■«» «»)i Wf"' 
 
 HISTORICAL AND 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 NOTES 
 
 i453_i5<^o 
 
 By HENRY STEVENS gmb fsa ma vale etc 
 
 Fellow of the Royal Geng & Zoological Societies of London 
 
 Foreign Member of the Amer Antiq Society Corresp Member 
 
 of the Historical Societies of Mass New York Connecticut 
 
 Maine Vermont New Jersey Pennsylvania Wisconsin 
 
 and Blk Bid Athm Clb Lend 
 
 New Haven : Office of the American Journal of Science 
 LoNDOK : Office of the Author No 4 Trafalgar Square 1869 
 
 Congress of Badajos. 
 
7 J7/ 
 
 HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 ON THE EARLIEST DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA 
 
 1453 — 1530 
 
 WITH COMMENTS ON THE EARLIEST CHARTS AND MAPS ; THE MIS 
 
 TAKES OF THE EARLY NAVIGATORS & THE BLUNDERS OP THE 
 
 GEOGRAPHERS ; THE ASIATIC ORIGIN OF THE ATLANTIC 
 
 COAST LINE OF NORTH AMERICA HOW 
 
 IT CREPT EN AND HOW IT 
 
 CREPT OUT OF 
 
 THE MAPS 
 
 THE 
 
 WHOLE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY THE 
 
 TEHUANTEPEC RAILWAY COMPANY'S 
 
 MAP OF THE WORLD ON MERCATOR'S PRO 
 
 JECTION AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHIC FAC-SIMILES 
 
 OF MANY OF THE EARLIEST MAPS AND CHARTS OF AMERICA 
 
 By henry STEVENS gmb ma etc 
 
 SOMBTIMB8 STUDENT IN TAIB COLLEGE IN CONNECTICUT 
 Now RESIDENT IN LONDON 
 
 NEW HAVEN: OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
 LONDOK : HENRT STEVENS 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE 
 
 1869 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1869 by 
 
 HENRY STEVENS 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connecticut 
 
 A few copies printed for presents— N^ U Q -/"> U^tv rc-U.t 
 Rflvfintv-five cor)ies printed for sale — N° " 
 
 Seventy-five copies printed for sale — N 
 
 jH-tyV-t-iH' <^ Ui.^-cyi^i-<i 
 
 7Z 
 
 yli^cZ ^^ '^~Jo 
 
 TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TATLOR, PBDJTEBS, 
 
 221 State St, New Haven, Conn. 
 
To 
 
 JAMES LENOX 
 
 WHOSE CONSTANT CORRESPONDENCE FOR MORE THAN TWENTY 
 
 YEARS RESPECTING THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE EAST 
 
 AS WELL AS THE WEST HAS ENCOURAGED 
 
 THE WRITER AND STIMULATED 
 
 HIS INVESTIGATIONS 
 
 THESE PAGES 
 
 ARE 
 
 GRATEFULLY AND CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 
 
EXPLANATORY 
 
 Notwithstanding the assiduity of his researches and the pains he has taken to extricate facts 
 from the confusion of different authors, as what is true does not always appear possible, and 
 what appears possible is not always true, he has not entirely succeeded, though he has done all 
 that could be expected.— Cullen on Clavigero, 
 
 In February last the writer was asked by bis brother, Mr. 
 Simon Stevens of New York, President of the Tebuantepec Rail- 
 way Company, to contribute to bis forthcoming book on Tebu- 
 antepec, an Historical Introduction on the earliest discoveries 
 in America, and on the routes of commerce of the Old "World, 
 tracing their changes, especially so far as they had any direct 
 bearing on his project of Interoceanic Communication by way 
 of the Isthmus of Tebuantepec. The writer accepted the op- 
 portunity, not expecting perhaps so much to aid the enterprise 
 as to give shape and expression to certain ideas that had for 
 years been floating and growing in his mind respecting the en- 
 tanglement, in our earliest charts, of the northeast coast lines of 
 Asia and North America, and the confusion growing out of it, 
 in the early history, geography, and chronology of the new Con- 
 tinent. In rejDrinting that paper here, with considerable revi- 
 sion and emendation, necessary to harmonize it, he finds it con- 
 venient to throw the chief additional matter into an explanatory 
 preface, rather than rewrite the whole. 
 
8 
 
 Recently vast stores of material of American history have 
 been brought to light. Old books and maps have turned up. 
 Bibliography has become an exact science. Documents are 
 scrutinized anew, as they never were before. New histor- 
 ical books have been written, old ones revived, annotated, edited 
 and reproduced, to such an extent that half an American his- 
 torian's labor, before he begins his narrative, consists in clear- 
 ing away the rubbish of his predecessors, and in reconciling 
 conflicting authorities. There is something manifestly wrong 
 in this, for the honest Muse of History is not such a muddler. 
 Truth is not so obscured in the other coast lines of this hemi- 
 sphere. 
 
 In 1793 appeared the first volume of Munos' great work. 
 The death of the author prevented its continuation. His man- 
 uscripts and his mantle fell to Senor Navarrete, who published 
 in 1825 his first two volumes on the voyages of Columbus, 
 though the learned compiler had been diligently at work in of- 
 ficial and private archives since 1789, under the patronage of 
 the Spanish government. Then followed in quick succession, 
 in 1828, a translation into French of Navarrete's volumes, with 
 additions by prominent members of the Greographical Society 
 of Paris. The same year Washington Irving gave to the world 
 his Life of Columbus, built confessedly upon Navarrete's found- 
 ation. The year 1830 brought forth in London The History of 
 Maritime Discovery, followed and cut to pieces the next year 
 by Biddle's Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, which in turn was 
 roughly handled in 1832 in Tytler's Historical View of the 
 Northern Coasts of America. Finally in 1835-1839, after long 
 and gigantic research, appeared Humboldt's Examen Critique, a 
 digest of all that had preceded it respecting the causes that led 
 to the discovery of the New "World ; the facts and dates of the 
 voyages of Columbus, the Cabots, Vespucci, and others ; the ear- 
 liest maps and charts, etc. 
 
 This incomparable work was a masterly survey of the whole 
 field of early American geography, and though unfinished has " 
 been the parent of innumerable minor productions. The large 
 marine chart of the World by Juan de la Cosa, discovered by 
 Humboldt in 1832, was here used for the first time, and was in 
 many respects the great philosopher's grand card. More re- 
 
cently tlie labors of Kuritsmann in Municli, of Santarem and 
 Joniard in Paris, of Ghillany in Nuremberg, of Eawdon Brown 
 in Venice, of Bergenrotb in Spain, have brought to light valu- 
 able original material illustrative of maritime discovery prior 
 to 1492, as well as of the voyages of Columbus, Vespucci, the 
 Cabots, Behaim, and others. Still more recently many subjects 
 of great interest and importance pertaining to our earliest ge- 
 ography have been elaborated by Messrs. LaSagra, Lelewel, 
 D'Avezac, Varnhagen, Major, Peschel, Bancroft, Helps, Park- 
 man, B. Smith, Murphy, Lenox, Asher, Hale, Eead, Deane, and 
 not least by Brevoort, until one is ready to exclaim of the old voy- 
 agers. Are their ways past finding out ? Yet there still exists 
 the old entanglement in the American and Asiatic coast lines 
 and the old confusion in our primitive annals and geography. 
 
 A. new summing up of North American discovery has ap- 
 peared in a magnum opus published in April of this year by 
 the Maine Historical Society, nominally the History of the Dis- 
 covery of Maine, but really the history of the discovery of 
 the whole eastern coast of North America. This learned work 
 by John G. Kohl, ll.d. is presumed to be the culmination of 
 all that is known and recorded on this vast subject from Adam 
 of Bremen to Kohl of Bremen, and may therefore be held as 
 the present state of the history of North American geography 
 and discovery. 
 
 There is appended to the Maine volume a remarkable pa- 
 per on the four voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot, by M. 
 D'Avezac of Paris, in which the distinguished French geog- 
 rapher, on several important points, expresses views precisely 
 opposite to those of Dr. Kohl. Both of course cannot be right, 
 but this affords an apt illustration of the present confused con- 
 dition of our geography. However, whether in all respects the 
 Maine volume will stand the test of criticism or not, the Histor- 
 ical Society of Maine is deserving of high commendation for 
 having so boldly and so honestly put forth this expensive for- 
 eign production, amply illustrated as it is with facsimiles (ut 
 vulgo) of no less than twenty-tliree of the earliest maps. The 
 whole question is now brought down to date and set up between 
 two boards for public view and judgment. No geographer has 
 as yet done the work better, and the only wonder is that Dr. 
 
10 
 
 Kohl could have done so much and so well, even from his point 
 of view, in the short time allowed him. But — 
 
 Still the writer does not find his cravings for true and exact 
 history satisfied. The words may, perhaps, and probably, are 
 the menials of Fiction, seldom of History. Another method of 
 treating our ancient records, he has thought, might possibly 
 throw new light on the old geographical puzzles that have come 
 down to us from and before the Great Discoverer, and reveal the 
 key. The truth is that the history of the early voyages is so 
 bemuddled by recent writers (and the newly discovered old ma- 
 terials seem only to add to the confusion) that nothing short of 
 an entke overhauling of first principles, and resifting of facts, 
 aided by rigid chronology and compound scrutiny, will enable 
 us to take clear observations, to ascertain our bearings and show 
 us whither we have drifted these four hundred years. The 
 writer does not pretend that he is competent to do this himself, 
 though he owns to the consumption of no little midnight petro- 
 leum in trying to read old records by the new light. He has 
 attempted, after many years of bibliographical study, to step 
 into the shoes of the old navigators, pilots and cosmogi'aphers, 
 to see as they saw, beginning fifty years before, and coming down 
 to half a century after Columbus, taking up the sequence of 
 events as they occurred, and excluding rigidly all subsequent 
 testimony. 
 
 In the following paper the writer has given a rapid sketch of 
 some of his observations from this point of view. A few of 
 them are sufficiently startling if true, but require, no doubt, 
 further elucidation and a full declaration of authorities. These, 
 when space is more abundant. Meanwhile the reader is invited 
 to study well the accompanying photo-lithographic facsimiles 
 of some of the oldest and most important maps and charts per- 
 taining to our coasts. It is not pei-mitted to every one to see 
 and touch the precious originals, scattered and secluded as they 
 are, in various public and private repositories, throughout Europe 
 and America. Not three persons exist probably who have seen 
 them all. The copies here given, imperfect as they are, speak 
 clearly to the eye, and will doubtless repay careful examination, 
 though a few explanations may aid the reader in understanding 
 them. 
 
11 
 
 And first, The Portolano, or marine chart of Juan de la Cosa, 
 made bj him at Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz, in 1500 
 [Plate r). The original, bought at a public sale in Paris about 
 twenty years ago, for the Queen of Spain, against the writer, 
 for 4020 francs, is now preserved in the Eoyal Library at Mad- 
 rid. It is on oxhide, five feet nine inches long, by three feet 
 two inches wide, cut square off at the tail, a little beyond the 
 Ganges and Golden Chersonesus, so as to be attached to a rol- 
 ler ; and rounded at the back of the neck, so as to be tied with 
 a ribbon when rolled up after the manner of ancient portolani. 
 The whole world is laid down, including the entire 360 degrees 
 of longitude, on a given scale of fifteen Spanish leagues to a 
 degree. The chart is well drawn, in colors and heightened with 
 gold, altogether a work of art of considerable pretention. It 
 is acknowledged by competent judges, to be the earliest, the 
 most important and the most authentic geographical monument 
 relating to the western discoveries that has come down to us. 
 It was not discovered until after Munos, Navarrete, Irving, Biddle 
 and Tytler had written their works, and hence Humboldt used it 
 constantly and with effect in his Examen Critique^ as well as in his 
 supplemental chapter prefixed to Ghillany's Martin Behaim in 
 1853. A full sized facsimile was published by M. Jomard, on 
 three double elephant folio sheets, some fifteen years ago. Of 
 the western sheet, or third, not colored, the accompanying re- 
 duced facsimile is taken. La Sagra, Lelewel, Ghillany, Kohl 
 and others have used it extensively and described it. All ge- 
 ographers admit its importance, but many raise objections 
 greatly diminishing its authority. 
 
 These objections have hitherto, by learned geogi'aphers, been 
 deemed unanswerable. They are : First, That Cuba is repre- 
 sented as an island in the year 1500, and is misshaped at the 
 western extremity by curving to the south so as to form a 
 kind of gulf, when in fact it was not ascertained to be an 
 island till Ocampo circumnavigated it in 1508, and found it to 
 extend considerably farther to the west than La Cosa's, and hav- 
 ing no such curve. Second, that the American coast line ex- 
 tending from a point west of Cuba to the Mar desuhierta por 
 Yngleses gives no proper idea of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, 
 New York, Cape Cod and other strongly marked coasts, in fact 
 
 2 
 
12 
 
 is mere guess work. Thirds that the discoveries of the Cabots 
 and Cortereals are not properly laid down, and that the coast line 
 does not resemble that from Cape Race westward. And fourth, 
 that "the map has no indication of the degrees of latitude " 
 (Kohl, p. 152) and longitude. 
 
 These four objections answered, Juan de la Cosa is vindicated, 
 and his chart becomes the authority. Let us look at them. 
 Answer, First, that La Cosa, the Maestro de hacer cartas, as Co- 
 lumbus styled his chart-maker, did not intend to represent Cuba 
 to be an island (whatever posterity may think of his di-aw- 
 ing) is manifest from the following facts. Li the spring of 1494 
 after Columbus, in his second voyage, had sent home from His- 
 paniola (his Zipangu or Japan) the larger part of his fleet un- 
 der Antonio de Torres, he resolved with three caravels and 
 about eighty men, to go on an exploring expedition along the 
 south side of Cuba (which he for sometime persisted in naming 
 Juana) supposing it to be continental, or that part of Asia near 
 Mangi. This little fleet reached Cuba on the last day of April 
 at a point named Cabo de Fundabril, previously called by Co- 
 lumbus Cape Alpha and Omega, the point where the "West ends 
 and the East begins. Proceeding westward they touched at 
 many places, the names of most of which, laid down by La 
 Cosa, can readily be recognized in the narratives of the Cura 
 de los Palacios and Peter Martyr, as well as in later maps. 
 These names are Cabo de Cruz, Cabo del Serpienta, Fumos, Cabo 
 Serafin, Mangni, Mont, Bienbaso, &c. At length they came to a 
 turn in the coast to the southwest. This place Columbus 
 named Cabo de Bienespera, or Cape of Good Hope, a guiding 
 point leading him on toward the Golden Chersonesus, the 
 bourne of his hopes. 
 
