To correct what, either from pride or from other reasons, he considered

the falsities of the Psalter, Ferdinand was now prompted to compose

a Life of his father,—or at least such was, until recently, the

universal opinion of his authorship of the book. As to Ferdinand’s own

relations to that father there is some doubt, or pretence of doubt,

particularly on the part of those who have found the general belief

in, and pretty conclusive evidence concerning, the illegitimacy of

Ferdinand an obstacle in establishing the highly moral character which

a saint, like Columbus, should have.[239]

Ferdinand Columbus, or Fernando Colon, was born three or four years

before his father sailed on his first voyage.[240] His father’s favor

at Court opened the way, and in attendance upon Prince Juan and Queen

Isabella he gained a good education. When Columbus went on his fourth

voyage, in 1502, the boy, then thirteen years of age, accompanied his

father. It is said that he made two other voyages to the New World;

but Harrisse could only find proof of one. His later years were passed

as a courtier, in attendance upon Charles V. on his travels, and in

literary pursuits, by which he acquired a name for learning. He had

the papers of his father,[241] and he is best known by the Life of

Columbus which passes under his name. If it was written in Spanish, it

is not known in its original form, and has not been traced since Luis

Colon, the Duque de Veraguas, son of Diego, took the manuscript to

Genoa about 1568. There is some uncertainty about its later history;

but it appeared in 1571 at Venice in an Italian version made by Alfonzo

de Ulloa, and was entitled _Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; nelle

quali s’ ha particolare & vera relatione della vita, & de’ fatti

dell’Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre_. It is thought that

this translation was made from an inaccurate copy of the manuscript,

and moreover badly made. It begins the story of the Admiral’s life with

his fifty-sixth year, or thereabout; and it has been surmised that an

account of his earlier years—if, indeed, the original draft contained

it—was omitted, so as not to obscure, by poverty and humble station,

the beginnings of a luminous career.[242] Ferdinand died at Seville,

July 12, 1539,[243] and bequeathed, conditionally, his library to the

Cathedral. The collection then contained about twenty thousand volumes,

in print and manuscript; and it is still preserved there, though,

according to Harrisse, much neglected since 1709, and reduced to about

four thousand volumes. It is known as the Biblioteca Colombina.[244]

Spotorno says that this Luis Colon, a person of debauched character,

brought this manuscript in the Spanish language to Genoa, and left it

in the hands of Baliano de Fornari, from whom it passed to another

patrician, Giovanni Baptista Marini, who procured Ulloa to make the

Italian version in which it was first published.[245]

Somewhat of a controversial interest has been created of late years by

the critiques of Henry Harrisse on Ferdinand Columbus and his Life of

his father, questioning the usually accepted statements in Spotorno’s

introduction of the _Codice_ of 1823. Harrisse undertakes to show

that the manuscript was never in Don Luis’ hands, and that Ferdinand

could not have written it. He counts it as strange that if such a

manuscript existed in Spain not a single writer in print previous to

1571 refers to it. “About ten years ago,” says Henry Stevens,[246] “a

society of Andalusian bibliographers was formed at Seville. Their first

publication was a fierce Hispano-French attack on the authenticity of

the Life of Columbus by his second son, Ferdinand, written by Henri

Harrisse in French, and translated by one of the Seville bibliófilos,

and adopted and published by the Society. The book [by Columbus’ son]

is boldly pronounced a forgery and a fraud on Ferdinand Columbus.

Some fifteen reasons are given in proof of these charges, all of

which, after abundant research and study, are pronounced frivolous,

false, and groundless.” Such is Mr. Stevens’s view, colored or not by

the antipathy which on more than one occasion has been shown to be

reciprocal in the references of Stevens and Harrisse, one to the other,

in sundry publications.[247] The views of Harrisse were also expressed

in the supplemental volume of his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_,

published as _Additions_ in 1872. In this he says, regarding the

Life of Columbus: “It was not originally written by the son of the

bold navigator; and many of the circumstances it relates have to be

challenged, and weighed with the utmost care and impartiality.”

The authenticity of the book was ably sustained by D’Avezac before the

French Academy in a paper which was printed in 1873 as _Le livre de

Ferdinand Colomb: Revue critique des allégations proposées contre son

authenticité_. Harrisse replied in 1875 in a pamphlet of fifty-eight

pages, entitled _L’histoire de C. Colomb attribuée à son fils Fernand:

Examen critique du mémoire lu par M. d’Avezac à l’Académie_, 8, 13, _22

Août, 1873_. There were other disputants on the question.[248]

The catalogue of the Colombina Library as made by Ferdinand shows

that it contained originally a manuscript Life of the Admiral written

about 1525 by Ferdinand Perez de Oliva, who presumably had the aid of

Ferdinand Columbus himself; but no trace of this Life now exists,[249]

unless, as Harrisse ventures to conjecture, it may have been in some

sort the basis of what now passes for the work of Ferdinand.

* * * * *

For a long time after the _Historie_ of 1571 there was no considerable

account of Columbus printed. Editions of Ptolemy, Peter Martyr, Oviedo,

Grynæus, and other general books, made reference to his discoveries;

but the next earliest distinct sketch appears to be that in the _Elogia

virorum illustrium_ of Jovius, printed in 1551 at Florence, and the

Italian version made by Domenichi, printed in 1554.[250] Ramusio’s

third volume, in 1556, gave the story greater currency than before; but

such a book as Cunningham’s _Cosmographical Glasse_, in its chapter

on America, utterly ignores Columbus in 1559.[251] We get what may

probably be called the hearsay reports of Columbus’ exploits in the

_Mondo nuovo_ of Benzoni, first printed at Venice in 1565. There was

a brief memorial in the _Clarorum Ligurum elogia_ of Ubertus Folieta,

published at Rome in 1573.[252] In 1581 his voyages were commemorated

in an historical poem, _Laurentii Gambaræ Brixiani de navigatione

Christophori Columbi_, published at Rome.[253] Boissard, of the De Bry

coterie at Frankfort in 1597, included Columbus in his _Icones virorum

illustrium_;[254] and Buonfiglio Costanzo, in 1604, commemorated him in

the _Historia Siciliana_, published at Venice.[255]

Meanwhile the story of Columbus’ voyages was told at last with all the

authority of official sanction in the _Historia general_ of Herrera.

This historian, or rather annalist, was born in 1549, and died in

1625;[256] and the appointment of historiographer given him by Philip

II. was continued by the third and fourth monarchs of that name. There

has been little disagreement as to his helpfulness to his successors.

All critics place him easily first among the earlier writers; and

Muñoz, Robertson, Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, and many others have

united in praise of his research, candor, and justness, while they

found his literary skill compromised in a measure by his chronological

method. Irving found that Herrera depended so much on Las Casas that it

was best in many cases to go to that earlier writer in preference;[257]

and Muñoz thinks only Herrera’s judicial quality preserved for him

a distinct character throughout the agglutinizing process by which

he constructed his book. His latest critic, Hubert H. Bancroft,[258]

calls his style “bald and accurately prolix, his method slavishly

chronological,” with evidence everywhere in his book of “inexperience

and incompetent assistance,” resulting in “notes badly extracted,

discrepancies, and inconsistencies.” The bibliography of Herrera is

well done in Sabin.[259]

Herrera had already published (1591) a monograph on the history of

Portugal and the conquest (1582-1583) of the Azores, when he produced

at Madrid his great work, _Historia general de los hechos de los

Castellanos_, in eight decades, four of which, in two volumes, were

published in 1601, and the others in 1615.[260] It has fourteen maps;

and there should be bound with it, though often found separate, a ninth

part, called _Description de las Indias occidentales_.[261] Of the

composite work, embracing the nine parts, the best edition is usually

held to be one edited by Gonzales Barcia, and supplied by him with an

index, which was printed in Madrid during 1727, 1728, 1729, and 1730,

so that copies are found with all those dates, though it is commonly

cited as of 1730.[262]

* * * * *

The principal chronicles of Spanish affairs in the seventeenth century

contributed more or less to Columbus’ fame;[263] and he is commemorated

in the Dutch compilation of Van den Bos, _Leven en Daden der

Zeehelden_, published at Amsterdam in 1676, and in a German translation

in 1681.[264]

There were a hundred years yet to pass before Robertson’s _History

of America_ gave Columbus a prominence in the work of a historian of

established fame; but this Scotch historian was forced to write without

any knowledge of Columbus’ own narratives.

In 1781 the earliest of the special Italian commemorations appeared

at Parma, in J. Durazzo’s _Elogi storici_ on Columbus and Doria.[265]

Chevalier de Langeac in 1782 added to his poem, _Colomb dans les fers à

Ferdinand et Isabelle_, a memoir of Columbus.[266]

[Illustration]

The earliest commemoration in the United States was in 1792, on the

three hundredth anniversary of the discovery, celebrated by the

Massachusetts Historical Society, when Dr. Jeremy Belknap delivered

an historical discourse,[267] included later with large additions

in his well-known _American Biography_. The unfinished history of

Muñoz harbingered, in 1793, the revival in Europe of the study of his

career. Finally, the series of modern Lives of Columbus began in 1818

with the publication at Milan of Luigi Bossi’s _Vita di Cristoforo

Colombo, scritta e corredata di nuove osservazioni_.[268] In 1823 the

introduction by Spotorno to the _Codice_, and in 1825 the _Coleccion_

of Navarrete, brought much new material to light; and the first to

make use of it were Irving, in his _Life of Columbus_, 1828,[269] and

Humboldt, in his _Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du

nouveau continent_, published originally, in 1834, in a single volume;

and again in five volumes, between 1836 and 1839.[270] “No one,” says

Ticknor,[271] “has comprehended the character of Columbus as Humboldt

has,—its generosity, its enthusiasm, its far-reaching visions, which

seemed watchful beforehand for the great scientific discovery of the

sixteenth century.” Prescott was warned by the popularity of Irving’s

narrative not to attempt to rival him; and his treatment of Columbus’

career was confined to such a survey as would merely complete the

picture of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.[272]

In 1844 there came the first intimation of a new style of biography,—a

protest against Columbus’ story being longer told by his natural

enemies, as all who failed to recognize his pre-eminently saintly

character were considered to be. There was a purpose in it to make the

most possible of all his pious ejaculations, and of his intention,

expressed in his letter to the Pope in 1502, to rescue the Holy City

from the infidel, with his prospective army of ten thousand horse

and a hundred thousand foot. The chief spokesman of this purpose has

been Roselly de Lorgues. He first shadowed forth his purpose in his

_La croix dans les deux mondes_ in 1844. It was not till 1864 that

he produced the full flower of his spirit in his _Christophe Colomb,

Histoire de sa vie et de ses voyages d’après des documents authentiques

tirés d’Espagne et d’Italie_.[273] This was followed, in 1874, by his

_L’ambassadeur de Dieu et le Pape Pie IX._ All this, however, and much

else by the abetters of the scheme of the canonization of Columbus

which was urged on the Church, failed of its purpose; and the movement

was suspended, for a while at least, because of an ultimate adverse

determination.[274]

Of the other later lives of Columbus it remains to mention only the

most considerable, or those of significant tendency.

