Florida et Regiones Vicinae

Translated and reprinted from Dutch 1625 first edition of de Laët's "Nieuwe Wereldt." This particular rendition of the "Bahia del spirit du Santu" appeared in de Laët's work for the first time, and was copied by mapmakers for decades thereafter. Some experts believe this is an early representation of the Mississippi River, despite explorers clear reports contradicting this distorted depiction of three large rivers and three small rivers flowing into a bay (probably present-day Galveston Bay). Other experts believe that this depiction is of the Mississippi River and describe it as the geographical hoax in the history of North American exploration. According to this theory, the explorer René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, who believed Louis XIV would not endorse his scheme to extend French settlement and control down the Mississippi River, made it appear in his reports that the mouth of the Mississippi River was on the western Gulf Coast in Texas rather than present-day Louisiana, more than 600 miles from where it actually empties into the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle's scheme made his planned colony appear to be an ideal staging point for an aggressive attack on the fabled silver mines of New Spain (New Mexico). La Salle's false location of the Mississippi River influenced sixteenth-and seventeenth-century European cartography of the Mississippi River valley because mapmakers could only rely on La Salle's reports. Only after Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, reached the mouth of the river was this mistake corrected.