 Here on the 12th of June, 1494, Columbus, being compelled 
 from shortness of provisions and other reasons, to turn back, 
 caused his captains, his pilots, his master of charts, and all his 
 sailors to sign a declaration under oath, that they believed Cuba 
 to be part of the Continent of Asia, near Mangi ; and Juan de 
 la Cosa added the further particulars that he never saw and 
 never heard tell of any island 835 leagues long, and hence he 
 believed Cuba to be in Asia. A little further on to the south- 
 southwest, amid shoals and islands, picking his way and grazing 
 
13 
 
 the sands, Columbus reached another place which he named Evan- 
 gelista. Here, from the mast head, one might see coasts to the 
 north, the Bay of Cortes and the Cayos de Indios to the west* 
 and land to the southwest and south, the whole, with islands 
 and keys, appearing continuous so as to form a gulf of consid- 
 erable extent studded with islets. This body of water Colum- 
 bus mistook for the Gulf of Granges ! " Indise Gangetidis con- 
 tinentem eam esse plagam contenditColonus," wrote Peter Mar- 
 tyr to Cardinal Bernardino, August, 1495, on the authority of 
 a letter to him from Columbus himself. This place was the 
 farthest point touched in the expedition, " hanc ultimam exist- 
 emati continentis oram quam ille [Columbus] attigit, vocavit 
 Evangelistam," again wrote P. Martyr. The Admiral longed to 
 go on down the coast, double the Golden Chersonesus, visit 
 Calicut and Arabia, and so return to Spain, ever going west, 
 but necessity compelled him, the next day, to set his face to- 
 ward Hispaniola. 
 
 Here then have we not the key of this mystery, the parent of 
 a hundred geographical blunders, in later maps ? Evangelista 
 is on the west side of the Isle of Pines, the Cape of Good Hope 
 is on Cuba to the N.N.E. near Batabano, and a dash of green 
 paint, the conventional color for terra incognita in old portolani, 
 marks a "cut-off" and completes the Gulf of Ganges! This 
 simple cut-oif shows that all beyond was unknown. Three days 
 more, had Columbus persevered toward the west, would have 
 brought him to the end of Cuba, and dispelled all his grand 
 visions of the Province of Mangi, and the incomparable riches 
 of the Grand Kahn of Cathay. Cuba is then here not an island, 
 but is merely cut off in the usual way by La Cosa himself 
 who was there with the Admiral, and who laid down the track 
 of the whole expedition with marvellous truthfulness.''^ 
 
 * Ruysch, seven years later (PL 2, No. 3) understood this perfectly, and in his 
 Continental Cuba marked this cut-ofif more distinctly. He has preserved the "Gulf 
 of Gauges," but has disguised some of the names of places. Cape Seraphin where 
 the white priest was seen, is changed to Cvlcar [c. vicar ?] and Evangelista to C. S. 
 Marci, one of the EvangeUsts. The south side of Cuba is a literal copy of La 
 Cosa's chart laid down from actual survey in company with Columbus himself, but 
 the north side considered as part of Asia beyond Zipangu, is carried up to about 
 40'^ N. latitude, above C. Elicontii the same as in Era Mauro's map of 1457 and 
 Behaim's globe of 1492. The German geographers of St Die and Stras- 
 burg, (who probably never saw salt water) in their map in the Ptolemy of 1513, 
 
u 
 
 The answer to tlie second objection, as to the American coast 
 line from the west of Cuba to Bacalaos is simply that La Cosa 
 intended that line for Asia, In 1500 neither he nor anj^body 
 else suspected or dreamed of an intervening Continent. La Cosa 
 projected a map of the whole world, the Eastern Asia of Marco 
 Polo and Sir John Mandeville included. Cutting his map off 
 at the Golden Chersonesus, beyond the Granges, so as to attach 
 it to a roller, how else could he complete Asia and the 360 de- 
 grees of longitude but by the line he drew on the other side of 
 the globe ? Asia and America are not both laid down. Which 
 is omitted ? If this line be the unknown new Continent, what 
 
 probably made as early as 1508, (PL 2, No. 1) have copied La Cosa and Ruysch both, 
 making Spagnola and Isabella answer for the Japanese islands, all the names being 
 transferred to their Continental Cuba with most of the names of La Cosa and Ruysch 
 Italianized, and almost obscured in the transfer. Corveo, Anterlinoi, Cvlcar and 
 Lago de Loro of Ruysch become Coruello, G. delinor, C. lurcar, and lago dellodro in 
 the 1513, while C. EUcontii becomes C. delicontir. La Cosa's Mar Oceanus, north 
 of Cuba, becomes C. del mar usiano and is carried up to latitude 54°. The Gulf of 
 Granges is not only preserved, with all the islands of La Cosa, but the three mouthed 
 Ganges itself is made to empty into the gulf! All this Terra de Cuba was thought 
 somehow, to pertain to Asia, for no one yet had dreamed of an mtervening conti- 
 nent. 
 
 The north side of Cuba in La Cosa's chart, west of Rio Mares (the farthest 
 point reached by Colimibus in his first voyage, the 31st of October, 1492,) is col- 
 ored as terra incognita having no defined coast line. The very accurate manner in 
 which the whole coast eastward of this point is laid down renders it almost certain 
 that La Cosa accompanied Columbus also in his first voyage as his Maestro de 
 Cartas. If so, considering his subordinate position, may not this be in substance 
 the long lost chart of Columbus ? The names on the north side of Cuba between 
 Rio Mares and Cabo de Fundabril written in full are no Mares, no Luna, Cabo de 
 Cuba, punta de Mar Nuestra Senora, punta de Santa Maria, Cabo Rico, Puerto 
 Santo, rio de la Vega, Cabolindo and ponta de Cuba, corresponding almost exactly 
 with the log book or journal of the first voyage of Coliunbus as preserved by Las 
 Casas. 
 
 The conclusions therefore to which all these old facts and new readings force one 
 are obvious, and opposed to the generally expressed opinions of geographers. It 
 should, however, be mentioned that Senlior Varnhagen, an earnest and painstaking 
 investigator, whose opinions are generally entitled to the highest respect, in his val- 
 uable work on Vespucci, printed in Lima, in 1865, in folio, differs from the writer, 
 interpreting the bay, the three mouthed river, and the point of land, west of Isa- 
 bella, in the 1513 map, to be the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and Florida. 
 It is difficult, on this theory, to account for the island of Isabella being denuded 
 of its names, and the weU-known Cabo Fundabril being transferred to Florida. 
 The influence of La Cosa's chart, and the later maps interpreted by its new read- 
 ings, wUl no doubt shed much new light on Vespucci's letters and voyages. 
 
15 
 
 has lie done witli tlie well known part of the old Continent ? 
 Furthermore, where are Zipangu and the islands of the Eastern 
 Archipelago described by Marco Polo and so ardently sought by 
 Columbus? If Cuba be Zaiton or Mangi, surely Hispaniola 
 must be Zipangu [PL 2, No. 8] How else could Columbus 
 reason ? Let it be borne in mind that there is great similarity 
 in the coasts of Eastern Asia and America. From all this it is 
 apparent that La Cosa and his map are not responsible for erro- 
 neous conclusions drawn by modem geographers. 
 
 The third objection, respecting the coast line of the Cabots 
 and the Cortereals, from Cape Kace westward, may be met by 
 the fact that La Cosa has laid down no such line. Cape Race is 
 in latitude 46° 40', and Cape Sable in Nova Scotia, is 43° 24'. 
 La Cosa's coast line in the north, marked by five English flags, 
 begins at latitude 53° N. that is the Straits of Belle Isle, and 
 extends very nearly west to the meridian of the Virgin Islands. 
 It is, in short, the northern coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence, pret- 
 ty accurately depicted. Of course it is to be understood that 
 the Cabots in 1497, as well as La Cosa in 1500, supposed this 
 coast to be in Eastern Asia. This chart carefully compared with 
 Sebastian Cabot's map of 1544 [PL 4, No. 1,] and studied with 
 the new material lately brought to light by Mr. Rawdon Brown 
 in Venice, and Mr. Bergenroth in Madrid, will, it is believed, 
 harmonize well, as contemporary documents, and throw into the 
 shade the loose gossip, long after date, reported by Butrigarius, 
 Peter Martyr and Mr. Secretary Williamson. The words Mar 
 descubierta por Yw^Zese^,. instead of Mar Oceanus, show it to be 
 a sea or gulf and not the open ocean. If the reader will lay 
 down on La Cosa's chart Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, 
 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in their proper latitudes and 
 longitudes, he will doubtless be sui"prised at the result, espe- 
 cially when he compares it with the map of F. Gr. in Hakluyt's 
 Peter Martyr of 1587 [PL 3, No. 1]. In this map Bacalaos is 
 laid down as discovered by the English under the grant of 1496 
 on the north coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence. The discoveries 
 of the Cortereals could not have been known by La Cosa in 
 1500. 
 
 The fourth objection is answered by simply looking for a mo- 
 ment at the original map, or at M. Jomard's facsimile, and not at 
 
16 
 
 the imperfect ones generally in use. The indications of lati- 
 tude and longitude are abundant, and there is a good scale both 
 at the top and the bottom of the chart. The equator is given, 
 and the tropic of Cancer, 23.^°, and guiding lines or parallels pass 
 through the Straits of Gibraltar, 36°, and Paris, 48° 40'. These 
 fixed points, with the scale, will help the reader to the latitude of 
 any other place. Longitude can be determined in a similar way. 
 
 The eclipse that took place in Sept. 1494, immediately after 
 his return to Hispaniola from Cuba, was a most important event 
 for Columbus, because it enabled him to determine the longi- 
 tude of his discoveries. He found that the middle of Hispani- 
 ola was nearly five hours west of Seville, or about 70°. La 
 Cosa's scale makes this distance to be about 68°, sufiiciently 
 near, considering the mode of measuring time then, before 
 Copernicus had commanded the sun to stand still. Columbus' 
 mistakes in latitude are difficult to be accounted for, but they 
 do not affect the observations of the Cabots in the north, or 
 those of Vespucci and Ojeda in the south, as very accurately 
 laid down by La Cosa. Columbus in his log book places 
 Cuba and Hispaniola some seven or eight degrees too far north. 
 He seems however to have been aware that he was oat in his 
 calculations, and on one occasion threw aside his instruments as 
 defective, preferring to defer his observations till he reached the 
 land. La Cosa has however retained all these errors of latitude 
 of the first and second voyages, though he is nearly correct in 
 his latitude of the northern coast of South America. 
 
 Now if these objections are fairly answered, La Cosa not only 
 emerges cleared from a Vast amount of unjust criticism, but his 
 chart becomes a beacon of light in the early annals of America. 
 It tells posterity, as it is told nowhere else so truthfully, of Co- 
 lumbus, his discoveries and his mistakes, and depicts in honest 
 lines just how far the Great Explorer gi^oped his way blind- 
 folded toward the west. The American historian has no longer 
 any difficulty in tracing the track of Columbus to the very end, 
 and accounting for the true and false lines in his continental or 
 Asiatic Cuba. He sees how the Asiatic lines grew in the map 
 of Kuysch of 1508, while those of La Cosa remained the same ; 
 how also in the maps of Bernard Sylvanus in 1511, of the 
 Gymnasium of St Die in 1513, of the Margarita Philosophica 
 
17 
 
 in 1515, of Apian and Schoner in 1520, of Bordone in 1521, 
 of Lawrence Fries in 1522, of Orontius Fine in 1581, and of 
 Sebastian Muenster in the Grynaeus of 1532. In all these old 
 maps the geographer can at a glance, now that the key is re- 
 covered, trace the true coast lines, for he knows the origin of 
 the false ones, thanks to painstaking La Cosa, Considering the 
 state of geographical, astronomical, and nautical knowledge at 
 that time, and the muddle of the map-makers, it is not to be 
 wondered at that the discoveries of Balboa, of Magellan, of 
 Cortes, of Ponce de Leon and Ayllon, led to some bewilder- 
 ment, and puzzled even the cognoscenti of the Congress of 
 Badajos. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind here, however, that many writers 
 claim that the Cabots in 1497 and 1498 discovered and explored 
 the coast of the present United States from Nova Scotia to the 
 Chesapeak Bay, and some even contend that the Cape of Florida 
 was reached ; and hence, as every thing was immediately known 
 in Spain, the discovery of the entire North American coast 
 might have been known to La Cosa in time to be laid down in 
 its general trending though not with accuracy in 1500, from John 
 Cabot's own map, which the Spanish minister in London de- 
 clares he saw. It matters not whether La Cosa and John Cabot 
 thought it the coast of Asia or an intervening Continent, if it 
 was really laid down from actual observation. But La Cosa 
 positively limits, in a very definite manner, the discoveries of 
 the English, to the Mar^ or Gulf of St Lawrence. And the 
 highly important Portuguese portolano, made about 1514, one 
 of the earliest and honestest maps known (Plate Y) after adding 
 the discoveries of the Cortereals, and Ponce de Leon, leaves the 
 whole space from Nova Scotia to Charleston open, as being 
 entirely unknown. Now these writers are invited to recollect 
 that all the testimonj^ on which these theories are based is not 
 only very loose, but recorded in a gossipping way, sometimes 
 second and even third handed, long subsequent to the event g 
 themselves, and have since been quoted and maintained with 
 national asperity, chiefly in diplomatic discussions and some- 
 times without a proper regard for historic truth. While on the 
 other hand all the contemporary documents recently found tend 
 to show that the Cabots' discoveries were confined to the Gulf 
 
18 
 
 of St Lawrence and north of it. La Cosa's testimony is strong, 
 nor does Sebastian Cabot's own map made in 1544, said to have 
 been engraved by Clement Adams, containing the new discov- 
 eries of the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese to 1542, 
 (Plate IV, N° 1) in the least invalidate it. 
 
