The first map of the continent of America

A good, dark printing of Munster's landmark map, the first to attempt to show America as a continent, yet demonstrating how little was known. On the map a narrow isthmus divides the Atlantic and Pacific in the region of the Carolinas, based on Verrazzano, and Yucatan is an island. The large island of Zipangri off the west coast is not California but Japan, based on the narrative of Marco Polo but a few years before any recorded visit to the islands by Europeans. The Philippines appear as an 'archipelago of 7448 islands'. The large vignette ship is the 'Victoria', the only survivor of Magellan's fleet of four. This map, published in Munster's 'Cosmographiae Universalis', contained two 'firsts': it was the first atlas map to depict North and South America together and to use the name 'Pacific' (as 'pacificum').