The script (calligraphy) while interesting also has a certain ‘tremulous’ trait that indicates not the fast flow of a contemporary writer but the slow calculated moves of a person intending to recreate a style. This would be but another single fact to add to the total collection; but, nothing can be as incriminating as the actual legends such as “All the blue is dune by the relation of the Indians”…and if you throw in Manahatin. To be honest I am surveying the map as found on-line at

http://www.she-philosopher.com/gallery/1610map.html

Now, as for testing, the emphasis should be on the ink and not the paper unless one would test to establish that the paper itself is of Spanish origin (rather than English). Many of legajos at Simancas and Indias, still contain blank sheets of paper bundled with the correspondence.

As noted by those who have looked at the map directly there are just too many “quirks”, not least of which are the grids! They have no relationship to a Mercator projection, but appear the classic “tracer’s” technique. Perhaps a review of maps from the 16th through the end of the 17th century might strike “source” matches and reveal the entire sketch a composite.

Having reviewed many a map attached to Spanish official correspondence at both Indias and Simancas, this little item is more than an anomaly and really whacko for an ‘English’ map in 1610 with the St. Lawrence all the way to Lake Ontario!

PS:

Begin with the 1529 Diego Ribero map. the 1550 Lopo Homem chart and the 1568 and 1571 Vaz Dourado maps. The fun part about this map for 1610 is NO BERMUDA (whose rediscovery by the English was the big news of that year). For so much detail on everything else and the specific reference in the supposed Velasco letter, it is a major omission.

However as an hispanicist, the 1887 transcription of the purported Simancas document strikes a discordant tone.

“They say also that it is impossible to pass to the South Sea by the river on which they have erected their two forts. By land it is more than 400 leagues off and many high mountains are there and vast deserts which the Indians themselves never yet have explored. Thus no credit can be given to what the Irishman Francisco Manuel says in the report which Y. M. commanded to be sent to me.

“This King sent last year a surveyor to survey that Province, and he returned here about three months ago and presented to him [King James] a plan or map of all that he could discover, a copy of which I send Y. M. Whose Catholic Person” etc.

Just these two paragraphs make me curious to look at the original Spanish, specially since none of these coastal areas were “new” to the Spanish crown and Phillip III had merely to consult with the Consejo de Indias—which he did and hence the reason for Santa Fe! The Spanish could give a fig for this coast, what concerned them was access to their colonial heartland. The clue to the problem is that word “surveyor”…