 The new papers of 1497-98 brought to light from the Ar- 
 chives of Simancas and Venice give details only of John Cabot 
 and his voyage of 1497, and simply allude to the expedition of 
 1498 as not yet returned. Nothing on contemporary authority 
 is known of this latter voyage or of Sebastian Cabot's connec- 
 tion with it. It is always dangerous to attempt the proof of a 
 negative, for any day new documents may turn up. Don 
 Pedro de Ayala wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella from London 
 the 25th July, 1498, of John Cabot, "I have seen the map 
 which the discoverer has made who is another Genaise^ like 
 Columbus, and who has been in Seville and in Lisbon, asking 
 assistance for his discoveries. The people of Bristol have, for 
 the last seven years, sent out every year two, three or four 
 caravels in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, 
 according to the fancy of this Genoise. The king determined 
 to send out [more ships this year, 1498] because last year they 
 brought certain news that they had found land." This passage 
 is positive, important and suggestive. In the first place it dis- 
 poses of the pretence that the Continent was discovered on the 
 24th of June, 1494, instead of 1497, and it suggests a plausible 
 theory to account for John Cabot's movements between the 
 granting of his charter in March, 1496, and the sailing of his 
 ship in May, 1497. During part of this long year this Genois 
 might have been with his fellow townsman Columbus at Seville, 
 who had just returned from his second voyage of three years, 
 bringing his chart-master, Juan de La Cosa with him. Cabot 
 was a Venetian only by naturalization. This is of course only a 
 suggestion, but it shows the early connection of the Cabots with 
 Spain, if not with Columbus and La Cosa. 
 
 It is well known, however, that Sebastian Cabot in October, 
 1512, was residing at Seville, with a royal commission in his 
 pocket as Captain, awaiting orders, in the service of the King 
 of Spain, Here he became the intimate friend of Peter Martyr 
 of the Council of the Indies, and shortly after became a mem- 
 
19 
 
 ber of that board himself. A little later, rising in honors and 
 salary, he became in 1518 the Pilot Major of Spain, and in 
 1524 was deputed to preside over the celebrated geographical 
 Congress of Badajos. Now in these several official positions it 
 was his duty to superintend and watch over all the discoveries 
 and explorations of the Spanish navigators. He was a man of 
 vast experience and was presumed to know all that had been 
 discovered by his contemporaries. Is it reasonable, therefore, 
 to suppose that if he had been down the coast from Bacalaos 
 in 1498 to 30° or to 25°, he would in 1513, in 1520, in 1524 and 
 1526, have yielded without a word of protest, these discoveries, to 
 Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and Gomez, to say nothing of Veraz- 
 zano. No writer pretends to deprive these navigators of their 
 rights as discoverers, and no protest or contemporary claim is 
 forthcoming from Sebastian Cabot, who was all the time in the 
 field and well acquainted with the affairs. 
 
 Before 1520 the Portuguese began to comprehend better the 
 longitude of the Moluccas and other of theii' possessions in the 
 East, and geographers began to suspect an intervening space 
 not accounted for. At iirst strange guesses were recorded as to 
 the extent and direction of the South Sea, by Schoner and oth- 
 ers, but after the appearance of the map of Cortes [PI. 4 No. 7] 
 in 1524, the culmination of absurdity appeared in the double- 
 hearted projection of Orontius Fine in July, 1531, [PI. 3, No. 3 
 and 4]. Schoner in describing his own newly improved globe 
 in 1532, exactly describes this map. The South Sea was re- 
 presented as south of the equator, while Asia was brought for- 
 ward to Bacalaos. One can readily see how all this grew up, as 
 one can also see how, by slow degTces, their false Asia receded 
 and melted away, for above 200 years, as the western coast of 
 America and the eastern coast of Asia were explored by Span- 
 ish, English, French and Russian navigators, till the year 1727, 
 when a strait was opened by Behring, and Asia and America 
 became divorced. 
 
 It was the writer's intention to try and trace out the history 
 of the first exploration of the entire coast of the United States, 
 until the last thread of the Asiatic line was expunged by Capt. 
 John Smith before 1614. But that labor, even if he had time 
 and space, is reserved for an abler pen. The Rev. Dr. Leonard 
 
 3 
 
20 
 
 Woods, late President of Bowdoin College, has on the anvil as 
 already announced, for the Maine Historical Society's next vol- 
 ume, an original unpublished manuscript of Richard Hakluyt, 
 of the highest historical and geographical interest. It is en- 
 titled " A particular discourse concerning the greate necessitie 
 and manifold comodyties that are like to grow to this Realme 
 of Englande by the westerne discoveries lately attempted, writ- 
 ten in the yere 1584, by Richarde Hakluyt ... at the requeste 
 of Mr. Walter Raleigh before the comynge home of his two 
 Barkes [from Virginia]," &c. This valuable manuscript, con- 
 sisting of sixty -three large closely written folio pages, was in 
 the possession of the writer for two or three years, having fallen 
 into his hands some sixteen or seventeen years ago by a piece 
 of good luck, after a bibliographical tournament memorable as 
 any recorded by Dibdin. After fruitless endeavors to find for 
 it a resting place in some public or private libraiy in America, 
 and subsequently in the British Museum, it finally became the 
 property of Sir Thomas Phillipps. So impressed was the 
 writer with its importance that immediately on learning the ob- 
 ject of Dr. Wood's mission to England in the autumn of 1867, 
 he called the doctor's attention to it, and suggested his procuring 
 a copy, if possible, for publication by the Maine Historical So- 
 ciety. He trusts soon to have the pleasure of seeing Richard 
 Hakluyt again in print, not alone because he is an old friend, 
 but because he is likely to render any further discussion of the 
 present subject, on the part of the wiiter, superfluous. 
 
HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 1453-1530 
 
 A retrospect of four centiiries, with a rapid glance at the 
 progress of modern discovery, exploration and invention, will 
 probably serve as an appropriate introduction to our projected 
 scheme of Interoceanic Communication by means of the Tehu- 
 antepec Eailway, and show that the time is near at hand for its 
 accomplishment. Let us, therefore, go back for a moment, and 
 survey the little old world and its inhabitants as they appeared 
 about the middle of the fifteenth century. According to Ptol- 
 emy, the best recognized authority, whose geography had stood 
 the test of thirteen hundred years, the then known world was 
 a strip of some seventy degrees wide, mostly north of the equa- 
 tor, with Cadiz on the west, and farthest India or Cathay on the 
 east, lying between the frozen and burning zones, both impassa- 
 ble by man. The inhabitants, as far as known in Europe, were 
 Christians and Mohamedans, the one sect about half the age of 
 the other. Christendom, the elder, that once held considerable 
 portions of Asia and Africa, had been driven back inch by inch, 
 in spite of the Crusades, even from the Holy Land, the place of 
 its birth, up into the northwest corner of Europe ; and both in 
 lands and people was outnumbered six to one by the followers 
 of Mahomet. For seven hundred years the fairest provinces of 
 Spain acknowledged the sway of the Moors, and the Mediter- 
 ranean, from Jaffa to the Grates of Hercules, was under their 
 control. The crescent was constantly encroaching on the cross ; 
 while Christendom, schismatic, dismayed, demoralized and dis- 
 heartened, seemed almost incapable of further resistance. 
 
 India beyond the Granges, from the days of Moses, Alexan- 
 der, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the geographers Pompo- 
 nius Mela, Strabo and Ptolemy, was deemed the land of prom- 
 ise, the abode of luxury, the source of wealth, and the home of 
 
22 
 
 the spices ; but tlie routes of commerce thither, via Venice and 
 Genoa, by the Red Sea, Egypt, the Nile, Arabia, Asia Minor, 
 the Black and Caspian Seas, through Persia and Tartary, were 
 one by one being closed to Christians. The profits of the over- 
 land carrying trade were mostly in the hands of the Arabians, 
 who inherited it from the Romans ; but Memphis, Thebes, and 
 Cairo, that flourished by it, had declined as it fell off, and yielded 
 to Alexandria nearer the sea. Finally, in 1453, Constantino- 
 ple, the Christian city of Constantine, fell into the hands of the 
 Turks, and with it the commerce of the Black Sea and the Bos- 
 phorus, the last of the old trading routes from the East to the 
 West. Christendom for a time was disconsolate, and could only 
 " pray for the contention of the Turks." The whole of the car- 
 rying trade passed into the hands of middle men or agents, who 
 passed goods without uev,"s, and India became more a land of 
 mystery than ever ; but this apparent misfortune proved to be 
 the beginning of a new and brighter era. 
 
 The learned Christians of Constantinople, with nothing but 
 their heads and their books, fled in exile into Italy, and became 
 its schoolmasters. At once began there the revival of learning, 
 which soon extended throughout the West. " Westward the 
 course of empire takes its way." The Medici family of Italy, 
 at Venice and Florence, welcomed these learned Greeks, and 
 bought their precious manuscripts of ancient lore. The gun- 
 powder of Europe had akeady silenced the Greek Fke of Asia. 
 On the Rhine the young printing press was just giving forth its 
 first sheets. The compass and the astrolabe, recent inventions, 
 began now to give confidence to mariners and teach them that, 
 though the old paths of trade overland were closed, they might 
 venture on new ones over sea. In 1453, in western Europe 
 there was no tea, no coffee, no tobacco, no Indian corn, no po- 
 tatoes ; and many of the necessities of our day were not even 
 known as luxuries. Though the Crusades had failed in their 
 immediate objects, they had exposed the secrets of the India 
 trade, and the vast revenues of the eastern cities. The manu- 
 script travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville had found 
 their way into the hands of thinking men. Venice was already 
 waning, preparatory to yielding its trade to Portugal, the then 
 most rising and active maritime power. Prince Henry the Nav- 
 
23 
 
 igator liad still ten years to live to carry out his great schemes 
 of discovery and exploration of the western coast of Africa. 
 He was an ambitious student of geography, history, mathemat- 
 ics, astronomy, and navigation, and for almost forty years had 
 stood alone. 
 
 At the early age of fifteen the Prince had a successful 
 brush with the Moors at Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar ; and by 1418 
 had crept down the coast of Africa to Cape Nun, lat. 28° 40', 
 the southern boundary of Morocco. In 1434 his captains doub- 
 led Cape Boyador, and seven years after obtained from Pope 
 Martin V a grant to the crown of Portugal of all he should dis- 
 cover from this cape to the Indies. In 1442 Eio del Oro was 
 reached, and gold and negro slaves brought back. These were 
 two real stimulants to Portuguese discoveiy, avarice, pride, and 
 wealth, though the conversion of the infidels to Christianity, 
 was, no doubt, a strong additional motive power. The reintro- 
 duction of negro slavery, and the part it soon played in com- 
 merce and the world's progress, may be ascribed to Prince Hen- 
 ry. He encouraged the trafl&c, which, with the love of gold 
 and the hatred of the Moors, aroused his countrymen to his pro- 
 jects, and insured the promotion of discovery, in so much that 
 by the time of the fall of Constantinople, his captains had 
 reached Cape Verde, lat. 14° 45' N., probably a few degrees be- 
 yond, and had exploded the old theory of a boiling belt about 
 the equator. 
 
 In all ages there had been a prevailing notion that one might 
 sail round Africa ; but when once it was demonstrated that Por- 
 tuguese sailors could cross the equator and survive, Prince 
 Henry's vague idea of reaching the land of spices by this route 
 was confirmed. At all events, he was schooling hardy sailors, 
 and training them for bolder work, so that soon after the date 
 of the fall of Constantinople, Italy and Portugal had reached that 
 turn for adventure and enterprise, which spread like wildfire 
 throughout the other states of Europe, and caused the entira 
 revolution in the commerce of the world. 
 
 In 1453, Columbus was a lad of six years at Genoa, Vespucci 
 of two at Florence and John Cabot a youth at Genoa (?) The 
 new learning at once took deep root. When these three Itahan 
 boys became men, behold how changed ! The sciences of mathe- 
 
24 
 
 matics, astronomy, and navigation had grown with their growth, 
 and developed with marvelous rapidity. The press had spread 
 broadcast the learning of the ancients. The secrets of the earth 
 were inquired into and revealed. Many islands of the Atlantic 
 had been discovered and described, and sailors knew the coasts 
 of Europe and Africa from Iceland to Cape Yerde. But above 
 all, the knowledge of the sphericity of our earth was no longer 
 confined to philosophers. Alexander had told Aristotle what 
 he knew of the East, and Aristotle had written down that there 
 was but a small space of sea between Spain and the eastern 
 coast of Asia. Strabo had said that nothing stood in the way 
 of a westerly passage from Spain to India but the great breadth 
 of the Atlantic Ocean ; but Seneca said this sea might be passed 
 in a few days with favorable winds. Pomponius Mela and 
 Macrobius put in like testimony, with certain difficulties about 
 passing burning zones, and the earth being shaped like an egg 
 floating in water. All these opinions were rehashed and di- 
 gested by Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the second century, who 
 first properly reduced the globe into 360 degrees of latitude and 
 longitude. In latitude he was as correct as he was incorrect in 
 his longitude. Roger Bacon, an Englishman, again summar- 
 ized these theories in his Opus Ifajus, in the thirteenth century ; 
 and in the fifteenth century, Pierre d'Ailly, a Frenchman, re- 
 viewed the whole question, bringing together the opinions of 
 the ancient writers named, as well as the fathers of the church, 
 including modern philosophers, travelers, and theologians, es- 
 pecially Roger Bacon, Marco Polo, and Grerson, and gave to the 
 world his well-known Imago Muyidi. This celebrated work, fin- 
 ished in 1410, was afterward the guide, companion and friend 
 of Columbus. The learned author was for three years Provost 
 of the ancient Ecclesiastical College of St Die in Lorraine, away 
 up in the Vosges Mountains, in the remotest corner of France. 
 This was on the very spot where, nearly a century later, in the 
 Gymnasium within the same precincts, a confraternity of some 
 half dozen earnest students, lovers of geogi"aphy, of whom the 
 poet Mathias Ringman was the soul, in a little work called Cos- 
 mographi(B Introduction printed there in the kalends of Ma}^, 1507, 
 suggested that the Mundus Novv^ of Vespucci should be named 
 America, after a man, inasmuch as Europe and Asia had been 
 
25 
 
 named after women. Thus a little mountain town of France 
 first gave aid and comfort to Columbus and afterwards a name 
 to the New World. 
 