The late Sir Arthur Helps wrote his _Spanish Conquest of America_

with the aim of developing the results—political, ethnological, and

economic—of the conquest, rather than the day-by-day progress of

events, and with a primary regard to the rise of slavery. His _Life

of Columbus_ is simply certain chapters of this larger work excerpted

and fitted in order.[275] Mr. Aaron Goodrich, in _A History of the

so-called Christopher Columbus_, New York, 1874, makes a labored and

somewhat inconsiderate effort, characterized by a certain peevish air,

to prove Columbus the mere borrower of others’ glories.[276]

In French, mention may be made of the Baron de Bonnefoux’s _Vie de

Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1853,[277] and the Marquis de Belloy’s

_Christophe Colomb et la découverte du Nouveau Monde_, Paris, 1864.[278]

In German, under the impulse given by Humboldt, some fruitful labors

have been given to Columbus and the early history of American

discovery; but it is only necessary to mention the names of

Forster,[279] Peschel,[280] and Ruge.[281]

=H.= PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS.—Of Columbus there is no likeness whose

claim to consideration is indisputable. We have descriptions of his

person from two who knew him,—Oviedo and his own son Ferdinand; we have

other accounts from two who certainly knew his contemporaries,—Gomara

and Benzoni; and in addition we possess the description given by

Herrera, who had the best sources of information. From these we learn

that his face was long, neither full nor thin; his cheek-bones rather

high; his nose aquiline; his eyes light gray; his complexion fair, and

high colored. His hair, which was of light color before thirty, became

gray after that age. In the _Paesi novamente retrovati_ of 1507 he is

described as having a ruddy, elongated visage, and as possessing a

lofty and noble stature.[282]

[Illustration: PAULUS JOVIUS.

Fac-simile of cut in Reusner’s _Icones_, Basle, 1589. There is another

cut in _Pauli Jovii elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium_, Basle,

1575 (copy in Harvard College Library).]

These are the test with which to challenge the very numerous so-called

likenesses of Columbus; and it must be confessed not a single one, when

you take into consideration the accessories and costume, warrants us in

believing beyond dispute that we can bring before us the figure of the

discoverer as he lived. Such is the opinion of Feuillet de Conches, who

has produced the best critical essay on the subject yet written.[283]

[Illustration: COLUMBUS (after Giovio).

Fac-simile of the woodcut in Paolo Giovio’s _Elogia virorum bellica

virtute illustrium_ (Basle, 1596), p. 124. There are copies in the

Boston Athenæum and Boston Public Library. It is also copied in

Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 81, from whom Hazard (_Santo Domingo_,

New York, 1873, p. 7) takes it. The 1575 edition is in Harvard

College Library, and the same portrait is on p. 191. This cut is also

re-engraved in Jules Verne’s _La découverte de la terre_, p. 113.]

A vignette on the map of La Cosa, dated 1500, represents Saint

Christopher bearing on his shoulders the infant Christ across a

stream. This has been considered symbolical of the purpose of Columbus

in his discoveries; and upholders of the movement to procure his

canonization, like De Lorgues, have claimed that La Cosa represented

the features of Columbus in the face of Saint Christopher. It has also

been claimed that Herrera must have been of the same opinion, since the

likeness given by that historian can be imagined to be an enlargement

of the head on the map. This theory is hardly accepted, however, by the

critics.[284]

[Illustration: THE YANEZ COLUMBUS (_National Library, Madrid_).

This picture was prominently brought before the Congress of

Américanistes which assembled at Madrid in 1881, and not, it seems,

without exciting suspicion of a contrived piece of flattery for

the Duke of Veraguas, then presiding over this same congress. Cf.

Cortambert, _Nouvelle histoire des voyages_, p. 40.]

Discarding the La Cosa vignette, the earliest claimant now known is

an engraving published in the _Elogia virorum illustrium_ (1575)[285]

of Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius, in the Latin form). This woodcut is

thought to have been copied from a picture which Jovius had placed in

the gallery of notable people which he had formed in his villa at Lake

Como. That collection is now scattered, and the Columbus picture cannot

be traced; but that there was a portrait of the discoverer there, we

know from the edition of Vasari’s _Lives of the Painters_ printed by

Giunti at Florence (1568), wherein is a list of the pictures, which

includes likenesses of Vespucius, Cortes, and Magellan, besides that

of “Colombo Genovese.” This indicates a single picture; but it is

held by some that Jovius must have possessed two pictures, since this

woodcut gives Columbus the garb of a Franciscan, while the painting in

the gallery at Florence, supposed also to follow a picture belonging

to Jovius, gives him a mantle. A claim has been made that the original

Jovius portrait is still in existence in what is known as the Yanez

picture, now in the National Library in Madrid, which was purchased

of Yanez in Granada in 1763. It had originally a close-fitting tunic

and mantle, which was later painted over so as to show a robe and fur

collar. This external painting has been removed; and the likeness bears

a certain resemblance to the woodcut and to the Florence likeness. The

Yanez canvas is certainly the oldest in Spain; and the present Duque de

Veraguas considers it the most authentic of all the portraits.[286] The

annexed cut of it is taken from an engraving in Ruge’s _Geschichte des

Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_ (p. 235). It bears the inscription shown

in the cut.[287]

The woodcut (1575) already mentioned passes as the prototype of another

engraving by Aliprando Capriolo, in the _Ritratti di cento capitani

illustri_, published at Rome in 1596.[288]

The most interesting of all pictures bearing a supposed relation to the

scattered collection at Lake Como is in the gallery at Florence, which

is sometimes said to have been painted by Cristofano dell’Altissimo,

and before the year 1568. A copy of it was made for Thomas Jefferson

in 1784, which was at Monticello in 1814; and, having been sent to

Boston to be disposed of, became the property of Israel Thorndike, and

was by him given to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose

gallery it now is; and from a photograph of it the cut (p. 74) has been

engraved.[289] It is perhaps the most commonly accepted likeness in

these later years.[290]

[Illustration: COLUMBUS (_after Capriolo_).

This is a reproduction of the cut in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 85.

It is also copied in Carderera, and in the _Magasin pittoresque_,

troisième année, p. 316.]

After the woodcut of 1575, the next oldest engraved likeness of

Columbus is the one usually called the De Bry portrait. It shows a

head with a three-cornered cap, and possesses a Dutch physiognomy,—its

short, broad face not corresponding with the descriptions which we

find in Oviedo and the others. De Bry says that the original painting

was stolen from a saloon in the Council for the Indies in Spain, and,

being taken to the Netherlands, fell into his hands. He claims that it

was painted from life by order of Ferdinand, the King. De Bry first

used the plate in Part V. of his _Grands Voyages_, both in the Latin

and German editions, published in 1595, where it is marked as engraved

by Jean de Bry. It shows what seem to be two warts on the cheek, which

do not appear in later prints.[291] Feuillet de Conches describes a

painting in the Versailles gallery like the De Bry, which has been

engraved by Mercuri;[292] but it does not appear that it is claimed as

the original from which De Bry worked.[293]

[Illustration: COLUMBUS (_the Jefferson copy of the Florence picture_).]

Jomard, in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_ (3d series), iii.

370, printed his “Monument à Christophe Colomb: son portrait,”[294] in

explanation and advocacy of a Titianesque canvas which he had found at

Vicenza, inscribed “Christophorus Columbus.”

[Illustration: THE DE BRY PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS.]

He claimed that the features corresponded to the written descriptions

of Columbus by his contemporaries and accounted for the Flemish ruff,

pointed beard, gold chain, and other anachronous accessories, by

supposing that these had been added by a later hand. These adornments,

however, prevented Jomard’s views gaining any countenance, though he

seems to have been confident in his opinion. Irving at the time records

his scepticism when Jomard sent him a lithograph of it. Carderera and

Feuillet de Conches both reject it.

[Illustration: JOMARD’S PICTURE OF COLUMBUS.

This is a reproduction of the cut in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 87.]

A similar out-of-date ruff and mustache characterize the likeness at

Madrid associated with the Duke of Berwick-Alba, in which the finery

of a throne makes part of the picture. The owner had a private plate

engraved from it by Rafael Esteve, a copy of which, given by the

engraver to Obadiah Rich, who seems to have had faith in it, is now in

the Lenox Library.[295]

A picture belonging to the Duke of Veraguas is open to similar

objections,—with its beard and armor and ruff; but Muñoz adopted it for

his official history, the plate being drawn by Mariano Maella.[296]

A picture of a bedizened cavalier, ascribed to Parmigiano (who was

three years old when Columbus died), is preserved in the Museo

Borbonico at Naples, and is, unfortunately, associated in this country

with Columbus, from having been adopted by Prescott for his _Ferdinand

and Isabella_,[297] and from having been copied for the American

Antiquarian Society.[298] It was long since rejected by all competent

critics.

A picture in the Senate chamber (or lately there) at Albany was given

to the State of New York in 1784 by Mrs. Maria Farmer, a granddaughter

of Governor Jacob Leisler, and was said to have been for many years

in that lady’s family.[299] There are many other scattered alleged

likenesses of Columbus, which from the data at hand it has not been

easy to link with any of those already mentioned.[300]

[Illustration: COLUMBUS.—THE HAVANA MEDALLION.

Reproduced from a cut in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 188.]

The best known, probably, of the sculptured effigies of Columbus is the

bust of Peschiera, which was placed in 1821 at Genoa on the receptacle

of the Columbus manuscripts.[301] The artist discarded all painted

portraits of Columbus, and followed the descriptions of those who had

known the discoverer.[302]

[Illustration: COLUMBUS.

This is copied from one given in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der

Entdeckungen_, p. 234, which follows a photograph of the painting in

the Ministry of Marine at Madrid.]

The most imposing of all the memorials is the monument at Genoa erected

in 1862 after a design by Freccia, and finished by Michel Canzio.[303]

=I.= BURIAL AND REMAINS OF COLUMBUS.—There is no mention of the death

of Columbus in the Records of Valladolid. Peter Martyr, then writing

his letters from that place, makes no reference to such an event. It

is said that the earliest contemporary notice of his death is in an

official document, twenty-seven days later, where it is affirmed that

“the said Admiral is dead.”[304] The story which Irving has written of

the successive burials of Columbus needs to be rewritten; and positive

evidence is wanting to show that his remains were placed first, as

is alleged, in a vault of the Franciscans at Valladolid. The further

story, as told by Irving, of Ferdinand’s ordering the removal of his

remains to Seville seven years later, and the erection of a monument,

is not confirmed by any known evidence.[305] From the tenor of Diego’s

will in March, 1509, it would seem that the body of Columbus had

already been carried to Seville, and that later, the coffins of his son

Diego and of his brother Bartholomew were laid in Seville beside him,

in the _cuevas_, or vaults of the Carthusians. Meanwhile the Cathedral

in Santo Domingo was begun,—not to be completed till 1540; and in this

island it had been the Admiral’s wish to be buried.

