-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: 'Lack of interest by historians in maps'
Date:   Wed, 5 Nov 2008 21:20:02 GMT
From:   [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
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Hmm...my sense of it is that the error on these old maps is huge.
Yes, coastlines change, but trying to get a handle on the digitizing error is impossible.  Even trying to estimate wetland loss from recently digitized maps (say the last 40 years) is suspect.

I recall discussing the following map on this very list several years ago:

http://www.landmarkmaps.com/catalog/catalog_11_main.html

It's interesting to guess what stuff was...I got looking at this
http://books.google.com/books?id=k1qClkaJsXsC.

There's a passage in that book that estimates:
100 leagues from Vera Cruz to the Tropic of Cancer
100 leagues from Tropic of Cancer to Rio de Pescadores
    (I figure that would be about Matagorda Bay, TX)
70 leagues from there to Bay of the Holy Spirit
  -- I'm guessing Lake Calcasieu or some such
70 leagues from there to Rio de Flores
   (which river flows into the Gulf by 30 leagues - New Orleans?)
20 leagues to Rio de Nieves - Biloxi?
100 leagues to Ancon bajo - easternmost point of the Florida panhandle.
100 or more to Punta de la Florida

One of my colleagues tells me that the Bay of the Holy Spirit looks a lot more like Mobile Bay than Lake Calcasieu.  I'll have to agree, although the dimensions from 1525 work out to Rio de Flores being the Mississippi and the Bay of the Holy Spirit being Lake Calcasieu.


Joe McCollum