 As early as 1474, Paul Toscanelli, a learned physician of Flor- 
 enc"e^ sent to Columbus a Chart made after the narrative of Mar- 
 co Polo, and was in correspondence with him on these very- 
 subjects, showing that even then the plans of Columbus were 
 maturing. In 1478, the great geographical work of Ptolemy, 
 with the twenty-seven beautiful copper plate maps, was printed 
 at Rome, and about the same time many other of the ancient 
 historians, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers , 
 saw the light. The Imago Mundi was printed at Louvain, in 
 1483, and there still exists at Seville, Columbus' own copy, with 
 manuscript notes said to be his, discovered and described about 
 forty years ago by our countryman, Washington Irving. 
 
 Meanwhile, the work of discovery and exploration was ear- 
 nestly pursued by the Portuguese. In 1454 Prince Henry se- 
 cured the services of Cadamosto, an intelligent Venetian, well 
 acquainted with the trade of the Mediterranean and the East, 
 and sent him down the coast of Africa, where he reduced the 
 explorations and the trade to order, and pushed southward the 
 discoveries to the Cape Verde Islands by 1460, the year of Hen- 
 ry's death. By 1462 Pedro de Cintra had crept down the coast 
 to some 300 miles beyond Sierra Leone. In 1463 Gibraltar 
 was captured by Spain from the Moors. Kings Alphonso and 
 John continued the African discoveries with so much energy 
 that, after Diogo Cam's passing Congo in 1484, the bold captain, 
 Bartholomew Dias, reached the Cape of Grood Hope, and looked 
 beyond it in 1487, thus completing with mai-velous perseverance 
 an exploration of some six thousand miles of coast line in sev- 
 enty years. Bartholomew Columbus was in this last expedition. 
 
 Meanwhile King John had sent overland through Egypt Pe- 
 dro de Covilham, to India and Eastern Africa to gain informa- 
 tion and report. In 1487 he reported that he had visited Ormuz, 
 Goa, Calicut, etc., and had seen pepper and ginger, and heard 
 of cloves and cinnamon. He visited the eastern coast of Africa, 
 went down as far as Sofala, and returning northward, sent a 
 message to King John that he had learned for certain that if 
 Dias should pursue his course round Africa he would reach 
 
26 
 
 India over tlie Eastern Ocean via Sofala. This theoretical dis- 
 covery of Covilham exactly coincided with the practical one of 
 Dias. 
 
 All these events were but leading up to the grandest discovery 
 the world ever knew, but it is difficult to trace the precise origin 
 and the gradual development of the plans of Columbus. We 
 know, however, that at the early age of fourteen he went to sea, 
 educated vnth small knowledge of Latin and less Greek ; and 
 in 1474, at the age of twenty-seven, was in correspondence with 
 Toscanelli, and became the father of Diego, the boy for whom, 
 some ten years later, he begged a night's lodging at the Convent 
 of La Rabida. 
 
 By the year 1487, when the mystery of a path to India 
 around Africa was solved, Columbus had not only completely 
 worked out his great idea of sailing West to find the East ; but 
 had offered his services in cariying it out, first to his native city, 
 Genoa, without success, and had two years before brought it 
 to Spain fi'om Portugal where his proposals had been openly 
 spurned and ridiculed, but treacherously though unsuccessfully 
 tested. It is tolerably certain that much of his time had been 
 spent in active and practical maritime service, for he had been 
 down the coast of Africa as far as El Mina ; had resided at 
 Porto Santo, one of the out-lying Portuguese islands of the At- 
 lantic, the daughter of whose first governor had become his wife ; 
 had visited England and Iceland, and was acquainted with the 
 whole of the Mediterranean. His brother Bartholemew had 
 been a chart-maker at Lisbon, and was his advocate at the court 
 of Henry VIL 
 
 We know from the writings of his son Ferdinand that Colum- 
 bus was both a practical and a learned mathematican as well as 
 navigator. He had read probably all the compilations named 
 above, and his own experience, together with what he had learned 
 fi'om the Portuguese, had enabled him, with his Marco Polo in 
 his pocket, to sift all the vague and contradictory notions of the 
 ancients as to the Antipodes and the shape of our earth, as well 
 as to cypher out a theory of his own. For seven long years, 
 after being worn out and disgusted elsewhere, he danced attend- 
 ance on the Spanish court, with no fortune but his idea ; some- 
 times threadbare and barefooted, ever pressing his suit, never 
 
27 
 
 flagging in liis confidence, questioned and ridiculed by com- 
 missions of geographers and scientific men, without ever being 
 able to penetrate the conservative ignorance of the learned and 
 courtly, or, as he complained, to convince any one man how it 
 was possible to sail west to reach the East. But Time was 
 working for him then, as it is now for Interoceanic Communi- 
 cation. 
 
 The fortieth year from the fall of Constantinople, the forty- 
 fifth of the age of Columbus, witnessed the death of Lorenzo 
 de Medici ; but other suns were rising. Copernicus, in the far 
 north, was in his twentieth year ; Erasmus, his twenty-fifth ; 
 Cortez, his seventh ; and Luther, his tenth. Martin Behaim, the 
 old geographer of the Azores, aged sixty -two, was home on a 
 visit to his native city of Nuremberg, from which the tide of 
 commerce was ebbing. Here, in 1492, he made his famous globe 
 of the whole world, as if to lay down upon it all the knowledge 
 (and all the ignorance) of the geography of the earth, prepara- 
 tory to the opening of new books. The same eventful year 
 witnessed the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the opening 
 of the Mediterranean, and the discovery of America. Moham- 
 edanism received its first check, and Christendom received a 
 New World. 
 
 These three Italian boys had become men. When Columbus 
 had balanced his egg for Spain, it was easy for Vespucci and 
 the Cabots to do it for Portugal and England. Italy, whose 
 noble sons did this in foreign service, never acquired a foot of 
 the newly discovered lands for herself, yet how much of the 
 honor was and still is hers. 
 
 In 1493, within three months from the return of Columbus, 
 Alexander YI, a Spaniard, a Pope of not a year's standing, 
 wishing to reward Ferdinand and Isabella, for their struggles 
 in expelling the Moors, divided our globe into two parts, by a 
 line of demarcation passing from pole to pole, one hundred 
 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands, giving to 
 Spain all she should discover within 180^ to the west of it, 
 lea\dng to Portugal all her African discoveries and the Indies 
 for 180° east of it. 
 
 But poor Portugal, that had been struggling seventy years 
 in the dark in her circuitous route to India round Africa, jeal- 
 4 
 
28 
 
 oils of tlie new short cut of Columbus, which had been offered 
 to her and refused, protested against the position of this merid- 
 ian. It was finally settled in the treaty of Tordesillas, of June, 
 1494, with the Pope's approval, that the line should stand at 
 three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores. Had 
 the King of Portugal's geographers and pilots advised him to 
 contend for a line farther east instead of farther west, he would 
 have received within his half the Moluccas and the other Spice- 
 ries. As some compensation for this geographical blunder, how- 
 ever, he secured a foothold in Brazil. Both nations were now 
 running a race of discovery of India by divers routes. By India 
 is here meant all the East beyond the Ganges, including China, 
 Cathay, Mangi, Japan, and the Spice Islands. The acquisitions 
 of the Spaniards were named the West Indies, while those of 
 the Portugese were called the East Indies. 
 
 Never was great discovery more modestly announced. " A 
 Letter of Christopher Columbus, to whom our age is muxih indebted, 
 respecting the Islands of India beyond the Ganges lately discov- 
 ered,'" dated February, 1493. Columbus thought his success 
 complete. He aimed at Zipangu, or Japan, and to his dying 
 day in 1506, believed that he had found it nearly where his cal- 
 culations had placed it, but never was man more mistaken, and 
 never did mistake produce greater results. Believing our earth 
 to be a globe, Columbus reasoned correctly that by sailing west 
 he would come to the East of Marco Polo, but from want of 
 knowledge of longitude, he, like everybody else, from Ptolemy 
 down, was vastly deceived as to the size of the globe. From 
 Cadiz to the Ganges the distance had been computed from the 
 days of Alexander at about 180°, or half round the globe. 
 From the Ganges to the Corea and Cathay, and thence to 
 Zipangu fifteen hundred miles more, the distance was also 
 exaggerated by Marco Polo. So that, still going east, the dis- 
 tance from Zipangu to Cadiz was calculated to be about equal 
 to the space from Palos to Saint Domingo. Upon this error in 
 longitude hung no doubt the problem of circumnavigating the 
 globe, for had Columbus suspected the real distance to Japan 
 by the west, he would never probably have ventured to pene- 
 trate the "sea of darkness," or have found sailors bold enough 
 to accompany him. The actual distance from San Francisco to 
 
29 
 
 Hong Kong is nearly one-third more than Columbus had reck- 
 oned it from Spain to Japan. 
 
 The sensation produced throughout Europe by this discov- 
 eiy of a short and direct route to India was great, but for 
 nearly forty years nobody suspected the truth. The simple 
 letter of Columbus in various editions, in prose and verse, was 
 about all that was published for ten years, but the intelligence 
 gave a new impulse to maritime discovery and commercial 
 enterprise. Columbus, with full honors, sailed in 1493, with a 
 well equipped fleet to explore his Eastern Archipelago. He 
 returned to Spain in June, 1496. Juan de la Cosa, author of 
 the world-renowned portolano of 1500, went with him as Master 
 of Charts in this second voyage. They proceeded directly to 
 Dominica, one of the Windward Islands, thence to Porto Eico, 
 St. Domingo, south side of Cuba, Jamaica, &c. 
 
 The Portuguese now redoubled their energies, and in 1497-98, 
 Yasco da Gama, just ten years after Dias' discovery of the Cape, 
 circumnavigated Africa and reached Calicut. The same year 
 John C(i)bot under a Patent of Henry VII, dated March 5, 
 1496, in trying for a short cut to Cathay by the northwest, dis- 
 covered certain islands, probably in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
 and took possession, supposing them to be off China, and 
 erected conjointly the flags of England and Venice, on the 24th 
 of June, 1497. 
 
 The next year Sebastian Cabot, under a supplemental license 
 dated February 8, 1498, sailed again with the view of plant- 
 ing a colony and promoting trade, but no contemporary ac- 
 count of the voyage being known, it is difficult to extract any 
 reliable information of this failure from the confused gossiping 
 reports that have come down to us. The discoveries of 1497 
 were in 1498 reported to the kings of Spain by their vigilant 
 ambassador in London, with the intimation that he had seen 
 John Cabot's chart, and would send home a copy of it. What 
 steps followed it is difficult now to trace, but the result appears 
 to be that Henry VII, never following up the discoveries after 
 1498, Sebastain Cabot remained quietly at home till after the 
 death of Henry, when in 1512 he took service under the king 
 of Spain, permitting his English and Venetian rights of dis- 
 covery and plantation to lapse. Thus ended the first English 
 and Venetian attempts to reach Cathay by the northwest. 
 
80 
 
 On tlie SOtli of May, 1498, in his third voyage, Columbus 
 first touched tlie continent of America in Yenezuela, though 
 some contend that Vespucci had anticipated him by nearly one 
 year. The natives called it Paria, and Columbus reasoned him- 
 self into the belief that it was Paradise, whence our first parents 
 had been driven. In 1499, Vicente Yauez Pinzon and Alonzo 
 de Ojeda, private traders, with the latter of whom was Vespucci 
 on his second voyage, visited Brazil under Spanish flags ; and 
 in 1500 Brazil was discovered accidentally (?) by Cabral, in 
 that great fleet which the success of Gama had called forth. 
 He was blown out of his course on his way to India, and took 
 possession for the Portuguese. Portugal thus gained undis- 
 puted possession of Eastern Brazil by rule of ignorance of 
 longitude, claiming it as hers because it was east of the line of 
 demarcation. All the science of Spain at that time could not 
 disprove this, and therefore Pinzon abandoned it to the Portu- 
 guese. 
 
 The same year the Portuguese hearing of the voyages of 
 the Cabots, and probably suspecting irreverence in the Eng- 
 lish for Papal bull lines of demarcation, sent Gaspar Corte- 
 real to follow in their track, who returned in the fall of 1500. 
 Between May 15 and the 8th of October, 1501, a second voyage 
 with two ships was made by Gaspar Cortereal, and laborers 
 (slaves) brought back to Lisbon, but Gaspar himself never 
 returned. A third voyage was undertaken by Miguel Cortereal 
 from Lisbon to the northwest the 10th of May, 1502, in search 
 of his brother, but no tidings ever came back. Then the king 
 dispatched two more vessels to cruise in search of the missing 
 ones, but they returned without any trace of the lost brothers, 
 and thus ended the Portuguese attempts to reach Cathay by 
 the northwest. 
 
 In 1501 New Granada, Darien, and Panama were taken pos- 
 session of for the Spanish by Bastides, and in 1501-2 Vespucci 
 explored the coast of Brazil for the Portuguese, it is said, as far 
 as 50^ S. lat, within two or three degrees of the strait, and in 
 1502 there was written an account of his expedition, which was 
 soon after printed, under the title of Mundus Novits. The 
 years 1502 to 1504 were occupied by Columbus in his fourth 
 and last voyage, in which he was accompanied by his brother 
 
31 
 
 Bartholomew, and Ms son Ferdinanclo who afterwards wrote a 
 life of his father. He explored the coasts of Central America 
 from Truxillo in Honduras to Darien, still looking for the 
 Granges and inquiring for the home of the Grand Knhn. An 
 account of this voyage, coming down to July 7, 1503, was 
 printed at Venice in 1505. y 
 
 In 1502 Valentim Fernandez, a German, attached to the 
 household of the ex-queen of Portugal, edited and printed at 
 Lisbon a collection of voyages in the Portuguese language, 
 comprising Marco Polo, Nicolo Conti, Santo Stephano, &c., 
 with a view of stirring up the people to a more lively interest 
 in the commerce and navigation of the Indies. The success of 
 Columbus and the Cabots is referred to, and the speedy return 
 of Cortereal from the north, from his second voyage, is expected. 
 This magnificent folio volume, the first important book (not 
 biblical) printed in Portugal, must have had a powerful effect 
 in drawing popular attention to the land of spices. It was the 
 first collection of voyages printed in the vernacular tongue, and ! 
 could be read by all the unlearned who had a penny to venture. 
 It was translated into S|)anish, and printed at Seville in 1503. 
 No rarer books are now known to geographers. In May, 1507, 
 the four voyages of Vespucci were published for the first time 
 together, in Latin, at St Die, in France, as before stated, as an 
 appendage to a little work on cosmography, a science which 
 now began to assume new and startling importance. 
 