[Illustration: COLUMBUS (_from Montanus_).]

His family were desirous of carrying out that wish; but it seemed to

require three royal orders to make good the project, and overcome

objections or delays. These orders were dated June 2, 1537, Aug.

22, 1539, and Nov. 5, 1540.[306] It has been conjectured from the

language of Ferdinand Columbus’ will, in 1539, that the remains were

still in the _cuevas_; and it is supposed that they were carried

to Santo Domingo in 1541,—though, if so, there is no record of

their resting-place from 1536,—when they are said, in the Convent’s

Records,[307] to have been delivered up for transportation. The

earliest positive mention of their being in the Cathedral at Santo

Domingo is in 1549;[308] and it is not till the next century that

we find a positive statement that the remains of Diego were also

removed.[309] Not till 1655 does any record say that the precise spot

in the Cathedral containing the remains was known, and not till 1676

do we learn what that precise spot was,—“on the right of the altar.”

In 1683 we first learn of “a leaden case in the sanctuary, at the side

of the platform of the high altar, with the remains of his brother Don

Luis on the other side, according to the tradition of the aged in this

island.”[310] The book from which this is extracted[311] was published

in Madrid, and erred in calling Luis a brother instead of grandson,

whose father, Diego, lying beside the Admiral, seems at the time to

have been forgotten.[312]

[Illustration: COFFER AND BONES.

This follows an engraving given in John G. Shea’s “Where are the

Remains of Columbus?” in _Magazine of American History_, January, 1883,

and separately. There are other engravings in Tejera, pp. 28, 29, and

after a photograph in the _Informe de la Real Academia_, p. 197. The

case is 16⅝ x 8½ x 8⅛ inches.]

Just a century later, in 1783, Moreau de Saint-Méry, prefacing his

_Description topographique_ of Santo Domingo,[313] sought more

explicit information, and learned that, shortly before his inquiry,

the floor of the chancel had been raised so as to conceal the top of

the vault, which was “a case of stone” (containing the leaden coffin),

on the “Gospel side of the sanctuary.” This case had been discovered

during the repairs, and, though “without inscription, was known from

uninterrupted and invariable tradition to contain the remains of

Columbus;” and the Dean of the Chapter, in certifying to this effect,

speaks of the “leaden urn as a little damaged, and containing several

human bones;” while he had also, some years earlier, found on “the

Epistle side” of the altar a similar stone case, which, according to

tradition, contained the bones of the Admiral’s brother.[314]

A few years later the treaty of Basle, July 22, 1795, gave to France

the half of Santo Domingo still remaining to Spain; and at the cost

of the Duke of Veraguas, and with the concurrence of the Chapter of

the Cathedral, the Spanish General, Gabriel de Aristazabal, somewhat

hurriedly opened a vault on the left of the altar, and, with due

ceremony and notarial record,[315] took from it fragments of a leaden

case and some human bones, which were unattested by any inscription

found with them. The relics were placed in a gilt leaden case, and

borne with military honors to Havana.[316] It is now claimed that these

remains were of Diego, the son, and that the vault then opened is still

empty in the Cathedral, while the genuine remains of Columbus were left

undisturbed.

In 1877, in making some changes about the chancel, on the right of the

altar, the workmen opened a vault, and found a leaden case containing

human bones, with an inscription showing them to be those of Luis, the

grandson. This led to a search on the opposite, or “Gospel, side” of

the chancel, where they found an empty vault, supposed to be the one

from which the remains were taken to Havana. Between this and the side

wall of the building, and separated from the empty vault by a six-inch

wall, was found another cavity, and in it a leaden case. There seem to

have been suitable precautions taken to avoid occasion for imputations

of deceit, and with witnesses the case was examined.[317] In it were

found some bones and dust, a leaden bullet,[318] two iron screws, which

fitted the holes in a small silver plate found beneath the mould in the

bottom of the case.[319] This casket bore on the outside, on the front,

and two ends—one letter on each surface—the letters C. C. A. On the top

was an inscription here reduced:—

[Illustration]

This inscription is supposed to mean “Discoverer of America, first

Admiral.” Opening the case, which in this situation presented the

appearance shown in the cut on page 80, the under surface of the lid

was found to bear the following legend:—

[Illustration]

This legend is translated, “Illustrious and renowned man, Christopher

Columbus.”[320] A fac-simile of the inscription found on the small

silver plate is given on page 82, the larger of which is understood

to mean “A part of the remains of the first Admiral, Don Christopher

Columbus, discoverer.”[321] The discovery was made known by the

Bishop, Roque Cocchia, in a pastoral letter,[322] and the news spread

rapidly.[323] The Spanish King named Señor Antonio Lopez Prieto, of

Havana, to go to Santo Domingo, and, with the Spanish consul, to

investigate. Prieto had already printed a tract, which went through two

editions, _Los restos de Colon: exámen histórico-critico_, Havana, 1877.

[Illustration]

In March, 1878, he addressed his Official Report to the Captain-general

of Cuba, which was printed in two editions during the same year,

as _Informe sobre los restos de Colon_. It was an attack upon the

authenticity of the remains at Santo Domingo. Later in the same year,

Oct. 14, 1878, Señor Manuel Colmeiro presented, in behalf of the

Royal Academy of History of Madrid, a report to the King, which was

printed at Madrid in 1879 as _Los restos de Colon: informe de la Real

Academia de la Historia_, etc. It reinforced the views of Prieto’s

Report; charged Roque Cocchia with abetting a fraud; pointed to the

A (America) of the outside inscription as a name for the New World

which Spaniards at that time never used;[324] and claimed that the

remains discovered in 1877 were those of Christopher Columbus, the

grandson of the Admiral, and that the inscriptions had been tampered

with, or were at least much later than the date of reinterment in the

Cathedral.[325] Besides Bishop Roque Cocchia, the principal upholder of

the Santo Domingo theory has been Emiliano Tejera, who published his

_Los restos de Colon en Santo Domingo_ in 1878, and his _Los dos restos

de Cristóbal Colon_ in 1879, both in Santo Domingo. Henry Harrisse,

under the auspices of the “Sociedad de Bibliófilos Andaluces,” printed

his _Los restos de Don Cristóval Colon_ at Seville in 1878, and his

_Les sépultures de Christophe Colomb: revue critique du premier rapport

officiel publié sur ce sujet_, the next year (1879) at Paris.[326]

From Italy we have Luigi Tommaso Belgrano’s _Sulla recente scoperta

delle ossa di Colombo_ (Genoa, 1878). One of the best and most

recent summaries of the subject is by John G. Shea in the _Magazine

of American History_, January, 1883; also printed separately, and

translated into Spanish. Richard Cortambert (_Nouvelle histoire des

voyages_, p. 39) considers the Santo Domingo theory overcome by the

evidence.

=J.= DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH OF COLUMBUS, AND ACCOUNTS OF HIS

FAMILY.—The year and place of Columbus’ birth, and the station into

which he was born, are questions of dispute. Harrisse[327] epitomizes

the authorities upon the year of his nativity. Oscar Peschel reviews

the opposing arguments in a paper printed in _Ausland_ in 1866.[328]

The whole subject was examined at greater length and with great care

by D’Avezac before the Geographical Society of Paris in 1872.[329]

The question is one of deductions from statements not very definite,

nor wholly in accord. The extremes of the limits in dispute are about

twenty years; but within this interval, assertions like those of

Ramusio[330] (1430) and Charlevoix[331] (1441) may be thrown out as

susceptible of no argument.[332]

In favor of the earliest date—which, with variations arising from

the estimates upon fractions of years, may be placed either in 1435,

1436, or 1437—are Navarrete, Humboldt, Ferdinand Höfer,[333] Émile

Deschanel,[334] Lamartine,[335] Irving, Bonnefoux, Roselly de Lorgues,

l’Abbé Cadoret, Jurien de la Gravière,[336] Napione,[337] Cancellieri,

and Cantù.[338] This view is founded upon the statement of one who

had known Columbus, Andres Bernaldez, in his _Reyes católicos_, that

Columbus was about seventy years old at his death, in 1506.

The other extreme—similarly varied from the fractions between 1455 and

1456—is taken by Oscar Peschel,[339] who deduces it from a letter of

Columbus dated July 7, 1503, in which he says that he was twenty-eight

when he entered the service of Spain in 1484; and Peschel argues that

this is corroborated by adding the fourteen years of his boyhood,

before going to sea, to the twenty-three years of sea-life which

Columbus says he had had previous to his voyage of discovery, and

dating back from 1492, when he made this voyage.

A middle date—placed, according to fractional calculations, variously

from 1445 to 1447—is held by Cladera,[340] Bossi, Muñoz, Casoni,[341]

Salinerio,[342] Robertson, Spotorno, Major, Sanguinetti, and Canale.

The argument for this view, as presented by Major, is this: It was in

1484, and not in 1492, that this continuous sea-service, referred to by

Columbus, ended; accordingly, the thirty-seven years already mentioned

should be deducted from 1484, which would point to 1447 as the year of

his birth,—a statement confirmed also, as is thought, by the assertion

which Columbus makes, in 1501, that it was forty years since he began,

at fourteen, his sea-life. Similar reasons avail with D’Avezac, whose

calculations, however, point rather to the year 1446.[343]

* * * * *

A similar uncertainty has been made to appear regarding the place of

Columbus’ birth. Outside of Genoa and dependencies, while discarding

such claims as those of England,[344] Corsica,[345] and Milan,[346]

there are more defensible presentations in behalf of Placentia

(Piacenza), where there was an ancestral estate of the Admiral, whose

rental had been enjoyed by him and by his father;[347] and still more

urgent demands for recognition on the part of Cuccaro in Montferrat,

Piedmont, the lord of whose castle was a Dominico Colombo,—pretty well

proved, however, not to have been the Dominico who was father of the

Admiral. It seems certain that the paternal Dominico did own land in

Cuccaro, near his kinspeople, and lived there as late as 1443.[348]

In consequence of these claims, the Academy of Sciences in Genoa named

a commission, in 1812, to investigate them; and their report,[349]

favoring the traditional belief in Genoa as the true spot of Columbus’

birth, is given in digest in Bossi.[350] The claim of Genoa seems to

be generally accepted to-day, as it was in the Admiral’s time by Peter

Martyr, Las Casas, Bernaldez, Giustiniani, Geraldini, Gallo, Senaraya,

and Foglietto.[351] Columbus himself twice, in his will (1498), says

he was born in Genoa; and in the codicil (1506) he refers to his

“beloved country, the Republic of Genoa.” Ferdinand calls his father

“a Genoese.”[352] Of modern writers Spotorno, in the Introduction to

the _Codice diplomatico Colombo-Americano_ (1823), and earlier, in his

_Della origine e della patria di Colombo_ (1819), has elaborated the

claim, with proofs and arguments which have been accepted by Irving,

Bossi, Sanguinetti, Roselly, De Lorgues, and most other biographers and

writers.

