CONTACT AND DISCOVERY 25Verrazzano sought a route to the Far East. While
exploring the coast of North Carolina, he mistook
Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds for the Pacific Ocean.
In the map of his expedition Verrazzano depicted
a vast inland sea—the fabled Sea of Verrazzano—
just west of the North Carolina coast.
Münster reproduced that geographical error
on this map. A small spit of land suggests an easy
passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, with
China and the Spice Islands just beyond. With this
map, Münster effectively publicized French hopes
of a Northwest Passage, and a view of the continent
that was informed by these voyages. And, because
Münster’s maps circulated so widely, Verrazzano’s
vision of North America shaped subsequent voyages.
Münster’s map was influential in other ways. In
the second half of the sixteenth century the English
joined the quest to find the Northwest Passage to
the Far East. Münster’s widely circulating picture of
the world forcefully influenced Richard Hakluyt’s
argument for English colonization efforts in North
America. In fact, Verrazzano’s imagined passage
to the Pacific, along the coast of North Carolina at
Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, was precisely the
spot where the English eventually founded their
earliest settlement, the failed colony of Roanoke.