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Born in Padua, Italy, Bordon moved to Venice around the time Columbus sailed for the New World. There he became an illustrator, working for noblemen, and designing woodcut illustrations and maps for books. He is best known for printing the first atlas of island maps, commonly called an Isolario. Interestingly, it contains this map showing a passage, stretto pte del modo novo, through the New World into the Pacific Ocean. The Azores are depicted, but the fictitious islands of Brasil and Asmaide are also represented, as well as unnamed and randomly spaced towns; hence, the map appears more conceptual than useful. Only in broad strokes does it feature some of the elements derived from the world map shown at the beginning of his volume. Yet the assumption, if one may call it that, is already evident: there must be some way to sail from one ocean to the other, some passage through the continent. But where?