There still remains the possibility of Genoa, as referred to by

Columbus and his contemporaries, signifying the region dependent on

it, rather than the town itself; and with this latitude recognized,

there are fourteen towns, or hamlets as Harrisse names them,[353] which

present their claims.[354]

* * * * *

Ferdinand Columbus resented Giustiniani’s statement that the Admiral

was of humble origin, and sought to connect his father’s descent

with the Colombos of an ancient line and fame; but his disdainful

recognition of such a descent is, after all, not conducive to a belief

in Ferdinand’s own conviction of the connection.

[Illustration: FERDINAND OF SPAIN.

This follows an ancient medallion as engraved in Buckingham Smith’s

_Coleccion_. Cf. also the sign-manual on p. 56.]

There seems little doubt that his father[355] was a wool-weaver or

draper, and owned small landed properties, at one time or another, in

or not far from Genoa;[356] and, as Harrisse infers, it was in one of

the houses on the Bisagno road, as you go from Genoa, that Columbus was

perhaps born.[357]

[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW COLUMBUS.

This is a fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera (Barcia’s edition).

There is a vignette likeness on the title of vol i., edition of 1601.

Navarrete’s Memoir of Bartholomew Columbus is in the _Coleccion de

documentos inéditos_, vol. xvi.]

The pedigree (p. 87) shows the alleged descent of Columbus, as a

table in Spotorno’s _Della origine e della patria di Colombo_,

1819, connects it with other lines, whose heirs at a later day were

aroused to claim the Admiral’s honors; and as the usual accounts of

his immediate descendants record the transmission of his rights. After

Columbus’ death, his son Diego demanded the restitution of the offices

and privileges[358] which had been suspended during the Admiral’s later

years.

[Illustration: GENEALOGICAL TABLE.]

He got no satisfaction but the privilege of contending at law with

the fiscal minister of the Crown, and of giving occasion for all the

latent slander about the Admiral to make itself heard. The tribunal

was the Council of the Indies; the suit was begun in 1508, and lasted

till 1527. The documents connected with the case are in the Archives

of the Indies. The chief defence of the Crown was that the original

convention was against law and public policy, and that Columbus, after

all, did not discover _Terra firma_, and for such discovery alone

honors of this kind should be the reward. Diego won the Council’s vote;

but Ferdinand, the King, hesitated to confirm their decision. Meanwhile

Diego had married a niece of the Duke of Alva, the King’s favorite, and

got in this way a royal grant of something like vice-royal authority

in the Indies, to which he went (1509) with his bride, prepared for

the proper state and display. His uncles, Bartholomew and Diego, as

well as Ferdinand Columbus, accompanied him. The King soon began to

encroach on Diego’s domain, creating new provinces out of it.[359] It

does not belong to this place to trace the vexatious factions which,

through Fonseca’s urging, or otherwise created, Diego was forced to

endure, till he returned to Spain, in 1515, to answer his accusers.

When he asked of the King a share of the profits of the Darien coast,

his royal master endeavored to show that Diego’s father had never been

on that coast. After Ferdinand’s death (Jan. 23, 1516), his successor,

Charles V., acknowledged the injustice of the charges against Diego,

and made some amends by giving him a viceroy’s functions in all

places discovered by his father. He was subjected, however, to the

surveillance of a supervisor to report on his conduct, upon going to

his government in 1520.[360] In three years he was again recalled for

examination, and in 1526 he died. Don Luis, who succeeded to his father

Diego, after some years exchanged, in 1556, his rights of vice-royalty

in the Indies for ten thousand gold doubloons and the title of Duque

de Veraguas (with subordinate titles), and a grandeeship of the first

rank;[361] the latter, however, was not confirmed till 1712.

His nephew Diego succeeded to the rights, silencing those of the

daughter of Don Luis by marrying her. They had no issue; and on his

death, in 1578, various claimants brought suit for the succession

(as shown in the table), which was finally given, in 1608, to the

grandson of Isabella, the granddaughter of Columbus. This suit led to

the accumulation of a large amount of documentary evidence, which was

printed.[362] The vexations did not end here, the Duke of Berwick still

contesting; but a decision in 1790 confirmed the title in the present

line. The revolt of the Spanish colonies threatened to deprive the Duke

of Veraguas of his income; but the Spanish Government made it good by

charging it upon the revenues of Cuba and Porto Rico, the source of the

present Duke’s support.[363]

POSTSCRIPT.

After the foregoing chapter had been completed, there came to hand the

first volume of _Christophe Colomb, son origine, sa vie, ses voyages,

sa famille, et ses descendants, d’après des documents inédits tirés

des Archives de Gênes, de Savone, de Séville, et de Madrid, études

d’histoire critique par Henry Harrisse_, Paris, 1884.

The book is essentially a reversal of many long-established views

regarding the career of Columbus. The new biographer, as has been

shown, is not bound by any respect for the Life of the Admiral which

for three hundred years has been associated with the name of Ferdinand

Columbus. The grounds of his discredit of that book are again asserted;

and he considers the story as given in Las Casas as much more likely

to represent the prototype both of the _Historia general_ of this last

writer and of the _Historie_ of 1571, than the mongrel production which

he imagines this Italian text of Ulloa to be, and which he accounts

utterly unworthy of credit by reason of the sensational perversions

and additions with which it is alloyed by some irresponsible editor.

This revolutionary spirit makes the critic acute, and sustains him in

laborious search; but it is one which seems sometimes to imperil his

judgment. He does not at times hesitate to involve Las Casas himself

in the same condemnation for the use which, if we understand him,

Las Casas may be supposed, equally with the author or editor of the

_Historie_, to have made of their common prototype. That any received

incident in Columbus’ career is only traceable to the _Historie_ is

sufficient, with our critic, to assign it to the category of fiction.

This new Life adds to our knowledge from many sources; and such points

as have been omitted or slightly developed in the preceding chapter,

or are at variance with the accepted views upon which that chapter has

been based, it may be well briefly to mention.

The frontispiece is a blazon of the arms of Columbus, “du cartulaire

original dressé sous ses yeux à Seville en 1502,” following a

manuscript in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at

Paris. The field of the quarter with the castle is red; that of the

lion is silver; that of the anchors is blue; the main and islands are

gold, the water blue. It may be remarked that the disposition of these

islands seems to have no relation to the knowledge then existing of the

Columbian Archipelago. Below is a blue bend on a gold field, with red

above (see the cut, _ante_, p. 15).

In writing in his Introduction of the sources of the history of

Columbus, Harrisse says that we possess sixty-four memoirs, letters,

or extracts written by Columbus, of which twenty-three are preserved

in his own autograph. Of these sixty-four, only the _Libro de las

profecias_ has not been printed entire, if we except a _Memorial

que presentó Cristóbal Colon á los Reyes Catolicos sobre las cosas

necesarias para abastecer las Indias_ which is to be printed for the

first time by Harrisse, in the appendix of his second volume. Las

Casas’ transcript of Columbus’ _Journal_ is now, he tells us, in the

collection of the Duque d’Osuna at Madrid. The copy of Dr. Chanca’s

relation of the second voyage, used by Navarrete, and now in the

Academy of History at Madrid, belonged to a collection formed by

Antonio de Aspa. The personal papers of Columbus, confided by him to

his friend Gaspar Gorricio, were preserved for over a century in an

iron case in the custody of monks of Las Cuevas; but they were, on

the 15th of May, 1609, surrendered to Nuño Gelves, of Portugal, who

had been adjudged the lawful successor of the Admiral. Such as have

escaped destruction now constitute the collection of the present Duque

de Veraguas; and of them Navarrete has printed seventy-eight documents.

Of the papers concerning Columbus at Genoa, Harrisse finds only one

anterior to his famous voyage, and that is a paper of the Father

Dominico Colombo, dated July 21, 1489, of whom such facts as are known

are given, including references to him in 1463 and 1468 in the records

of the Bank of St. George in Genoa. Of the two letters of 1502 which

Columbus addressed to the Bank, only one now exists, as far as Harrisse

could learn, and that is in the Hôtel de Ville. Particularly in regard

to the family of Columbus, he has made effective use of the notarial

and similar records of places where Columbus and his family have lived.

But use of depositions for establishing dates and relationship imposes

great obligation of care in the identification of the persons named;

and this with a family as numerous as the Colombos seem to have been,

and given so much to the repeating of Christian names, is more than

usually difficult. In discussing the evidence of the place and date

of Columbus’ birth (p. 137), as well as tracing his family line (pp.

160 and 166), the conclusion reached by Harrisse fixes the humble

origin of the future discoverer; since he finds Columbus’ kith and

kin of the station of weavers,—an occupation determining their social

standing as well in Genoa as in other places at that time. The table

which is given on a previous page (_ante_, p. 87) shows the lines

of supposable connection, as illustrating the long contest for the

possession of the Admiral’s honors. His father’s father, it would seem,

was a Giovanni Colombo (pp. 167-216), and he the son of a certain Luca

Colombo. Giovanni lived in turn at Terrarossa and Quinto. Domenico,

the Admiral’s father, married Susanna Fontanarossa, and removed to

Genoa between 1448 and 1551, living there afterward, except for the

interval 1471-1484, when he is found at Savona. He died in Genoa not

far from 1498. We are told (p. 29) how little the Archives of Savona

yield respecting the family. Using his new notarial evidence mainly,

the critic fixes the birth of Columbus about 1445 (pp. 223-241); and

enforces a view expressed by him before, that Genoa as the place of

Columbus’ birth must be taken in the broader sense of including the

dependencies of the city, in one of which he thinks Columbus was born

(p. 221) in that humble station which Gallo, in his “De navigatione

Columbi,” now known to us as Printed in Muratori (xxiii. 301), was

the first to assert. Giustiniani, in his Psalter-note, and Senarega,

in his “De rebus Genuensibus” (Muratori, xxiv. 354) seem mainly to

have followed Gallo on this point. There is failure (p. 81) to find

confirmation of some of the details of the family as given by Casoni

in his _Annali della republica di Genova_ (1708, and again 1799). In

relation to the lines of his descendants, there are described (pp.

49-60) nineteen different memorials, bearing date between 1590 and

1792—and there may be others—which grew out of the litigations in which

the descent of the Admiral’s titles was involved.

The usual story, told in the _Historie_, of Columbus’ sojourn at the

University of Pavia is discredited, chiefly on the ground that Columbus

himself says that from a tender age he followed the sea (but Columbus’

statements are often inexact), and from the fact that in cosmography

Genoa had more to teach him than Pavia. Columbus is also kept longer

in Italy than the received opinion has allowed, which has sent him

to Portugal about 1470; while we are now told—if his identity is

unassailable—that he was in Savona as late as 1473 (pp. 253-254).