 On the third of November, the same year, there was pub- 
 lished in Italian, at Vicenza, a most important collection of 
 voyages under the title, Gountries newly discovered^ and the New 
 World of Albericus Vespucci^ containing accounts of the voy- 
 ages of Cadamosto to Cape Verde, in 1454:-5 ; of de Cintra to 
 Senegal, in 1462 ; of Vasco da Gama, in 1497-1500 ; of Cabral, 
 in 1500-1 ; of Columbus (three voyages) 1492-1498 ; of Alonzo 
 Negro and the Pinzons ; of Vespucci (four voyages) ; of Cor- 
 tereal, &c. This work was the next year, 1508, printed in Latin 
 and German. 
 
 All these new geographical works hitherto printed, it will be 
 perceived, pointed to the same thing, enlightenment of the 
 public as to India beyond the Ganges, and how to go and trade 
 thither. In 1508, for the first time in print, all these discov- 
 
32 
 
 ei'ies were collected and laid down in a beautiful copper-plate 
 map, by Joliann Euysch, a German wbo had probably* visited 
 the new found islands with the Cabots, and knew well what he 
 was doing. It appears in the Ptolemy of 1508, published at 
 Rome, accompanied by A new Description of the World, and the 
 new Navigation of the Ocean from Lisbon to India, hy Marcus 
 Beneventanus. A careful study of this map and its descriptive 
 text, if we exclude all subsequent publications, and look at 
 the world as seen by the geographers of that day, will greatly 
 aid us in clearing up many apparent inconsistencies. 
 
 Ruj'^sch lays down three distinct and independent fields of 
 discovery. First, the Archipelago of Columbus in the center, 
 filling a space of above a thousand miles from north to south, 
 and open to India. This part of the map was no doubt laid 
 down from Columbus' own letter, the only authority, in 1507, 
 existing in print. He had, indeed, coasted along Paria from 
 Trinidad westward, in June, 1498, as Pinzon, Ojeda, and others 
 did subsequently, supposing it to be another large island, or 
 part of the mainland of Cathay, but nothing of this had then 
 been printed. Second, the Mundus Novus of Yespucci, being 
 the eastern coast of South America from Darien to Upper Pat- 
 agonia, one vast Island with an unknown background. The 
 authority for this was what has since been called Yespucci's 
 " Third Letter," first printed at the end of 1502, or probably 
 early in 1503. And third, the discoveries of the Cabots and 
 the Cortereals in the north, represented by them as part of the 
 mainland of Asia. This portion of the map is only Marco 
 Polo's description of Cathay extended considerably to the 
 northeast, and modified by the experience, probably, of Euysch 
 
 * Beneventanus says "Joannes vero Ruisch Germanus Geographorum meo 
 judicio peritissimus, ac in pLngendo orbe diligentissmus cujus adminiculo in hac 
 lucubratiuncula usi sumus, dixit, se navigasse ab Albionis australi parte ; et tamdiu 
 quo ad subparallelum ab subajquatore ad boream subgradum, 53, pervenit ; et in 
 eo parallelo navigasse ad ortus littora per angulum noctis atque plures insulas lus- 
 trasse, quarum inferius descriptionem assignabimus." Anglice : But John Ruyseh, 
 of Germany, in my judgment a most exact geographer, and a most painstaking 
 one in delineating the globe, to whose aid in this little work I am indebted, has 
 told me that he sailed from the south of England, and penetrated as far as the 53d 
 degree of north latitude [straits of Belle Isle], and on that parallel he sailed west 
 toward the shores of the East [Asia], bearing a little northward [per anglum Twdis] 
 and observed many islands, the description of which I have given below. 
 
38 
 
 himself, and tlie information lie gathered from the Bristol men, 
 when he was with them in 1497-8 and the discoveries of the 
 Cortereals.* 
 
 Columbus had placed his discoveries in the Indian Archipel- 
 ago beyond the Granges, and the world accepted the names he 
 gave to the separate islands. No new general name was required. 
 The discoveries of the Cabots and the Cortereals being also in 
 
 * The chart of Juan de la Cosa, representing the then known world bearing the 
 date of 1500, is not overiooked, but its significance, so far as the coast line of the 
 United States is concerned, has been so manifestly distorted by every one who has 
 described it, from its discovery by Humboldt in the library of Baron Walckenaer, 
 nearly forty years ago, down to the present day, that the writer hesitates to venture 
 his opinion. But by long study and comparison of tliis with other early maps, es- 
 pecially with those of Ruysch and Peter Martyr of 1508 and 1511, he is convinced 
 that the coast line, from the most westerly of the five English flag-staffs marking 
 the extent of Cabot's discoveries southward and westward, to a point west of Cuba, 
 precisely like the map of Ruysch seven or eight years later, is laid down as the 
 northeastern coast of Cathay, from the descriptions of Marco Polo. If our Maine 
 friends, therefore, will place behind their red line border, Marco Polo's name Mangi, 
 they win see that this territory is farther "down East" tlian is generally supposed, 
 being indeed eastern Asia. The word Cuba, instead of Juana, the name given by 
 Coliunbus, and the fact that it is represented as an island have been strenuously 
 objected to by geographers, but both these objections will be answered in another 
 place. [See explanatory preface.] 
 
 La Cosa perished in Ojeda's mad expedition in Dec, 1509. He was a clever fel- 
 low, and a great favorite, and used to boast that he knew more of the geography 
 of the new lands than did Columbus hhnself. Indeed, of all others, says Peter 
 Martyr in 1514, his charts were the most esteemed. His knowledge and experience 
 were great, for he had been, between the years 1493 and 1509, on no less than six 
 exploring expeditions, either as Master of Charts or commander, with Columbus, 
 Ojeda, Yespucci, and Bastides, and had visited repeatedly the entire coast, from Paria 
 to Uraba, and thence on his own accoimt, north to the middle of Yucatan, as well as 
 most of the islands in Columbus' vast Archipelago. "When with Bastides, in 1501-2, 
 he found that the Portuguese were meddling on the wrong side of the line of de- 
 marcation, endeavoring, probably, to find a shorter route to Calicut via Darien, and 
 therefore, on his return to Spain, La Cosa was sent to Lisbon to remonstrate against 
 this enroachment. He was there imprisoned and was not released till August, 1504. 
 Nothing daimted, the next year, 1505-6, he went on an exploring and trading ex- 
 pedition of his own to Uraba and Panama, and on another similar one in 1507-8. 
 On the 11th of November, 1509, he embarked with Ojeda from Hispaniola, and per- 
 ished soon after. From this it will be seen that he might be in Spain chart-making, 
 from June to October, 1500 ; from September, 1502 to 1504, autumn, (except when 
 in prison in Lisbon); and again parts of the years 1506-7, as well as parts of 
 1508-9. 
 
 La Cosa had, therefore, ample time, if necessary, to touch up his great chart of 
 the world, made and dated in 1500, but a careful examination of the whole chart will 
 
34 
 
 the East, were so recognized as tliej placed tliem, and required 
 no new general name, but their names of particular localities, 
 such as Terra ISTova and Bacalaos, were adopted. But as to the 
 New World described by Vespucci, the case is different. This 
 large country was undoubtedly new, and as his was the first de- 
 scription of it printed, his friends of the Vosges Mountains, 
 lovers of geography, sought very properly, in 1507, to compli- 
 ment him by giving it, instead, the beautiful name America. 
 
 show that it gives no information later than its date. The date is positive, and 
 there is probably no reason to doubt it. But as his own discoveries and explora- 
 tions west of Mont San Eufemia towards Uriba, Darien and Panama made from 
 1501 to 1508 are not laid down, is it not probable that the chart had passed out of 
 the maker's possession, and was therefore beyond his reach for retouching? There 
 are many other points for discussion, but as the writer has never had under his eye 
 the original chart, but judges only from M. Jomard's excellent colored fac-simile on 
 three double elephant folio sheets, he feels that he is treading on ticklish ground. 
 The fac-similes (greatly reduced in size) given by Humboldt, Ghillany, Lelewel, Kohl 
 and others, are in many respects defective, and tend to mislead the student, inasmuch 
 as the coloring, and the Unes of latitude and longitude are left out. Some names are 
 misplaced and others are misspelled, while many important ones are omitted alto- 
 gether. Only the western sheet or third, is given (except by Humboldt). But it 
 should not be forgotten that the chart is intended to represent, on a plain, the entire 
 globe as far as known in 1500. 
 
 There is a broad green border above and beyond the Ganges, showing that the 
 northeast of Asia is terra incognita. The same green also covers what is now North 
 and South America, and therefore being unknown the lines and ornaments are not 
 to be mistaken for rivers and lakes. But La Cosa had the same authorities up to 
 the Polisacus river and bay, in latitude 52° north that Behaun had for his globe 
 made in 1492. Hence the two works agree remarkably well, but La Cosa, taking 
 advantage of the seven years progress in geography, has attempted to complete 
 Asia by laying down its northeastern coast on the other side of the globe, from 
 somewhere about Zaiton in the Corea, to and some thirty degrees eastward, be- 
 yond the Polisacus river and bay, through the kingdoms of Gog and Magog, and 
 thence by a cbeam line connecting Asia with the discoveries of the Cabots and the 
 Cortereals. The Polisanchiu river of Fra Mauro in 1457 is the Polisacus of Ruysch 
 and the Ptolemies of 1511, 1513, 1535, and 1540. These and the Posacus of 
 Schoner, the Puluisangu of Ortelius, and Pulisangu in later maps, are probably 
 the Amoor river of our day. At all events, the river and bay are in eastern Asia, 
 are about 50° to 52° north latitude, and therefore, America on La Cosa's chart can- 
 not extend further west than the left flagstaff, the meridian of Porto Rico. The 
 three rivers on the three reduced fac-similes are not in the original map of La 
 Cosa, and on Dr. Kohl's fac-simile the important words, Ma/r descubierta por Tng- 
 lesss, are placed too low down and half an inch too far west, thus conveying the 
 idea that the English had discovered Mangi. 
 
 In short. La Cosa's coast line, from Cuba to the first flagstaff, was intended for 
 Asia, and to this day answers better for Asia than America. The student, there- 
 
35 
 
 This was done witliout the knowledge of Yespucci, and was 
 never intended to interfere with the just rights and claims of 
 Columbus. The truth is, there was then no other book in print 
 describing Brazil but Vespucci's very simple and interesting let- 
 ter, written (but in what language it is doubtful) probably im- 
 mediately after his return in September, 1502. He gave the 
 country he described no name, but the translator into Latin en- 
 tled his little tract Mundus Novus. But time wore on, and the 
 mistakes of the geographers, as well as those of Columbus and 
 Vespucci, are made apparent* 
 
 In 1505-6 northwestern Honduras and Yucatan were seen by 
 Solis and Pinzon, and in 1508 Juana (henceforth called Cuba) 
 was circumnavigated by Ocampo, thus dispelling the doubt about 
 
 fore, who is not clear on these points is liable to get the Polisacus (sometimes 
 speUed Plisacus) Bay, the Gulf of Maine, Rio Gomez, Cathay, Memphramagog, 
 Gog and Magog, Quinsay, Cape Cod, Zaiton, Zipangu, Capes Race and Henlopen, 
 Mangi, Carolina, Ciambu, Florida, Chicora, Cuba, etc., into a beautiful muddle. 
 This is no exaggeration. This utter confusion has been made by compilers and am- 
 ateur geographers from the times of Hylacomilus, Apianus, Schoner, Laurence Fries, 
 Orontius Fine, and Muenster, to the present day, and no doubt wUl continue so un- 
 til geographers look more carefully into the chronology and bibliography of their 
 subjects. With these explanations this map is perfectly intelligible, and is recon- 
 cilable with other good maps made since the discovery of the Pacific in 1513, when . 
 America first began to stand alone in geography independent of Asia. The ques- 
 tion next to be asked is, how far west and south did Sebastion Cabot go in 149*7-8 ? 
 According to La Cosa and Ruysch, as far probably as the extent of the Gulf of St. 
 Lawrence. Compare Hakluyt's map of 1587. Ruysch differs from La Cosa onlj- 
 as he had to record also the discoveries of the Cortereals. The remark of Peter 
 Martyr, in 1515 (after their eyes were opened to the size and shape of the globe 
 by the discovery of the Pacific) about Cabot's reaching on the American coast the 
 latitude of Gibraltar, and finding himself then on a meridian of longitude far enough 
 west to leave Cuba on his left, is simply absurd, dilemmatize it as you will. Such 
 a voyage would have landed him near Cincinnati. 
 
 * A Uttle book, hitherto unknown, written by "Walter Lud, and printed at Stras- 
 burg in 1507, entitled SpecuK Orbis Dedaratio, discovered by the writer in 1862, 
 has been the means of clearing up many unjust aspersions of historians against 
 Yespucci, and explaining the true state of affairs. The book is now in the British 
 Museum. The writer, after unsuccessful endeavors for two years to place it in 
 America, at the end of March, 1864, had the great satisfaction of calling the atten- 
 tion of his friend, R. H. Major, Esq., to it, and pointing out to him the passages re- 
 ferring to tlie Vespucci books. How well Mr. Major has used these materials his 
 excellent paper on the Manu.script ilap of Leonardo da Vinci, printed in the Arch- 
 osologia and his admirable Life of Prince Henry the Navigator, nbimdantly show. 
 The next year the \TOtcr called Monsieur Harrisse's attention to it, and in his Bib. 
 Ara. Vet it appears, under No. 49. 
 
its being Zipangu, or part of the main land of Asia. It was 
 found to be a long, narrow island, extending east and west, and 
 not north and south, like Zipangu. A strange confusion now 
 began to seize the German geographers of Strasburg and Vienna. 
 They made Cuba an island, and called it Isabella, and then 
 transferred all the names from Isabella to a mainland, named 
 usually. Terra de Cuba, connecting it with Paria (sometimes 
 with and sometimes without a narrow strait) standing bolt up- 
 right, and extending to 45° north latitude, with a point like 
 Florida, and a gulf to the west of it. This was still supposed 
 to be part of Asia, the Florida-like projection being the Corea, 
 and the gulf, the sinus GangeticuAi, but in reality existed only 
 in the imaginations of the geogi*aphers, like Antilla and San 
 Brandan. It holds on their maps about twenty names, some of 
 which are found on Euysch's large island or main land west of 
 Spagnola, and all of which are found on early maps, especially 
 on a Portuguese portalauo compiled by Lelewel under date of 
 1501-4. It is in the Ptolemy of 1513, extending up to 45° with 
 the three-mouthed Ganges and the Gulf of Ganges, while on the 
 globe of Schoner, of 1520, it reaches 51°, and is separated from 
 Zipangu by five or six degrees of Balboa's newly discovered 
 South Sea which by a strange guess is carried due north to the 
 pole. Off to the northeast, in its proper latitude and longitude, 
 most of these maps have Terra de Corte Keal as a large island, 
 extending probably as far as the Cabots and the Cortereals dis- 
 covered — that is, as far west as the meridian of Poito Eico. 
 Some maps have it Terra de Cuba, others Paria ; and one, in 
 the Margarita PMlosophica of 1515, from a misreading of Colum- 
 bus' first letter, Zoana Mela. This fancy continent grew in size 
 for nearly a quarter of a century, and was hard to get rid of, 
 but the explorations of Ayllon, Cortez, Gomez, Yerrazzano, Car- 
 tier, and others, finally di'ove it from our geographies. 
 
