The Pacific Ocean features a flying fish and a sailing ship plying the Strait separating Asia and America (something no European would do for centuries). Richly Decorative and EvocativeThe map is superbly engraved, with an elaborate strapwork-and-floral cartouche. The island of Antilla actually appears on many early portolan charts of the Atlantic, but as navigators explored more and more of that ocean and failed to discover the Antilla, the Seven Cities were relocated to the unexplored American southwest. They landed on an island in the Atlantic called 'Antilla.' There, each of the seven bishops established a city. It was said that when the Moors invaded Porto in the early 8th century, the city’s seven bishops took all of their wealth and fled to sea.

The legend of the Seven Cities emerged in Europe long before Columbus, during the Moorish invasion of Spain.

Treasure Cities in the AmericasNear America's peninsular California, six of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold are noted: Chicuich, Axa, Tiguas, Totonteas, Chicana, and Coana. The Pacific Ocean is optimistically narrow, particularly at the Strait of Asian separating the continents, encouraging the notion of a close connection between the Americas and the treasures of the orient. Ortelius' map is infused with considerable data from Marco Polo's 13th century voyages, but Ortelius also does much to reconcile the medieval knowledge of Asia with the 16th century revelations of the Western Hemisphere. A Groundbreaking MapThis is one of the earliest maps to attempt the mapping of northeast Asia: prior maps relied entirely on the information of ancient geographers, whose concrete data seldom reached beyond what is now considered Eastern Europe. In fact, much of the content north of China is mythical or loosely derived from the journals of Marco Polo, the legends of Prester John, and Biblical sources. The map is based on a partial conic projection, and depicts from the Black Sea to the Gulf of California, and from the Arctic to southern China, what Europeans then considered the extent of the Tartar Kingdom. It also displays a strait separating Asia and America - the Strait of Asian - appearing long before the existence of such a strait was proved by discovery. It is the earliest obtainable map to name California. The map includes what is now the west coast of the United States, northwestern Canada and Alaska, bit was then almost entirely unknown lands.

While the map is primarily intended to detail Asia as dominated by the Great Khan, it is also notable for what it shows of America.

Minnesota - North Dakota - South DakotaĪ richly-colored example of Ortelius' seminal map of Tartary, this is one of the first maps to focus on the North Pacific.

Massachusetts - Connecticut - Rhode Island.

World map 1570