Documentary Portuguese evidence of Columbus’ connection with Portugal

is scant. The Archivo da Torre do Tombo at Lisbon, which Santarem

searched in vain for any reference to Vespucius, seem to be equally

barren of information respecting Columbus, and they only afford a few

items regarding the family of the Perestrellos (p. 44).

The principal contemporary Portuguese chronicle making any reference

to Columbus is Ruy de Pina’s _Chronica del Rei Dom João II._, which is

contained in the _Colleccão de livros ineditos de historia Portugueza_,

published at Lisbon in 1792 (ii. 177), from which Garcia de Resende

seems to have borrowed what appears in his _Choronica_, published at

Lisbon in 1596; and this latter account is simply paraphrased in the

_Decada primeira do Asia_ (Lisbon, 1752) of João de Barros, who, born

in 1496, was too late to have personal knowledge of earlier time of the

discoveries. Vasconcellos’ _Vida y acciones del Rey D. Juan al segundo_

(Madrid, 1639) adds nothing.

The statement of the _Historie_ again thrown out, doubt at least is

raised respecting the marriage of Columbus with Philippa, daughter of

Bartholomeu Perestrello; and if the critic cannot disprove such union,

he seems to think that as good, if not better, evidence exists for

declaring the wife of Columbus to have been the daughter of Vasco Gil

Moniz, of an old family, while it was Vasco Gill’s sister Isabel who

married the Perestrello in question. The marriage of Columbus took

place, it is claimed there is reason to believe, not in Madeira, as

Gomara and others have maintained, but in Lisbon, and not before 1474.

Further, discarding the _Historie_, there is no evidence that Columbus

ever lived at Porto Santo or Madeira, or that his wife was dead when he

left Portugal for Spain in 1484. If this is established, we lose the

story of the tie which bound him to Portugal being severed by the death

of his companion; and the tale of his poring over the charts of the

dead father of his wife at Porto Santo is relegated to the region of

fable.

We have known that the correspondence of Toscanelli with the monk

Martinez took place in 1474, and the further communication of the

Italian _savant_ with Columbus himself has always been supposed to have

occurred soon after; but reasons are now given for pushing it forward

to 1482.

The evidences of the offers which Columbus made, or caused to be made,

to England, France, and Portugal,—to the latter certainly, and to

the two others probably,—before he betook himself to Spain, are also

reviewed. As to the embassy to Genoa, there is no trace of it in the

Genoese Archives and no earlier mention of it than Ramusio’s; and no

Genoese authority repeats it earlier than Casoni in his _Annali di

Genova_, in 1708. This is now discredited altogether. No earlier writer

than Marin, in his _Storia del commercio de’ Veneziani_ (vol. vii.

published 1800), claims that Columbus gave Venice the opportunity of

embarking its fortunes with his; and the document which Pesaro claimed

to have seen has never been found.

There is difficulty in fixing with precision the time of Columbus’

leaving Portugal, if we reject the statements of the _Historie_, which

places it in the last months of 1484. Other evidence is here presented

that in the summer of that year he was in Lisbon; and no indisputable

evidence exists, in the critic’s judgment, of his being in Spain till

May, 1487, when a largess was granted to him. Columbus’ own words would

imply in one place that he had taken service with the Spanish monarchs

in 1485, or just before that date; and in another place that he had

been in Spain as early as January, 1484, or even before,—a time when

now it is claimed he is to be found in Lisbon.

The pathetic story of the visit to Rábida places that event at a

period shortly after his arriving in Spain; and the _Historie_ tells

also of a second visit at a later day. It is now contended that the

two visits were in reality one, which occurred in 1491. The principal

argument to upset the _Historie_ is the fact that Juan Rodriguez

Cabezudo, in the lawsuit of 1513, testified that it was “about

twenty-two years” since he had lent a mule to the Franciscan who

accompanied Columbus away from Rábida!

With the same incredulity the critic spirits away (p. 358) the junto of

Salamanca. He can find no earlier mention of it than that of Antonio

de Remesal in his _Historia de la Provincia de S. Vincente de Chyapa_,

published in Madrid in 1619; and accordingly asks why Las Casas, from

whom Remesal borrows so much, did not know something of this junto?

He counts for much that Oviedo does not mention it; and the Archives

of the University at Salamanca throw no light. The common story he

believes to have grown out of conferences which probably took place

while the Court was at Salamanca in the winter of 1486-1487, and which

were conducted by Talavera; while a later one was held at Santa Fé late

in 1491, at which Cardinal Mendoza was conspicuous.

Since Alexander Geraldinus, writing in 1522, from his own acquaintance

with Columbus, had made the friar Juan Perez, of Rábida, and Antonio

de Marchena, who was Columbus’ steadfast friend, one and the same

person, it has been the custom of historians to allow that Geraldinus

was right. It is now said he was in error; but the critic confesses

he cannot explain how Gomara, abridging from Oviedo, changes the

name of Juan Perez used by the latter to Perez de Marchena, and this

before Geraldinus was printed. Columbus speaks of a second monk who

had befriended him; and it has been the custom to identify this one

with Diego de Deza, who, at the time when Columbus is supposed to have

stood in need of his support, had already become a bishop, and was not

likely, the critic thinks, to have been called a monk by Columbus. The

two friendly monks in this view were the two distinct persons Juan

Perez and Antonio de Marchena (p. 372).

The interposition of Cardinal Mendoza, by which Columbus secured the

royal ear, has usually been placed in 1486. Oviedo seems to have been

the source of subsequent writers on the point; but Oviedo does not fix

the date, and the critic now undertakes to show (p. 380) that it was

rather in the closing months of 1491.

Las Casas charges Talavera with opposing the projects of Columbus:

we have here (p. 383) the contrary assertion; and the testimony of

Peter Martyr seems to sustain this view. So again the new biographer

measurably defends, on other contemporary evidence, Fonseca (p. 386)

as not deserving the castigations of modern writers; and all this

objurgation is considered to have been conveniently derived from the

luckless _Historie_ of 1571.

The close student of Columbus is not unaware of the unsteady character

of much of the discoverer’s own testimony on various points. His

imagination was his powerful faculty; and it was as wild at times as

it was powerful, and nothing could stand in the way of it. No one has

emphasized the doleful story of his trials and repressions more than

himself, making the whole world, except two monks, bent on producing

his ignominy; and yet his biographer can pick (p. 388) from the

Admiral’s own admissions enough to show that during all this time he

had much encouragement from high quarters. The critic is not slow to

take advantage of this weakness of Columbus’ character, and more than

once makes him the strongest witness against himself.

It is now denied that the money advanced by Santangel was from the

treasury of Aragon. On the contrary, the critic contends that the

venture was from Santangel’s private resources; and he dismisses

peremptorily the evidence of the document which Argensola, in his

_Anales de Aragon_ (Saragossa, 1630), says was preserved in the

archives of the treasury of Aragon. He says a friend who searched at

Barcelona in 1871, among the “Archivo general de la Corona de Aragon,”

could not find it.

Las Casas had first told—guardedly, to be sure—the story of the

Pinzons’ contributing the money which enabled Columbus to assume an

eighth part of the expense of the first voyage; but it is now claimed

that the assistance of that family was confined to exerting its

influence to get Columbus a crew. It is judged that the evidence is

conclusive that the Pinzons did not take pecuniary risk in the voyage

of 1492, because only their advances of this sort for the voyage of

1499 are mentioned in the royal grant respecting their arms. But such

evidence is certainly inconclusive; and without the evidence of Las

Casas it must remain uncertain whence Columbus got the five hundred

thousand maravedis which he contributed to the cost of that momentous

voyage.

The world has long glorified the story in the _Historie_ of 1571 about

the part which the crown jewels, and the like, played in the efforts

of Isabella to assist in the furnishing of Columbus’ vessels. Peter

Martyr, Bernaldez, and others who took frequent occasion to sound the

praises of her majesty, say nothing of it; and, as is now contended,

for the good reason that there was no truth in the story, the jewels

having long before been pledged in the prosecution of the war with the

Moors.

It is inferred (p. 417) from Las Casas that his abridgment of

Columbus’ Journal was made from a copy, and not from the original

(Navarrete, i. 134); and Harrisse says that from two copies of this

abridgment, preserved in the collection of the Duque d’Osuna at

Madrid, Varnhagen printed his text of it which is contained in his

_Verdadera Guanahani_. This last text varies in some places from that

in Navarrete, and Harrisse says he has collated it with the Osuna

copies without discovering any error. He thinks, however, that the

_Historie_ of 1571, as well as Las Casas’ account, is based upon the

complete text; and his discrediting of the _Historie_ does not prevent

him in this case saying that from it, as well as from Las Casas, a few

touches of genuineness, not of importance to be sure, can be added to

the narrative of the abridgment. He also points out that we should

discriminate as to the reflections which Las Casas intersperses; but he

seems to have no apprehension of such insertions in the _Historie_ in

this particular case.

The Ambrosian text of the first letter is once more reprinted (p. 419),

accompanied by a French translation. In some appended notes the critic

collates it with the Cosco version in different shapes, and with that

of Simancas. He also suggests that this text was printed at Barcelona

toward the end of March, 1493, and infers that it may have been in this

form that the Genoese ambassadors took the news to Italy when they left

Spain about the middle of the following month.

The closing chapter of this first volume is on the question of the

landfall. The biographer discredits attempts to settle the question

by nautical reasoning based on the log of Columbus, averring that the

inevitable inaccuracies of such records in Columbus’ time is proved by

the widely different conclusions of such experienced men as Navarrete,

Becher, and Fox. He relies rather on Columbus’ description and on that

in Las Casas. The name which the latter says was borne in his day by

the island of the landfall was “Triango;” but the critic fails to find

this name on any earlier map than that first made known in the _Cartas

de Indias_ in 1877. To this map he finds it impossible to assign an

earlier date than 1541, since it discloses some reminders of the

expedition of Coronado. He instances other maps in which the name in

some form appears attached to an island of the Bahamas,—as in the Cabot

mappemonde of 1544 (Triangula), the so-called Vallard map (Triango),

that of Gutierrez in 1550 (Trriango), that of Alonso de Santa Cruz in

his _Islario_ of 1560 (Triangulo). Unfortunately on some of the maps

Guanahani appears as well as the name which Las Casas gives. Harrisse’s

solution of this conjunction of names is suggested by the fact that in

the Weimar map of 1527 (see sketch, _ante_, p. 43) an islet “Triango”

lies just east of Guanahani, and corresponds in size and position to

the “Triangula” of Cabot and the “Triangulo” of Santa Cruz. Guanahani

he finds to correspond to Acklin Island, the larger of the Crooked

Island group (see map, _ante_, p. 55); while the Plana Cays, shown

east of it, would stand for “Triango.” Columbus, with that confusion

which characterizes his writings, speaks in one place of his first land

being an “isleta,” and in another place he calls it an “isla grande.”

