northern Mexico concluded that the island was actually a peninsula and published a map refuting the claim (Paris, 1705). Another skeptic was Guillaume De L’Isle. In 1700, De L’Isle discussed “whether California is an Island or a part of the continent” with J. D. Cassini; the letter was published in 1715. After reviewing all the literature available to him in Paris, De L’Isle concluded that the evidence supporting an insular California was not trustworthy. He also cited more recent explorations by the Jesuits (including Kino) that disproved the island theory. Later, in his map of 1722 (Carte d’Amerique dressee pour l’usage du Roy), De L’Isle would abandon the island theory entirely.
Despite Kino’s and De L’Isle’s work, California as an island remained common on maps until the mid-eighteenth century. De L’Isle’s son-in-law, Philippe Buache, for example, remained an adherent of the island depiction for some time. Another believer was Herman Moll, who reported that California was unequivocally an island, for he had had sailors in his offices that claimed to have circumnavigated it. In the face of such skepticism, the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, had to issue a decree in 1747 proclaiming California to be a peninsula connected to North America; the geographic chimera, no matter how appealing, was not to be suffered any longer, although a few final maps were printed with the lingering island.
John Speed (1551 or '52 - 28 July 1629) was the best known English mapmaker of the Stuart period. Speed came to mapmaking late in life, producing his first maps in the 1590s and entering the trade in earnest when he was almost 60 years old.
John Speed's fame, which continues to this day, lies with two atlases, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (first published 1612), and the Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (1627). While The Theatre ... started as solely a county atlas, it grew into an impressive world atlas with the inclusion of the Prospect in 1627. The plates for the atlas passed through many hands in the 17th century, and the book finally reached its apotheosis in 1676 when it was published by Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell, with a number of important maps added for the first time.
![Pascaart vertoonende de zeecusten van Chili, Peru, Hispania Nova, Nova Granada, en California…. [Early New Zealand Inset]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/65168.jpg)