 In 1513 Florida, up to Chicora, was explored by Ponce de 
 Leon, but it is now certain that it had been discovered two or 
 three years before, probably by private adventurers, but perhaps 
 by Ocampo in his return voyage in 1508. At all events, it ap- 
 pears correctly laid down in the excellent map of Peter Martja- 
 printed at Seville April 11th, 1511, under the designation, Isla 
 de Beimeni. This map, exhibiting an unbroken coast line from 
 
87 
 
 Cape Santa Cruz, in Brazil, to the middle of Yucatan, with 
 hints of continental lines from Florida northward and westward, 
 and one due north of Yucatan, if studied by the light of Peter 
 Martyr's tenth book of his second decade, dated December, 1514, 
 will foreshadow an approaching eclipse of Spanish enterprise in 
 this direction. 
 
 There is little doubt that, at the time of the publication of 
 this most important map, the author was still under the belief 
 that all these new main lands somehow pertained to the conti- 
 nent of Asia. It is true, he informs us that some philosophers, 
 and he leaves us to infer that he was one of them, had their sus- 
 picions that Columbus was mistaken in his opinion of its being 
 Cathay, that the globe was larger than Columbus supposed, and 
 that he had not really reached the antipodes, or the kingdom of 
 the Grand Khan. But when Columbus, in his fourth voyage, 
 brought home some poppinjays, and exhibited their brilliant 
 plumage at the court, the good old gossipping letter-writer ac- 
 knowledged that the gi'eat Discoverer was right, that such beau- 
 tifal birds could come only from the East. Hence, probably on 
 this map the lines west of Beimeni and north of Yucatan are 
 dream lines from Marco Polo. Indeed, Peter Martyr says, in 
 his first decade, finished in 1510 and printed shortly after, that 
 all these provinces of Paria, Cariena, Canehiet, Cuquibacoa, 
 Uraba, Veragua, and others, are supposed to pertain to the con- 
 tinent of India. Florida and Beimini forgotten by Marco Polo, 
 and left out of his report ! Shade of Sebastian Cabot ! 
 
 In 1511 Cuba was settled under favorable auspices, and with 
 Diego Velasquez as governor over well-to-do colonists, it became 
 the base of operations for extensive explorations. On the 8th 
 of February, 1517, Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, accom- 
 panied by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, he of the True History^ and 
 Antonio Alaminos as pilot, who as a boy had sailed with Colum- 
 bus, set out on an exploring expedition to the west, to look for 
 trade, gold, and the long-sought passage to the land of promise. 
 He went by Cape Catoche, the bay of Campeche, as far as Cham- 
 poton, and returned. The next year, 1518, on the 5th of April, 
 Juan de Grijalva set out on the same route, with a better fleet 
 and fuller instructions, accompanied by Bernal Diaz, Pedro de 
 Alvarado, and the ever faithfal Palinurus, Alaminos. They 
 
 i--' 
 
38 
 
 visited Cozumel, Cape Catoche, Campeclie, Eio Tabasco, Poton- 
 clian, and named tlie country New Spain. They went as far as 
 Panuco. Alvarado was sent back witli tbe sick and heaps of 
 gold, but Grijalva himself did not return to Cuba till the 15th 
 of November. The journal of this important expedition, kept 
 by the chaplain, Diez, was first published in Italian by Zorzi, at 
 Venice in 1520, as an appendage to the Itinerario of Varthema. 
 Three days after Grijalva's return, Hernando Cortez, on the 
 18th of November, 1518, with the instructions in his pocket, 
 which the governor sought in vain to recall after the return and 
 favorable report of Alvarado, embarked on that most wonder- 
 ful expedition of modern history, but he did not really leave 
 Cuba for Cozumel till the 10th of February, 1519. He followed 
 the courses of Cordova and Grijalva till he reached Vera Cruz. 
 From thenxje he ascended the Grand Plateau, and what followed 
 is known to all the world. In his Second Relation, dated 30th 
 October, 1520, Cortes sent to the Emperor a map of the entir 
 Gulf of Mexico, well laid down, which was printed for the first 
 time in 1524, at Augsburg, where Charles V had resided. This 
 map was incorporated into Orontius Fine's celebrated map of 
 the world dated July, 1531, which, compared with the account 
 of Hegelian's voyage, and the third and fourth Relations of 
 Cortes, led the great geographer and astronomer of Nuremburg, 
 Schoner, the next year, 1532, to completely change his mind as 
 to the extent of the South Sea, and place it almost entirely 
 south of the equator, extending Asia to the north of it from the 
 Ganges to Bacalaos, or Newfoundland. On this map of Cortes 
 are the names of all the places at which he touched from Yuca- 
 tan along the coast as far as Vera Cruz. These are, in order, 
 Santo Anton, Roca Partida, Rio de Grijalva, Rio de la Palma, 
 Rio de dos botas, Caribes, Santo Andres, Rio de Cocuqualquo, 
 Roca partida, Rio de Vanderas, Rio de Alvarado, P. de Sant 
 Juan, Seville, Almera, and San Pedro. The Rio de Cocuqual- 
 quo was surveyed for many miles, probably with the hope of 
 finding an opening to the South Sea. In Fine's map of 1531 
 most of Cortes' names are indiscriminately mixed up with those 
 of Marco Polo. [PL ill. No. 3 and 4.] 
 ^ In 1519, Francisco Garay, the Governor of Jamaica, dispatched 
 Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda to explore the keys and coasts of 
 
39 
 
 Florida, but owing to the reefs and contrary winds, he directed 
 his way round by the northwest coast by Mobile Bay, and the 
 Mississippi river to Yera Cruz, thus completing a full and care- 
 ful survey of the Gulf of Mexico. But still the disappointing- 
 report to the home government of old Spain was — no thorough- 
 fare. Here was the eclipse. Portugal had gained a strong foot- 
 hold of eight hundred miles on the coast of Brazil in conse- 
 quence of removing the Line westward. In this way Spain be- 
 came hemmed in between two lines of demarcation, the one the 
 breadth of the Pope, the other the Cordilleras of the new hemi- 
 sphere, the one about as impassible as the other, to the Spanish 
 mind. 
 
 Thus all these three fields of discovery had by degrees crept 
 into one vast continent, extending from the Arctic to the Ant- 
 artic Circles, and, instead of being India, the land of fabulous 
 treasures, it was an impassable barrier to the approach thither 
 by the western route. In 1513, when Vespncci had been in his 
 gi'ave a year, and Columbus seven, NuSez de Balboa first saw 
 the Pacific Ocean (for many years called the South Sea) from 
 the mountain tops of Panama, and soon after navigators began 
 to realize that the land of spices was beyond another ocean, even 
 more vast than the Atlantic itself The beautiful name America 
 now began to swallow up the conjunctives, to spread itself 
 eventually all over the new hemisphere, by the same law that 
 made the Libya of the Romans succumb to its younger and 
 more beautifully named daughter, Africa. 
 
 But Spain, with her new Emperor, her Fonsecas, her Corteses, 
 her Pizarros, her Almagros, her Don Quixotes, her affluent mis 
 eries, her newly awakened thirst for gold, her Christian zeal, 
 and her jealous rivalry for possession of the Spiceries, was not 
 the power to bend or break. She redoubled her energies, made 
 laws for the regulation of her half of the world, and pious and 
 unscrupulous as they were, systematized her efforts. She would 
 not permit the Portuguese to seek a passage to their eastern 
 possessions through her half by the way of the Isthmuses of 
 America, and by the same rule she felt a delicacy in using their 
 route by the Cape of Good Hope. Her ambassadors and agents 
 in foreign countries manifested no such scruples. 
 
40 
 
 In 1512 or earlier, Sebastian Cabot was seduced from Eng- 
 land, and induced to take service, with liis experience, in Spain ; 
 and the same year Juan de Solis, exploring the coast of South 
 America, discovered Eio de la Plata, In 1515 he was again sent 
 thither with a view of finding a passage to the South Sea, and 
 thence to the Moluccas. This expedition returned soon after 
 in consequence of the death of Solis, but it led the way to a 
 successful one in 1519, under Magellan, a disaffected Portuguese 
 gentleman who had served his country for five years in the 
 Indies under Albuquerque, and understood well the secrets of 
 the Eastern trade. In 1517, conjointly with his geographical 
 and astronomical friend, Ruy Falerio, another unrequited Por- 
 tuguese, he offered his services to the Spanish court. At the 
 same time these two friends proposed not only to prove that the 
 Moluccas were within the Spanish lines of demarcation, but to 
 discover a passage thither different from that used by the Por- 
 tuguese. Their schemes were listened to, adopted and carried 
 out. The Straits of Magellan were discovered, the broad South 
 Sea was crossed, the Ladrones and the Phillipines were inspected, 
 the Moluccas were passed through, the Ca,pe of Grood Hope was 
 doubled on the homeward voyage, and the globe was circum- 
 navigated, all in less than three years, from 1519 to 1522. Ma- 
 gellan lost his life, and only one of his five ships returned to 
 tell the marvelous story. The magnitude of the enterprise was 
 equalled only by the magnitude of the results. The globe for 
 the first time began to assume its true character and size in the 
 minds of men, and the minds of men began soon to grasp and 
 utilize the results of this circumnavigation for the enlargement 
 I of trade and commerce, and for the benefit of geography, as- 
 tronomy, mathematics, and the other sciences. This wonderful 
 story, is it not told in a thousand books ? The SjDanish eclipse 
 was now passed, and America not long after stood boldly out 
 as an independent hemisphere. 
 
 Meanwhile the Spaniards were timidly tempting their new 
 ocean. The South Sea shores of Darien, Panama, and Veragua 
 were explored in 1515 to 1517, as they had been a few years be- 
 fore on the north side, with a view of finding a water communi- 
 cation from ocean to ocean. Estevan Gomez, another decoyed 
 Portuguese pilot in the service of Spain, who went with Magel- 
 
41 
 
 Ian in 1519 as far as the Straits and there discreditably deserted 
 him, returning to Spain in 1521, reported that, though a strait 
 had been found by the admiral, it was too remote and too dan- 
 gerous for use. It was resolved, therefore, to seek for the sup- 
 posed isthmian passage by a more thorough examination of the 
 coasts of the Pacific. Accordingly, in 1522, four vessels hav- 
 ing been built at Panama, Avila and the pilot Nino set out to 
 explore the coast from the Bay of San Miguel to the Gulf of 
 Fonseca, expecting to find at the latter place a passage by water 
 through to the Gulf of Honduras. 
 
 The same year Cortes, after having subjected the mighty bar- 
 baric empire of Montezuma, extending from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, with characteristic energy set himself to work exploring 
 to find a natural water passage, or to make an artificial one. 
 He ordered four ships to be built at Zacatula, two for direct 
 trade to the Moluccas, and two to search for the strait. The 
 voyage to the Moluccas was postponed, but the search for the 
 strait was prosecuted so vigorously that, between the expedi- 
 tions of Avila and his own, every inlet was explored between 
 Colima, in latitude 18-|° North, and the Bay of San Miguel, a 
 distance of above 2,500 miles of coast line, but of course with- 
 out finding any passage. The following year, 1523, Cortes is 
 said to have dispatched five small vessels to reconnoitre the coasts 
 from Florida northward, to seek for the passage connecting the 
 two oceans. His plan was to send another fleet up the western 
 coast that they might meet somewhere north of the German 
 geographer's fancy continent, or sail round it. Of course they 
 never met. 
 
 In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro, the future conquerors of Peru, 
 began their approaches thither from Panama, caiTying with them 
 always the impossible instructions to seek out the hidden pas- 
 sage, while they were looking for trade and searching for gold. 
 
 The Portuguese in India and the Spiceries, as well as at home, 
 now seeing the inevitable conflict approaching, were thoroughly 
 aroused to the importance of maintaining their rights. They 
 openly asserted them, and pronounced this trade with the Mo- 
 luccas by the Spanish an encroachment on their prior discoveries 
 and possession, as well as a violation of the Papal Compact of 
 1494, and prepared themselves energetically for defense and of- 
 
42 
 
 fense. On tlic other hand, the Spaniards as openly declared 
 that Magellan's fleet carried the first Christians to the Moluccas, 
 and by friendly intercourse with the kings of those islands, re- 
 duced them to Christian subjection and brought back letters 
 and tribute to Caesar. Hence these kings and their people came 
 under the protection of Charles Y. Besides this, the Spaniards 
 claimed that the Moluccas were within the Spanish half, and 
 were therefore doubly theirs. Accordingly great preparations 
 were made to dispatch a fleet of six new ships to the Moluccas, 
 to establish and protect trade. The Council of the Indies ad- 
 vised the Emperor to maintain this fleet there, and to take the 
 Spiceries into his own hands, and carry on commerce and nav- 
 igation thither through his own exclusive channels, either by 
 the strait recently discovered by Magellan, or by some hidden 
 one which must soon be disclosed (if any reliance could be 
 placed on the geographers) in a more direct line through some 
 one of the Isthmuses ; or, failing that, by opening communica- 
 tion from the coast of the Pacific. 
 