This gives the critic ground for supposing that Columbus saw first the

islet, the “Triango” of Las Casas, or the modern “Plana Cays,” and that

then he disembarked on the “isla grande,” which was Acklin Island. So

it may be that Columbus’ own confused statement has misled subsequent

writers. If this theory is not accepted, Fox, in selecting Samana, has,

in the critic’s opinion, come nearer the truth than any other.

THE EARLIEST MAPS

OF THE

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE enumeration of the cartographical sources respecting the

discoveries of the earlier voyagers began with the list, “Catalogus

auctorum tabularum geographicarum, quotquot ad nostram cognitionem

hactenus pervenere; quibus addidimus, ubi locorum, quando et a quibus

excusi sunt,” which Ortelius in 1570 added to his _Theatrum orbis

terrarum_, many of whose titles belong to works not now known. Of maps

now existing the best-known enumerations are those in the _Jean et

Sébastian Cabot_ of Harrisse; the _Mapoteca Colombiana_ of Uricoechea;

the _Cartografia Mexicana_ of Orozco y Berra, published by the Mexican

Geographical Society; and Gustavo Uzielli’s _Elenco descritto degli

Atlanti, planisferi e carte nautiche_, originally published in 1875,

but made the second volume, edited by Pietro Amat, of the new edition

of the _Studi biografici e bibliografici della Società Geografica

Italiana_, Rome, 1882, under the specific title of _Mappamondi, carte

nautiche, portolani ed altri monumenti cartografici specialmente

Italiani dei secoli XIII-XVII_.[364]

* * * * *

The Editor has printed in the _Harvard University Bulletin_ a

bibliography Of Ptolemy’s geography, and a calendar, with additions and

annotations, of the Kohl collection of early maps, belonging to the

Department of State at Washington, both of which contributions called

for enumerations of printed and manuscript maps of the early period,

and included their reproductions of later years.

The development of cartography is also necessarily made a part of

histories of geography like those of Santarem, Lelewel, St.-Martin,

and Peschel; but their use of maps hardly made chronological lists of

them a necessary part of their works. Santarem has pointed out how

scantily modern writers have treated of the cartography of the Middle

Ages previous to the era of Spanish discovery; and he enumerates such

maps as had been described before the appearance of his work, as well

as publications of the earlier ones after the Spanish discovery.[365]

To what extent Columbus had studied the older maps from the time when

they began to receive a certain definiteness in the fourteenth century,

is not wholly clear, nor how much he knew of the charts of Marino

Sanuto, of Pizignani, and of the now famous Catalan map of that period;

but it is doubtless true that the maps of Bianco (1436) and Mauro

(1460) were well known to him.[366] “Though these early maps and charts

of the fifteenth century,” says Hallam,[367] “are to us but a chaos of

error and confusion, it was on them that the patient eye of Columbus

had rested through long hours of meditation, while strenuous hope and

unsubdued doubt were struggling in his soul.”

[Illustration: EARLY COMPASS.

This follows the engraving in Pigafetta’s _Voyage_ and in the work of

Jurien de la Gravière. The main points were designated by the usual

names of the winds, _Levante_, east; _Sirocco_, southeast, etc.]

A principal factor in the development of map-making, as of navigation,

had been the magnet. It had been brought from China to the eastern

coast of Africa as early as the fourth century, and through the

Arabs[368] and Crusaders it had been introduced into the Mediterranean,

and was used by the Catalans and Basques in the twelfth century, a

hundred years or more before Marco Polo brought to Europe his wonderful

stories.[369] In that century even it had become so familiar a sight

that poets used it in their metaphors. The variation of its needle

was not indeed unknown long before Columbus, but its observation in

mid-ocean in his day gave it a new significance. The Chinese had

studied the phenomenon, and their observations upon it had followed

shortly upon the introduction of the compass itself to Western

knowledge; and as early as 1436 the variation of the needle was

indicated on maps in connection with places of observation.[370]

The earliest placing of a magnetic pole seems due to the voyage of

Nicholas of Lynn, whose narrative was presented to Edward III. of

England. This account is no longer known,[371] though the title of it,

_Inventio fortunata_, is preserved, with its alleged date of 1355.

Cnoyen, whose treatise is not extant, is thought to have got his

views about the regions of the north and about the magnetic pole from

Nicholas of Lynn,[372] while he was in Norway in 1364; and it is from

Cnoyen that Mercator says he got his notion of the four circumpolar

islands which so long figured in maps of the Mercator and Finæus

school. In the Ruysch map (1508) we have the same four polar islands,

with the magnetic pole placed within an insular mountain north of

Greenland. Ruysch also depended on the _Inventio fortunata_. Later,

by Martin Cortes in 1545, and by Sanuto in 1588, the pole was placed

farther south.[373]

Ptolemy, in the second century, accepting the generally received

opinion that the world as known was much longer east and west than

north and south, adopted with this theory the terms which naturally

grew out of this belief, _latitude_ and _longitude_, and first

instituted them, it is thought, in systematic geography.[374]

Pierre d’Ailly, in his map of 1410,[375] in marking his climatic

lines, had indicated the beginnings, under a revival of geographical

inquiry, of a systematic notation of latitude. Several of the early

Ptolemies[376] had followed, by scaling in one way and another

the distance from the equator; while in the editions of 1508 and

1511 an example had been set of marking longitude. The old Arabian

cartographers had used both latitude and longitude; but though there

were some earlier indications of the adoption of such lines among the

European map-makers, it is generally accorded that the scales of such

measurements, as we understand them, came in, for both latitude and

longitude, with the map which Reisch in 1503 annexed to his _Margarita

philosophica_.[377]

Ptolemy had fixed his first meridian at the Fortunate Islands

(Canaries), and in the new era the Spaniards, with the sanction of

the Pope, had adopted the same point; though the Portuguese, as if in

recognition of their own enterprise, had placed it at Madeira,—as is

shown in the globes of Behaim and Schöner, and in the map of Ruysch.

The difference was not great; the Ptolemean example prevailed, however,

in the end.[378]

In respect to latitude there was not in the rude instruments of the

early navigators, and under favorable conditions, the means of closely

approximate accuracy. In the study which the Rev. E. F. Slafter[379]

has made on the average extent of the error which we find in the

records of even a later century, it appears that while a range of

sixty geographical miles will probably cover such errors in all cases,

when observations were made with ordinary care the average deviation

will probably be found to be at least fifteen miles. The fractions

of degrees were scarcely ever of much value in the computation,

and the minute gradation of the instruments in use were subject

to great uncertainty of record in tremulous hands. It was not the

custom, moreover, to make any allowance for the dip of the horizon,

for refraction or for the parallax; and when, except at the time of

the equinox, dependence had to be placed upon tables of the sun’s

declination, the published ephemerides, made for a series of years,

were the subjects of accumulated error.[380]

[Illustration: REGIOMONTANUS’ ASTROLABE.

This cut follows the engravings in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters

der Entdeckungen_, p. 106, and in Ghillany’s _Ritter Behaim_, p. 40.

Cf. Von Murr, _Memorabilia bibliothecarum Norimbergensium_, i. 9.]

With these impediments to accurate results, it is not surprising that

even errors of considerable extent crept into the records of latitude,

and long remained unchallenged.[381] Ptolemy, in A. D. 150, had placed

Constantinople two degrees out of the way; and it remained so on maps

for fourteen hundred years. In Columbus’ time Cuba was put seven

or eight degrees too far north; and under this false impression the

cartography of the Antilles began.

The historic instrument for the taking of latitude was the astrolabe,

which is known to have been in use by the Majorcan and Catalanian

sailors in the latter part of the thirteenth century; and it is

described by Raymond Lullius in his _Arte de navegar_ of that

time.[382] Behaim, the contemporary of Columbus, one of the explorers

of the African coast, and a pupil of Regiomontanus, had somewhat

changed the old form of the astrolabe in adapting it for use on

shipboard. This was in 1484 at Lisbon, and Behaim’s improvement was

doubtless what Columbus used. Of the form in use before Behaim we

have that (said to have belonged to Regiomontanus) in the cut on page

96; and in the following cut the remodelled shape which it took after

Behaim.

[Illustration: LATER ASTROLABE.

This cut follows an engraving (_Mag. of Amer. Hist._, iii. 178) after

a photograph of one used by Champlain, which bears the Paris maker’s

date of 1603. There is another cut of it in Weise’s _Discoveries of

America_, p. 68. Having been lost by Champlain in Canada in 1613, it

was ploughed up in 1867 (see Vol. IV. p. 124; also _Canadian Monthly_,

xviii. 589). The small size of the circle used in the sea-instrument

to make it conveniently serviceable, necessarily operated to make

the ninety degrees of its quarter circle too small for accuracy in

fractions. On land much larger circles were sometimes used; one was

erected in London in 1594 of six feet radius. The early books on

navigation and voyages frequently gave engravings of the astrolabe;

as, for instance, in Pigafetta’s voyage (Magellan), and in the

_Lichte der Zee-Vaert_ (Amsterdam, 1623), translated as _The Light

of Navigation_ (Amsterdam, 1625). The treatise on navigation which

became the most popular with the successors of Columbus was the work

of Pedro de Medina (born about 1493), called the _Arte de navegar_,

published in 1545 (reprinted in 1552 and 1561), of which there were

versions in French (1554, and Lyons, 1569, with maps showing names on

the coast of America for the first time), Italian (1555 with 1554, at

end; _Court Catalogue_, no. 235), German (1576), and English (1591).

(Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 266.) Its principal rival was

that of Martin Cortes, _Breve compendio de la sphera y de la arte de

navegar_, published in 1551. In Columbus’ time there was no book of

the sort, unless that of Raymond Lullius (1294) be considered such;

and not till Enciso’s _Suma de geografia_ was printed, in 1519, had

the new spirit instigated the making of these helpful and explanatory

books. The _Suma de geografia_ is usually considered the first book

printed in Spanish relating to America. Enciso, who had been practising

law in Santo Domingo, was with Ojeda’s expedition to the mainland in

1509, and seems to have derived much from his varied experience; and

he first noticed at a later day the different levels of the tides on

the two sides of the isthmus. The book is rare; Rich in 1832 (no. 4)

held it at £10 10_s._ (Cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, 171; _Bibl.

Amer. Vet._, nos. 97, 153, 272,—there were later editions in 1530

and 1546,—Sabin, vol. vi. no. 22,551, etc.; H. H. Bancroft, _Central

America_, i. 329, 339; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 58, with a fac-simile

of the title: _Cat. Hist. do Brazil, Bibl. Nac. do Rio de Janeiro_, no.

2.) Antonio Pigafetta in 1530 produced his _Trattato di navigazione_;

but Medina and Cortes were the true beginners of the literature of

seamanship. (Cf. Brevoort’s _Verrazano_, p. 116, and the list of such

publications given in the _Davis Voyages_, p. 342, published by the

Hakluyt Society, and the English list noted in Vol. III. p. 206, of the

present _History_.) There is an examination of the state of navigation

in Columbus’ time in Margry’s _Navigations Françaises_, p. 402, and in

M. F. Navarrete’s _Sobre la historia de la náutica y de las ciencias

matemáticas_, Madrid, 1846,—a work now become rare.

The rudder, in place of two paddles, one on each quarter, had come into

use before this time; but the reefing of sails seems not yet to have

been practised. (Cf. _De Gama’s Voyages_, published by the Hakluyt

Society, p. 242.) Columbus’ record of the speed of his ship seems to

have been the result of observation by the unaided eye. The log was not

yet known; the Romans had fixed a wheel to the sides of their galleys,

each revolution of which threw a pebble into a tally-pot. The earliest

description which we have in the new era of any device of the kind is

in connection with Magellan’s voyage; for Pigafetta in his Journal

(January, 1521), mentions the use of a chain at the hinder part of the

ship to measure its speed. (Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 631;

v. 56.) The log as we understand it is described in 1573 in Bourne’s

_Regiment of the Sea_, nothing indicating the use of it being found

in the earlier manuals of Medina, Cortes, and Gemma Frisius. Humfrey

Cole is said to have invented it. Three years later than this earliest

mention, Eden, in 1576, in his translation of Taisnier’s _Navigatione_,

alludes to an artifice “not yet divulgate, which, placed in the pompe

of a shyp, whyther the water hath recourse, and moved by the motion of

the shypp, with wheels and weyghts, doth exactly shewe what space the

shyp hath gone” (_Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. no. 310),—a reminiscence

of the Roman side-wheels, and a reminder of the modern patent-log. Cf.

article on “Navigation” in _Encyclopedia Britannica_, ninth ed. vol.

xvii.]

An instrument which could more readily adapt itself to the swaying

of the observer’s body in a sea-way, soon displaced in good measure

the astrolabe on shipboard. This was the cross-staff, or jackstaff,

which in several modified forms for a long time served mariners as

a convenient help in ascertaining the altitude of the celestial

bodies. Precisely when it was first introduced is not certain; but the

earliest description of it which has been found is that of Werner in

1514. Davis, the Arctic navigator, made an improvement on it; and his

invention was called a backstaff.

While the observations of the early navigators in respect to latitude

were usually accompanied by errors, which were of no considerable

extent, their determinations of longitude, when attempted at all,

were almost always wide of the truth,[383]—so far, indeed, that their

observations helped them but little then to steer their courses,

and are of small assistance now to us in following their tracks. It

happened that while Columbus was at Hispaniola on his second voyage,

in September, 1494, there was an eclipse of the moon.[384] Columbus

observed it; and his calculations placed himself five hours and a half

from Seville,—an error of eighteen degrees, or an hour and a quarter

too much. The error was due doubtless as much to the rudeness of his

instruments as to the errors of the lunar tables then in use.[385]

[Illustration: THE JACKSTAFF.]

The removal of the Line of Demarcation from the supposed meridian

of non-variation of the needle did not prevent the phenomena of

terrestrial magnetism becoming of vast importance in the dispute

between the Crowns of Spain and Portugal. It characterizes the

difference between the imaginative and somewhat fantastic quality

of Columbus’ mind and the cooler, more practical, and better

administrative apprehension of Sebastian Cabot, that while each

observed the phenomenon of the variation of the needle, and each

imagined it a clew to some system of determining longitude, to

Columbus it was associated with wild notions of a too-ample revolution

of the North Star about the true pole.[386] It was not disconnected

in his mind from a fancy which gave the earth the shape of a pear; so

that when he perceived on his voyage a clearing of the atmosphere, he

imagined he was ascending the stem-end of the pear; where he would find

the terrestrial paradise.[387] To Cabot the phenomenon had only its

practical significance; and he seems to have pondered on a solution of

the problem during the rest of his life, if, as Humboldt supposes, the

intimations of his death-bed in respect to some as yet unregistered

way of discovering longitude refer to his observations on the magnetic

declination.[388]

The idea of a constantly increasing declination east and west from a

point of non-variation, which both Columbus and Cabot had discovered,

and which increase could be reduced to a formula, was indeed partly

true; except, as is now well known, the line of non-variation, instead

of being a meridian, and fixed, is a curve of constantly changing

proportions.[389]

[Illustration: THE BACKSTAFF.]

The earliest variation-chart was made in 1530 by Alonzo de Santa

Cruz;[390] and schemes of ascertaining longitude were at once based

on the observations of these curves, as they had before been made

dependent upon the supposed gradation of the change from meridian to

meridian, irrespective of latitude.[391] Fifty years later (1585),

Juan Jayme made a voyage with Gali from the Philippine Islands to

Acapulco to test a “declinatorum” of his own invention.[392] But

this was a hundred years (1698-1702) before Halley’s Expedition was

sent,—the first which any government fitted out to observe the forces

of terrestrial magnetism;[393] and though there had been suspicions of

it much earlier, it was not till 1722 that Graham got unmistakable data

to prove the hourly variation of the needle.[394]

The earliest map which is distinctively associated with the views

which were developing in Columbus’ mind was the one which Toscanelli

sent to him in 1474. It is said to have been preserved in Madrid in

1527;[395] and fifty-three years after Columbus’ death, when Las Casas

was writing his history, it was in his possession.[396] We know that

this Italian geographer had reduced the circumference of the globe to

nearly three quarters of its actual size, having placed China about six

thousand five hundred miles west of Lisbon, and eleven thousand five

hundred miles east. Japan, lying off the China coast, was put somewhere

from one hundred degrees to one hundred and ten degrees west of Lisbon;

and we have record that Martin Pinzon some years later (1491) saw a map

in Rome which put Cipango (Japan) even nearer the European side.[397]

[Illustration: PIRCKEYMERUS.

Fac-simile of a cut in Reusner’s _Icones_, Strasburg, 1590, p. 42.

This well-known cosmographical student was one of the collaborators

of the series of the printed Ptolemies, beginning with that of 1525.

There is a well-known print of Pirckeymerus by Albert Dürer, 1524,

which is reproduced in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, xix. 114. Cf.

Friedrich Campe’s _Zum Andenken Wilibald Pirkheimers, Mitglieds des

Raths zu Nürnberg_ (Nürnberg, 58 pp., with portrait), and _Wilibald

Pirkheimer’s Aufenthalt zu Neunhof, von ihm selbst geschildert; nebst

Beiträgen zu dem Leben und dem Nachlasse seiner Schwestern und Töchter,

von Moritz Maximilian Meyer_ (Nürnberg, 1828).]

A similar view is supposed to have been presented in the map which

Bartholomew Columbus took to England in 1488;[398] but we have no trace

of the chart itself.[399]

[Illustration: TOSCANELLI’S MAP.

This is a restoration of the map as given in _Das Ausland_, 1867, p. 5.

The language of the original was doubtless Latin. Another restoration

is given in St. Martin’s _Atlas_, pl. ix.]

It has always been supposed that in the well-known globe of Martin

Behaim we get in the main an expression of the views held by

Toscanelli, Columbus, and other of Behaim’s contemporaries, who

espoused the notion of India lying over against Europe.

[Illustration: MARTIN BEHAIM.

This cut follows the engravings in Ghillany’s _Behaim_, and in Ruge’s

_Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 105.]

Eratosthenes, accepting the spherical theory, had advanced the

identical notion which nearly seventeen hundred years later impelled

Columbus to his voyage. He held the known world to span one third of

the circuit of the globe, as Strabo did at a later day, leaving an

unknown two thirds of sea; and “if it were not that the vast extent of

the Atlantic Sea rendered it impossible, one might even sail from the

coast of Spain to that of India along the same parallel.”[400]

Behaim had spent much of his life in Lisbon and the Azores, and was

a friend of Columbus. He had visited Nuremberg, probably on some

family matters arising out of the death of his mother in 1487. While

in this his native town, he gratified some of his townspeople by

embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in the

maritime countries; and the globe was finished before Columbus had

yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493) Behaim returned

to Portugal; and after having been sent to the Low Countries on a

diplomatic mission, he was captured by English cruisers and carried to

England. Escaping finally, and reaching the Continent, he passes from

our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of again.

[Illustration: SECTION OF BEHAIM’S GLOBE.

This globe is made of papier-maché, covered with gypsum, and over

this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches

in diameter. It having fallen into decay, the Behaim family in

Nuremberg caused it to be repaired in 1825. In 1847 a copy was made

of it for the Dépôt Géographique (National Library) at Paris; the

original is now in the city hall at Nuremberg. The earliest known

engraving of it is in J. G. Doppelmayr’s _Historische Nachricht von den

nürnbergischen Mathematikern und Künstlern_ (1730), which preserved

some names that have since become illegible (Stevens, _Historical

Collection_, vol. i. no. 1,396). Other representations are given in

Jomard’s _Monuments de la géographie_; Ghillany’s _Martin Behaim_

(1853) and his _Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner_ (1842); C.

G. von Murr’s _Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim_ (1778, and

later editions and translations); Cladera’s _Investigaciones_ (1794);

Amoretti’s translation of Pigafetta’s _Voyage de Magellan_ (Paris,

1801); Lelewel’s _Moyen-âge_ (pl. 40; also see vol. ii. p. 131, and

_Epilogue_, p. 184); Saint-Martin’s _Atlas_; Santarem’s _Atlas_, pl.

61; the _Journal_ of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xviii.;

Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_; Irving’s _Columbus_ (some editions);

Gay’s _Popular History of the United States_, i. 103; Barnes’ _Popular

History of the United States_; _Harpers’ Monthly_, vol. xlii.; H. H.

Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 93. Ruge, in his _Geschichte des

Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230, reproduces the colored fac-simile

in Ghillany, and shows additionally upon it the outline of America in

its proper place. The sketch in the text follows this representation.

Cf. papers on Behaim and his globe (besides those accompanying

the engravings above indicated) in the _Journal_ of the American

Geographical Society (1872), iv. 432, by the Rev. Mytton Maury; in

the publications of the Maryland Historical Society by Robert Dodge

and John G. Morris; in the _Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde_

(Dresden, 1866), p. 59. Peschel, in his _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_

(1858), p. 90, and in the new edition edited by Ruge, has a lower

opinion of Behaim than is usually taken.]

Of Columbus’ maps it is probable that nothing has come down to us

from his own hand.[401] Humboldt would fain believe that the group

of islands studding a gulf which appears on a coat-of-arms granted

Columbus in May, 1493, has some interest as the earliest of all

cartographical records of the New World; but the early drawings of the

arms are by no means constant in the kind of grouping which is given

to these islands.[402] Queen Isabella, writing to the Admiral, Sept.

5, 1493, asks to see the marine chart which he had made; and Columbus

sent such a map with a letter.[403] We have various other references

to copies of this or similar charts of Columbus. Ojeda used such a one

in following Columbus’ route,[404] as he testified in the famous suit

against the heirs of Columbus. Bernardo de Ibarra, in the same cause,

said that he had seen the Admiral’s chart, and that he had heard of

copies of it being used by Ojeda, and by some others.[405] It is known

that about 1498 Columbus gave one of his charts to the Pope, and one

to René of Lorraine. Angelo Trivigiano, secretary of the Venetian

Ambassador to Spain, in a letter dated Aug. 21, 1501, addressed to

Dominico Malipiero, speaks of a map of the new discoveries which

Columbus had.[406]

[Illustration: LA COSA, 1500.]