 Matters thus waxing hot, King John of Portugal begged 
 Charles V to delay dispatching his new fleet until the disputed 
 points could be discussed and settled. Charles, who boasted 
 that he had rather be right than rich, consented, and the ships 
 were staid. These two Christian princes, who owned all the 
 newly discovered and to be discovered parts of the whole world 
 between them by deed of gift of the PojDe, agreed to meet in 
 Congress at Badajos by their representatives, to discuss and set- 
 tle all matters in dispute about the division of their patrimony, 
 and to define and stake out their lands and waters, both parties 
 agreeing to abide by the decision of the Congress. 
 
 Accordingly, in the early spring of 1524, up went to this lit- 
 tle border town four-and-twenty wise men, or thereabouts, chosen 
 by each prince. They comprised the first judges, lawyers, math- 
 ematicians, astronomers, cosmographers, navigators and pilots 
 of the land, among whose names were many honored now as 
 then — such as Fernando Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Estevan 
 Gomez, Diego Ribero, etc. They were empowered to send for 
 persons and papers, and did in reality have before them pilots, 
 Papal bulls, treaties, royal grants and patents, log books, maps, 
 charts, globes, itineraries, astronomical tables, the fathers of 
 
43 
 
 tlie chnrcli, ancient geogi'apliies and modern geographers, navi- 
 gators witli their compasses, quadrants, astrolabes, mathemati- 
 cal instruments, etc. For two months they fenced, cyphered, 
 debated, argued, protested, discussed, grumbled, quarreled and 
 almost fought, yet they could agree upon nothing. 
 
 Whereas in the treaty of 1494 the Portuguese claimed the 
 right of placing the hne farther west than 370 leagues from the 
 Cape Verde Islands, while the Spaniards contended rather to 
 carry it farther east than placed in the original bull, both parties 
 now (so much does self-interest sometimes modify arguments of 
 right) contended for the very opposite to their former arguments. 
 The line, however, had been fixed on and approved by the Pope 
 in 1494, and therefore could not be altered by them. But as 
 there were 150 miles between the most easterly and most west- 
 erly of the Cape Verde Islands, they discussed angrily as to 
 which island the line should pass through, each party knowing 
 that every mile the line was moved here to the east or west, it 
 would necessarily have to be moved just so much at the anti- 
 podes, the real field in dispute. 
 
 The debates and proceedings of this Congress, as reported by 
 Peter Martyr, Oviedo, and Gomara, are very amusing, but no 
 regular joint decision could be reached, the Portuguese declin- 
 ing to subscribe to the verdict of the Spaniards, inasmuch as it 
 deprived them of the Moluccas. So each party published and 
 proclaimed its own decision, after the Congress broke up in con- 
 fusion on the last day of May, 1524. It was, however, tacitly 
 understood that the Moluccas fell to Spain, while Brazil, to the 
 extent of two hundred leagues from Cape St Augustine, fell to 
 the Portuguese. The calculation of longitude was the pons as- 
 inorum of the Congress, the very problem that had deceived 
 Columbus and other experienced navigators a quarter of a cen- . 
 tury before. At this time let it be remembered, no geographer 
 had given any hint of the fan -like shape of North America, but 
 all maps represent it as a narrow strip of land, like that from 
 Panama to Tehuantepec, with the South Sea, itself narrow, run- 
 ning up to the west of it. 
 
 However, much good resulted from this first geographical 
 Congress. The extent and breadth of the Pacific were appre- 
 ciated, and the influence of the Congress was soon after seen in 
 
 6 
 
44 
 
 the greatly improved maps, globes, and cliarts. Many doubt- 
 ful points in geography and navigation were cleared up on both 
 sides of the globe, and the latitude and longitude of many places 
 were defined. Indeed, on the new maps after this, all the dis- 
 coveries actually made, up to 1524, were tolerably well laid 
 down, but there was a deal of imposition left in the imaginar}' 
 lines of those parts of the North American coast which had not 
 yet been explored, that is, between Florida and Nova Scotia. 
 These false lines were still used by the pilots of both Spain and 
 Portugal, probably with a view of blinding the eyes of each 
 other, or leading astray the outside barbarians of England, 
 France, and Holland, who, though children of the Father, and 
 given to trade and adventure, had no share in the Papal gratu- 
 ity. The fact that all the coasts of South America, Panama. 
 Nicaragua, Honduras, Yucatan, the Gulf of Mexico, and Flor- 
 ida, as well as of the Pacific shores from the Gulf of San Mig- 
 uel to Colima, that had been surveyed by the Spaniards up to 
 this time, were well laid down, both as to latitude and longitude, 
 proves almost to a certainty that the indefinite coast line of the 
 United States was still imaginary, if not Asiatic. Indeed, the 
 old wood-cut maps of 1513 and 1522 of the German geographers, 
 with their ideal continent. Terra de Cuba, did service, without 
 alteration in the Ptolemies, for a quarter of a century later. 
 
 The return of Magellan's ship Victoria in 1522 aroused the 
 spirit of public and private enterprise throughout Spain. 
 Innumerable schemes for developing commerce with the Orient, 
 and making farther explorations, were proposed and discussed; 
 Every pilot, whether amateur or practical, had his card of the 
 shortest route to the Indies. Of these schemes no less than 
 six in 1523 and 1524 were adopted by the government, and 
 promoted wholly or in part by public funds; viz., that of 
 Cortes, of Loaysa, of Gomez, of Ayllon, of Cabot, and of 
 Saavedra. The impending conflict with Portugal called to- 
 gether the Congress of Badajos. That being over hj the 1st 
 of June, 1524, and resulting practically in favor of Spain, 
 these several plans were matured as fast as practicable. 
 
 Cortes, the first and most active, had no sooner conquered 
 Mexico and clenched his conquest than he began his explora- 
 tion of the coasts of the Pacific. Without delay he sent 
 
45 
 
 Alvarado and other captains to the south and southeast, to 
 bring into subjection the chiefs of the Province of Oaxaca and 
 what is now called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and, shortly 
 after, proceeded thither himself 
 
 Ships were built on the Pacific side, but with many of the 
 materials carted over from the Coatzacoalcos River. All the 
 details of this scheme, from the 15th of May, 1522, to the 15th 
 of October, 1524, are recorded in Cortes' Fourth Relation to 
 the Emperor, printed at Toledo, October 20th, 1525. This Re- 
 lation in Spain, with the reports of Alvarado and Godoy at- 
 tached, gave still another impulse to the new speculations and 
 enterprises, as it showed not only the practicability, but the 
 probability of opening by artificial means a direct route to the 
 Orient in a low latitude and good climate. Cortes was clear- 
 headed and far-sighted enough to see that lines of commerce 
 must be straight lines, and that the curves of the capes in high 
 latitudes are only temporary matters of necessity. Indeed, so 
 sanguine was Cortes on these points, that he planted his per- 
 sonal hopes and private fortune on and near this isthmus, as 
 likely to become the Old World's highway for Oriental com- 
 merce. All the lands and private estates selected for himself 
 and his posterity, and confirmed to him in 1529 by the Empe- 
 ror, were located here in the Valley of Oaxaca, and near Tehuan- 
 tepec. He was ennobled in 1529, taking his title, Marquis del 
 Valle, from his possessions chosen here. To this day they are 
 called the Cortes Estates, or the Marquisanas. He and his 
 kinsman, Saavedra, had vast schemes for opening communica- 
 tion, by means of a ship canal or Roman road, for the transpor- 
 tation of merchandise brought hither from the Moluccas and 
 other parts of the East for passage or transhipment to Spain. 
 How unexpectedly this rational scheme was thwarted will ap- 
 pear farther on. 
 
 At the end of 1524 or early in 1525, Estevan Gromez, the pi- 
 lot who had been in the East, had started with Magellan and 
 deserted him, a delegate to the Congress of Badajos, was the 
 first to get off" from Spain. He had boasted that he could find 
 a passage to Cathay and the Spice Islands by the north, as Ma- 
 gellan had done by the south. He must have seen at Badajos, 
 if not before, the maps of Ruysch, with the continent west of 
 
46 
 
 Spagnola extending to 35° north, and the Hylacomylns map of 
 1513, carrying the same ideal continent up to lat. 46°, ending 
 with Cape Mar del Oceano, just above Euysch's Cape Helicon 
 (probably named from the rumored fountains of Florida). Pe- 
 ter Martyr's map of 1511, and Cortes' map of 1520, printed in 
 March, 1524, together with the knowledge that Ponce de Leon, 
 in 1513, and Ayllon, in 1520, had explored the coast of Flori- 
 da up to 33° 40', a little above Charleston ; and it being known 
 that Ayllon had another commission in his pocket, dated June 
 12, 1523, to explore still further north of Florida ; and his own 
 commission being to find a strait between Florida and Barcala- 
 os ; these considerations make it certain that Gomez' field of 
 search lay between 35'' and 45", or between Norfolk and Cape 
 Sable, where, as Peter Martyr expresses it, "he found pleasant 
 and profitable countries agreeable with our parallels." Very 
 little is known about this unimportant expedition, and no au- 
 thentic maps or papers have come down to us. The contempo- 
 rary historians give no prominence to it, and veiy few facts about 
 it. Indeed fi'om what is at present known, it is very difficult 
 to tell whether Gomez sailed up or down the coast, or both, or 
 at what points he touched. So little infoiTQation did he bring 
 back, that it wou.ld not now be a matter worth discussing if the 
 results of the voyage had not been so enormously exaggerated 
 by recent writers. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that Gomez sailed with only a single 
 caravel of fifty tons, with perhaps a dozen men, in the dead of 
 winter, from Coruna, in lat. 43°, the government contribution 
 toward the cost of the fit-out being only 750 ducats, returning 
 in November, 1525, after an absence of about ten months, with 
 some Indian slaves, whom he had kidnapped against a recent 
 law of Spain and the positive instructions of the Emperor, and 
 you have the whole story. Oviedo, writing in 1526, says that 
 he sailed to the northern parts and found a great part of land 
 continuate from that which is called Bacalaos, taking his course 
 toward the west to 40° and 41°, from whence he brought certain 
 Indians. Would an intelligent pilot sail north with such a 
 craft in winter? Might not New England be the " great part " 
 of land next to Bacalaos ; and might not the fine tall natives 
 of Rhode Island have been kidnapped, part being taken to 
 
47; 
 
 Cuba for sale, the rest taken to Toledo, tlins consuming the ten 
 months, without having gone north of Cape Cod ? Peter Mar- 
 tyr says, writing also in 1526 : " He, neither finding the strait 
 nor Cathay, which he promised, returned back within ten 
 months from his departure. I always thought and presupposed 
 this good man's imaginations were vain and frivolous." Her- 
 rera, who wrote three quarters of a century later, is hardly more 
 favorable to this explorer. 
 
 The reader is referred, by recent writers, to the manuscript, 
 map of Ribero of 1529, now preserved at Weimar, for the re- 
 sult of Gomez' voyage. But the intelligent reader will see 
 with half an eye that this is a partizan map, and intentionally 
 deceptive in the coast line between 33° 40' and 50° N. The 
 discoveries of the English are thrown into Greenland, and called 
 Labrador, while Bacalaos is given to the Portuguese, and cut 
 off by the line of demarcation. All the rest of the coast is 
 closed up under the names of Gomez and Ayllon, and so given 
 to Spain. There is no room left for the discoveries of Veraz- 
 zano for the French in 1524. The Spaniards knew of his voy- 
 ages, for they had been watching him, and caught him, and in 
 1527 hanged him as a corsair. Indeed, the best that can be 
 reasonably said of the voyage of Gomez is, that it exploded the 
 ideal continent of the German geographers, and, connecting the 
 explorations of Ayllon with New England, showed that the 
 coast of North America trended continuall}^ eastward, so as 
 probably to connect it with the discoveries of the Cabots, and 
 thus make the whole coast west of the Line Spanish. 
 
 Lucas Vasquez Ayllon, a lawyer, a Senator in Hispaniola, 
 and a man of position, immediately after the survey of the en- 
 tire Gulf of Mexico under Grijalva and Cortes, sent an expedi- 
 tion up the coast of Florida in 1520, as far as Chicora, explor- 
 ing beyond the limit of Ponce de Leon, as far, probably, as 
 Cape Fear, seeking for the passage to Cathay. He found a fine 
 country, but to Asia no thoroughfare. The next year he re- 
 turned to Spain, and was, according to Peter Mart^T, in behalf 
 of the Regency of Hispaniola "a long time suitor [to the Coun- 
 cil of the Indies] to have leave to depart again into those coun- 
 tries, to build a colony there." At length, after the return of 
 Magellan's ship Victoria with its glorious news, the Council 
 
48 
 
 granted his request, and articles of agreement were signed tlie 
 12tli of June, 1523, giving him permission, at his own expense, 
 to lit out as many vessels as he pleased for the purpose of plant- 
 ing his proposed colony, but the usual instructions were inserted 
 in his grant, to explore all inlets and islands with a view of 
 finding a passage to Cathay. This license, given by Navarrete, 
 permitted him to explore as far as 800 leagues to the north of 
 Hispaniola. He returned to Hispaniola, built there six fine 
 vessels, and, after many delays, sailed with them and above 500 
 men and nearly 100 horses, in July, 1526. He went as far 
 north as lat. 33° 40', found no strait, and met with nothing but 
 misfortunes. The 18th of October Ayllon died, and soon after 
 the few survivors, about 150 out of the 500, returned to His- 
 paniola, the expedition being a dead failure. Thus ended the 
 attempt to plant a colony near the mouth of Cape Fear Kiver, 
 and thus ended the Spanish attempts to penetrate to the East 
 by the way of the North. Both Gomez and Ayllon had found 
 , no gold, and no strait, and even the trees and animals they re- 
 sj ported were common in Europe ; whereat old Martyr exclaims, 
 " to the south ! to the south ! for the great and exceeding riches 
 of the equinoxial ; they that seek riches must not go unto the 
 cold and frozen north." The whole story is comprehended in 
 Martyr's sentence. North America, by the Spaniards, was never 
 considered of any consequence of itself, and was regarded only 
 as a barrier or a stepping stone to a richer, older and better 
 land. It was necessary, however, to shut it up by a coast line 
 west of the line of demarcation, so that other nations might be 
 deterred from finding a northern passage to India. 
 
 The Emperor, considering the verdict of the Congress of 
 Badajos in his favor, lost no time in dispatching his new fleet of 
 six sail and 450 men by the Straits of Magellan, from Coruna, 
 on the 24th of July, 1525, under the command of Loaysa, to 
 the Moluccas and the Spice Islands, with the view, first, to suc- 
 cor the men left there by Magellan's fleet, and then to establish 
 a government bureau and to protect its commerce. The Straits 
 were passed, and four of the six ships reached the Moluccas ; 
 but the story of their long, long sufferings is too long to be told 
 here. 
 
 In April, 1526, Sebastian Cabot, who had for years been the 
 
49 
 
 Pilot Major of Spain — said, Lowever, to have been a better cos- 
 mograplier than pilot — after long and ample preparations at Se- 
 ville, sailed for the Moluccas via the Straits of Magellan, with 
 four well-equipped ships, for the purpose of reinforcing and as- 
 sisting the expedition of Loaysa. This expedition was another 
 dead failure. For some unaccountable reason, Cabot did not 
 deem it prudent to try the Straits of Magellan, but attempted 
 to find a passage through the Kio de la Plata. He penetrated 
 far into the interior of Paraguay, explored many large rivers 
 and fertil provinces, suffered many hardships, lost most of his 
 men and ships, and finally, after four years of toil and disap- 
 pointment, returned without any favorable results. 
 
 Cortes was kept informed of these several expeditions, with 
 a request from the Emperor that he would cooperate with them 
 at the Moluccas, by sending a fleet from the western coast of 
 Mexico. Accordingly he caused three ships to be built on the 
 Pacific, and dispatched them, with 110 men and thirty pieces of 
 artillery, under command of his kinsman, Saavedra, from some 
 port of Southern Mexico, probably Tehuantepec, Huatulco, or 
 Acapulco, on the 31st of October, 1527. This fleet met that of 
 Loaysa in the Moluccas, cooperated with it, found the Portu- 
 guese strong and resolute, by no means disposed to abandon the 
 islands, fought them separately, and fought them together for 
 months, nay, for years, never hearing a word from home, being 
 cruelly neglected, yet loyal and true, till reduced to a handful, 
 some few of the survivors, long after Loaysa and Saavedra had 
 died, as well as most of the sub-ofiicers, found their way home 
 after twelve years of unspeakable hardships. Thus all these 
 six hopeful expeditions brought nothing but disapjDointment. 
 The Straits of Magellan were found so dangerous and remote, 
 that old Peter, had he lived, would no doubt have again ex- 
 claimed as before, " To the north ! to the north ! they that seek 
 riches must not go to the dangerous and frozen south !" 
 
 As early as 1526 or 1527, before the extent of these failures 
 was known, it became apparent, if the commerce of the East 
 was to flourish, it must be by some more direct communication. 
 These great difficulties of the extreme North and South deter- 
 mined the Spaniards to explore the Isthmuses yet more thor- 
 ougly. All the five routes from Darien to Tehuantepec, were 
 
60 
 
 spoken of then as now, witli the view of constructing immediate- 
 ly a canal, road, or portage, deeming it safer and cheaper to tran- 
 ship goods, than to carry them round by the Strait. " There are 
 mountains it is true," exclaimed the old historian, " but Spanish 
 hands, and Spanish enterprise can overcome them." But no Span- 
 ish hands could overcome the impolitic blunders of the Emperor. 
 There is little doubt that inter-oceanic communication would 
 have been opened in 1529 or 1530, by means of a ship canal or 
 a turnpike across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, had not the Em- 
 peror, who was greatly in want of money, defeated all the 
 schemes against the advice of the Council of the Indies, by pawn- 
 ing in the treaty of Saragossa to the King of Portugal who had 
 just married his sister, the Moluccas for 350,000 ducats. So the 
 trade of the Moluccas passing for a time out of the hands of the 
 Spaniards, there was no immediate pressure for the completion 
 of this great work. The opportunity then lost of securing an 
 exclusive transit was never recovered by Spain, but it is reserved 
 to us of to-day to make the Isthmus of Tehuantepec the world's 
 highway. H. s. 
 
 May 10, 1869. 
 
LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS 
 
 n( 
 
 Plate 1 
 
 Chart of the World by Juan de la Cosa, dated 1500, the western third, re- 
 duced from M. JoXmard's uncolored fac-simile. The original is in the Royal li- 
 brary, Madrid, on leather, colored, size 5 feet 10, by 3 feet 2 inches, described 
 in the preceding pages. Humboldt and Lelewel differ as to the continuation of 
 La Cosa's coast line of Eastern Asia, cut off a little beyond the Ganges, the former 
 supposing tliat La Cosa intended'^to be continued as the Western coast of tlie 
 new heraesphere, while the latter thinks it was intended to he continued in the 
 coast line of Brasil. 
 
 "^ Plate II 
 
 NO 1 OcEANUS OcciDENTALis SEU Terr^ Nov^, reduced from the Ptolemy 
 of 1513, printed at Strasburg in foho. 
 
 No 2 La Carta universale della terra ferma & Isole delle Indie occi- 
 dentali, cauata da due carte da nauicare fatte in Sibiha da li piloti della Maiesta 
 Cesarea. Venetia, 1534. Reduced to one quarter the size of the unique origi- 
 nal in the possession of Mr James Lenox of New York. The two pilots are ,c0 
 doubt Fernando Columbus and Diego Ribero whose original charts of 1527 and 
 1529, or contemporary copies, are preserved in the military library at Weimar, 
 tlie American portions of which have been extracted and published by D'- John 
 G. Kohl of Bremen. 
 
 N" 3 Part of the Universalior Co«niti Orbis Tabula by Jolin Ruysch. 
 Published in the Ptolemy of 1508, printed at Rome, in folio. See supra pages 
 13 and 32. 
 
 Plate III 
 
 N" 1 Map of the New Hemisphere by F. G. Size of the original, dedicated 
 to Hakluyt, and issued in his edition of Peter Martyr's Eight Decades, Paris, 
 1587, 8vo. It is very rare. Cabot's discoveries are placed north of the Gulf of 
 St Lawrence and dated 1496. Virginia is here laid down for the first time, and 
 dated 1584. Drake's landing in California is recorded under the date of 1680, 
 and the territory assigned to the Enghsh. Frobisher's discoveries are dated 
 1576, and given to the EngHsli. 
 
 N" '2 Honter's Globe dated 1542, three continents terminating alike in the 
 Southern Ocean. Faria takes the place of Terra de Cuba and is separated from 
 Zipangu by a narrow sea. America is confined to South America which is 
 represented as a large island. 
 
 N" 3 Orontics Fine's double-hearted Globe dated July, 1531, slightly re- 
 duced from the original in the Paris edition of the Novtis Orbis of 1532. 
 1 
 
62 
 
 No 4 Part of tho above mentioned Globe of Okontius Fine of July, 1531, 
 reduced to Mercator's Projectioa. The best autliorities seem to have been used 
 by Fine in compiling this map, but he has so misread them that his production 
 is the culmination of absurdities Yet the best geographers and mathemati- 
 cians of his day agree with him. Schoner's Opuscidum Gtographictim, 4°, 1532, 
 though intended as a description of his own new and improved globes made at 
 Nuremberg, answcs equally well for tho descriptive text of this map. The 
 names of places used by Marco Polo in i astern Asia, and those given by Cortes 
 in Mexico, are mixed up and all laid down in one country which is called 
 farthest India. For this admirable reduction to Mercator's Projection the writer 
 is indebted to his friend Mr. J. C. Brevoort, of Brooklyn, who on all occasions 
 has liberally opened to the writer his geographical treasures to use as freely 
 as if they were his own. 
 
 Plate IV 
 NO 1 Extract from the very large Mapa Mundi op Sebastian Cabot of 1544, 
 showing the Gulf of StLawrence, Newfoundland. Labrador, Nova Scotia, &c. 
 From M. Jomard's facsimile of the original in the Imperial Library of Paris, 
 the only copy at present known to exist, reproduced by photo-lithography, and 
 and consequently a correct copy. The reader is invited to compare this extract 
 with a similar one lately published by Mr J. F. Nichols, City Librarian of Bris- 
 tol in his well printed Life and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot. Out of about 
 65 names Mr Nichols' engraver has managed to misspell above 40 of them, some 
 of them becoming hopelessly disguised, as /, i,^Capo de arause^ which means 
 nothing, instead o{ capo de arecife whicli does have a meaning. It is suspected 
 that Mr Nichols' copyists and printer have fallen into similar errors with re- 
 gard to the text of his book, and that consequently Sebastian Cabot is elevated 
 into a position at the expense of his father, and historical truth, which cannot be 
 sustained, without some sort of trustworthy evidence. 
 N<» 2 Western portion of tho Typus Umversalis Terre in Reisch's Maroa- 
 RITA PniLOSOPHiCA of 1515, evidently copied from the Ptolomy of 1513 with 
 the Ganges left out, and Zoana Mela put in. At this period, and for some time 
 after, it was the general opinion of the German Geographers, that whatever 
 parts of the world were not included in Europe or Africa somehow pertained 
 to Asia. The terms Novus Orbis and Mundus Novils were very early applied to 
 the new di.scoveries. As early as August, 1495, Peter Martyr wrote de orbe novo 
 of Cuba believing it on the authority of a letter from Columbus himself, to be a 
 part of Asia, just as more than a thousand years before the Eomans called 
 England the new world because it was then as another world to them beyond 
 Cadiz. Ovid to Livia honors Germany with tlie title of Netu World. 
 
 Et penitus toto diversos orbe Britannia.— Hrj/i/. 
 
 Serves jterum Cae.sarem in ultimas 
 
 Orbes Brit&naoa.—JIoracc. 
 
 The fact therefore that Giocondi, in translating Vespucci's account of his third 
 voyage, called the newly described country, Mundus Novus ^ does not prove that 
 by him in 1 504, Brasil was thought to be a new continent independent of Asia. 
 
 N" 3 The New Hemisphere, reduced from Ramusio of 1556, almost the whole 
 of it laid down from good authorities except the Atlantic coast line of North 
 America, the Asiatic features of which are not eradicated. Terra del Fuego 
 
53 
 
 is represented as a Southern Continent. The latest Spanish explorations in Cali- 
 fornia are carried up to lat. 40° N. and the coast of Labrador extends to 67^°. 
 
 c 
 N° 4 Part of Sebastian Muexst^'s Map of the World from the Xnvus Or- 
 
 his of Grynaeus, Basil, 1532. Muenster in this map, as well as in his printed 
 description of it, was much behind the times. The map is of the school of 
 Bernard Sylvanus 1511, of Gregory Reisch 1515, of Apian 1520, and Laurence 
 Fries of 1522. There is no trace of Peter Martyr's map published in 1511, or 
 that of Cortes priuted in 1524, nor had Magellan disturbed his conservatism. 
 The discoveries of the Cabots and the Cortereals are represented as an island 
 and called Terra Cortesia. The German geographers' fancy continent, Terra de 
 Cuba extends due north and south, nearly ten degrees wide, from lat. 1 0° to 
 48° N. with Columbus' Gulf of Ganges to the west of Spagnola. America is 
 still confined to South Ameiica, of which Farias and Prisilia are provinces. 
 
 N° 5 Peter Martyr's Map of the discoveries of Columbus, Vespucci and oth- 
 ers, made in 1510, and published in his First Bacade, April 11, 1511, reduced 
 from the very rare original which belonged to the writer in 1 845, but is now 
 in the possession of Mr John Carter Brown of Providence. This is by far the 
 most authentic, accurate and important printed map of the coasts from Cape 
 St Roque to Honduras, including Columbus' Archipelago, that has come down to 
 us, of all those known printed prior to 1634. 
 
 No 6 The World enlarged from Porcacchi of 1576. The Province of Anian is 
 in Eastern Asia, and Labrador occupies all New England and beyond is Florida. 
 The lakes are represented by one large one, some 600 miles long, in Canada, 
 divided by a river flowing southeast into the Atlantic, in latitude 41°. This will 
 do for the Hudson river. In separating Asia from America, several of the 
 Asiatic Provinces are set off to California. The Southern Continent has grown 
 to an enormous extent. 
 
 N" 7 Cortes' Chart of the Gulp op Mexico sent to Charles V in 1520, 
 and printed at Augsburg in 1524. Size of the original in the possession of Mr V*- ■'-' Y '^' ^'''^ ' 
 James Lenox. This and Peter Martyr's Map are incorporated Ijodily into 
 £^jr«w«- Fine's map of 1531, and laid.down with Marco Polo's ns part of Eastern 
 Asia. 
 
 Plate V 
 
 Part of a Portuguese Portolano, not dated, but circa 1514 (?) extracted from 
 Kuntzman's fac-simile of the original at Munich. A very important chart, but 
 manifestly not well understood by the several writers who have described it. 
 Among the flags, Spanish, English and Portuguese, set up to mark the nation- 
 alities of the several possessions there are two Mohammedan ones showing incon- 
 testably that the compiler of the chart supposed these countries to belong to 
 Asia. One is in Nicaragua and the other in Venezuela. Cuba is represented as 
 an island, and thrown down to its proper latitude, while Houdur.is like Peter 
 Martyr's is carried too high. Dr. Kohl has misled many by putting on his 
 reduced fac-simile the name of Yucatan, which is not on the original. There 
 are indications of the discovery of the South Sea in 1513, in the short coast line 
 south of Darien and in the two canoes of Indians. But this part of the chart 
 is evidently an after thought, for there are indications of names being cut out 
 or curtailed to make room for the^new discoveries, which circumstance, together 
 
54 
 
 with the namo Tera Rimini, instead of Florida, tends to sliow that the original 
 map was made before the expeditions of Balboa and Ponce de Lcoa iu 151 S. 
 Indeed by leaving honestly open tlie undiscovered coast between Bacalaos west 
 of the line of demarcation, and Tera Bimini, the map clearly resembles that of 
 Bernard Sylvanus with his Regains domus in the Venetiac Ptolemy of 1511. 
 
 V Plate VI. 
 Tehuantepec Railway Company's Chart of the World on Mercator's Projection: 
 siiowing the lines of railway with its connections of steamships ami sailing ves- 
 sels, with the pi-orainent parts of the world as they are this year, 1 8G9. 
 
 CONCLUSIOX. 
 
 All these thmgs disjoined and crannned as they are in this little book, to the 
 indifferent reader will no doubt seem very siniple, insomuch that some will think 
 that they liavo known them all along. But simple as they are if credited and 
 adapted, they will require a careful revisi(m of our whole f;i>urse of study in 
 early American geography and history. 
 
 Te?,nc, LaUS DeO.