Three or four maps at least have come down to us which are supposed to

represent in some way one or several of these drafts by Columbus. The

first of these is the celebrated map of the pilot Juan de la Cosa,[407]

dated in 1500, of which some account, with a heliotype fac-simile of

the American part of the map, is given in another place.[408] After the

death (April 27, 1852) of Walckenaer (who had bought it at a moderate

cost of an ignorant dealer in second-hand articles), it was sold at

public auction in Paris in the spring of 1853, when Jomard failed to

secure it for the Imperial Library in Paris, and it went to Spain,

where, in the naval museum at Madrid, it now is.

Of the next earliest of the American maps the story has recently been

told with great fulness by Harrisse in his _Les Cortereal_, accompanied

by a large colored fac-simile of the map itself, executed by Pilinski.

The map was not unknown before,[409] and Harrisse had earlier described

it in his _Cabots_.[410]

We know that Gaspar Cortereal[411] had already before 1500 made some

explorations, during which he had discovered a mainland and some

islands, but at what precise date it is impossible to determine;[412]

nor can we decide upon the course he had taken, but it seems likely

it was a westerly one. We know also that in this same year (1500) he

made his historic voyage to the Newfoundland region,[413] coasting the

neighboring shores, probably, in September and October. Then followed a

second expedition from January to October of the next year (1501),—the

one of which we have the account in the _Paesi novamente retrovati_,

as furnished by Pasqualigo.[414] There was at this time in Lisbon one

Alberto Cantino, a correspondent—with precisely what quality we know

not—of Hercule d’Este, Duke of Ferrara; and to this noble personage

Cantino, on the 19th of October, addressed a letter embodying what

he had seen and learned of the newly returned companions of Gaspar

Cortereal.[415]

The Report of Cantino instigated the Duke to ask his correspondent

to procure for him a map of these explorations. Cantino procured

one to be made; and inscribing it, “Carta da navigar per le Isole

novam^{te} tr.... in le parte de l’India: dono Alberto Cantino Al S.

Duca Hercole,” he took it to Italy, and delivered it by another hand to

the Duke at Ferrara. Here in the family archives it was preserved till

1592, when the reigning Duke retired to Modena, his library following

him. In 1868, in accordance with an agreement between the Italian

Government and the Archduke Francis of Austria, the cartographical

monuments of the ducal collection were transferred to the Biblioteca

Estense, where this precious map now is. The map was accompanied when

it left Cantino’s hands by a note addressed to the Duke and dated at

Rome, Nov. 19, 1502,[416] which fortunately for us fixes very nearly

the period of the construction of the map. A much reduced sketch is

annexed.

[Illustration: THE CANTINO MAP.

This is sketched from Harrisse’s fac-simile, which is of the size of

the original map. The dotted line is the Line of Demarcation,—“Este

he omarco dantre castella y Portuguall,”—which has been calculated by

Harrisse to be at 62° 30´ west of Paris.]

For the northern coast of South America La Cosa and Cantino’s

draughtsmen seem to have had different authorities. La Cosa attaches

forty-five names to that coast: Cantino only twenty-nine; and only

three of them are common to the two.[417] Harrisse argues from the

failure of the La Cosa map to give certain intelligence of the Atlantic

coast of the United States (here represented in the north and south

trend of shore, north of Cuba), that there was existing in October,

1500, at least in Spanish circles, no knowledge of it,[418] but that

explorations must have taken place before the summer of 1502 which

afforded the knowledge embodied in this Cantino map. This coast was

not visited, so far as is positively known, by any Spanish expedition

previous to 1502. Besides the eight Spanish voyages of this period

(not counting the problematical one of Vespucius) of which we have

documentary proof, there were doubtless others of which we have

intimations; but we know nothing of their discoveries, except so far

as those before 1500 may be embodied in La Cosa’s chart.[419] The

researches of Harrisse have failed to discover in Portugal any positive

trace of voyages made from that kingdom in 1501, or thereabout, records

of which have been left in the Cantino map. Humboldt had intimated

that in Lisbon at that time there was a knowledge of the connection

of the Antilles with the northern discoveries of Cortereal by an

intervening coast; but Harrisse doubts if Humboldt’s authority—which

seems to have been a letter of Pasqualigo sent to Venice, dated

Oct. 18, 1501, found in the _Diarii_ of Marino Sanuto, a manuscript

preserved in Vienna—means anything more than a conjectural belief in

such connection. Harrisse’s conclusion is that between the close of

1500 and the summer of 1502, some navigators, of whose names and nation

we are ignorant, but who were probably Spanish, explored the coast of

the present United States from Pensacola to the Hudson. This Atlantic

coast of Cantino terminates at about 59° north latitude, running nearly

north and south from the Cape of Florida to that elevation. Away to the

east in mid-ocean, and placed so far easterly as doubtless to appear

on the Portuguese side of the Line of Demarcation, and covering from

about fifty to fifty-nine degrees of latitude, is a large island which

stands for the discoveries of Cortereal, “Terra del Rey du Portuguall;”

and northeast of this is the point of Greenland apparently, with

Iceland very nearly in its proper place.[420] This Cantino map, now

positively fixed in 1502, establishes the earliest instance of a kind

of delineation of North America which prevailed for some time. Students

of this early cartography have long supposed this geographical idea to

date from about this time, and have traced back the origin of what is

known as “The Admiral’s Map”[421] to data accumulated in the earliest

years of the sixteenth century. Indeed Lelewel,[422] thirty years ago,

made up what he called a Portuguese chart of 1501-1504, by combining

in one draft the maps of the 1513 Ptolemy, with a hint or two from the

Sylvanus map of 1511, acting on the belief that the Portuguese were

the real first pursuers, or at least recorders, of explorations of the

Floridian peninsula and of the coast northerly.[423]

[Illustration: PETER MARTYR, 1511.

The 1511 map, here given in fac-simile after another fac-simile in

the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, has been several times reproduced,—in

Stevens’s _Notes_, pl. 4; J. H. Lefroy’s _Memorials of the Bermudas_,

London, 1877; H. A. Schumacher’s _Petrus Martyr_, New York, 1879; and

erroneously in H. H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 127. Cf. also

Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 66; _Additions_, p. viii and no. 41;

_Notes on Columbus_, p. 9; and his _Les Cortereal_, p. 113. Copies of

the book are in the Carter-Brown, Lenox, Daly, and Barlow libraries.

A copy (no. 1605*) was sold in the Murphy sale. Quaritch has priced a

perfect copy at £100. The map gives the earliest knowledge which we

have of the Bermudas. Cf. the “Descripcion de la isla Bermuda” (1538),

in Buckingham Smith’s _Coleccion_, p. 92.]

[Illustration: PART OF THE ORBIS TYPUS UNIVERSALIS (PTOLEMY, 1513).

The European prolongation of Gronland resembles that of a Portuguese

map of 1490. Another reduced fac-simile is given in Ruge’s _Geschichte

des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_ (1881.) These 1513 maps were

reprinted in the Strasburg, 1520, edition of _Ptolemy_ (copies in the

Carter-Brown Library and in the _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,053), and

were re-engraved on a reduced scale, but with more elaboration and with

a few changes, for the _Ptolemies_ of 1522 and 1525; and they were

again the basis of those in Servetus’ _Ptolemy_ of 1535.]

[Illustration: TABULA TERRE NOVE, OR THE ADMIRAL’S MAP (PTOLEMY, 1513).

Kohl remarks that the names on the South American coast (north part)

are carried no farther than Ojeda went in 1499, and no farther south

than Vespucius went in 1503; while the connection made of the two

Americas was probably conjectural. Other fac-similes of the map

are given in Varnhagen’s _Premier voyage de Vespucci_, in Weise’s

_Discoveries of America_, p. 124; and in Stevens’s _Historical

and Geographical Notes_, pl. 2. Cf. Santarem (Childe’s tr.), 153.

Wieser, in his _Magalhâes-Strasse_ (Innsbruck, 1881), p. 15, mentions

a manuscript note-book of Schöner, the globe-maker, preserved in

the Hof-bibliothek at Vienna, which has a sketch resembling this

1513 map. Harrisse (_Les Cortereal_, pp. 122, 126) has pointed out

the correspondence of its names to the Cantino map, though the

Waldseemüller map has a few names which are not on the Cantino. Again,

Harrisse (_Les Cortereal_, p. 128) argues from the fact that the

relations of Duke René with Portugal were cordial, while they were not

so with Spain, and from the resemblance of René’s map in the Ptolemy of

1513 to that of Cantino, that the missing map upon which Waldseemüller

is said to have worked to produce, with René’s help, the so-called

“Admiral’s map,” was the original likewise of that of Cantino.]

The earliest Spanish map after that of La Cosa which has come down to

us is the one which is commonly known as Peter Martyr’s map. It is a

woodcut measuring 11 × 7½ inches, and is usually thought to have

first appeared in the _Legatio Babylonica_, or Martyr’s first decade,

at Seville, 1511; but Harrisse is inclined to believe that the map

did not originally belong to Martyr’s book, because three copies of

it in the original vellum which he has examined do not have the map.

Quaritch[424] says that copies vary, that the leaf containing the map

is an insertion, and that it is sometimes on different folios. Thus of

two issues, one is called a second, because two leaves seem to have

been reprinted to correct errors, and two new leaves are inserted,

and a new title is printed. It is held by some that the map properly

belongs to this issue. Brevoort[425] thinks that the publication of the

map was distasteful to the Spanish Government (since the King this same

year forbade maps being given to foreigners); and he argues that the

scarcity of the book may indicate that attempts were made to suppress

it.[426]

The maker of the 1513 map as we have it was Waldseemüller, or

Hylacomylus, of St. Dié, in the Vosges Mountains; and Lelewel[427]

gives reasons for believing that the plate had been engraved, and

that copies were on sale as early as 1507. It had been engraved at

the expense of Duke René II. of Lorraine, from information furnished

by him to perfect some anterior chart; but the plate does not seem to

have been used in any book before it appeared in this 1513 edition

of Ptolemy.[428] It bears along the coast this legend: “Hec terra

adjacentibus insulis inventa est per Columbū ianuensem ex mandato Regis

Castelle;” and in the Address to the Reader in the Supplement appears

the following sentence, in which the connection of Columbus with the

map is thought to be indicated: “Charta antē marina quam Hydrographiam

vocant per Admiralem [? _Columbus_] quondam serenissi. Portugalie [?

_Hispaniæ_] regis Ferdinandi ceteros denique lustratores verissimis

pagratiōibus lustrata, ministerio Renati, dum vixit, nunc pie mortui,

Ducis illustris. Lotharingie liberalius prelographationi tradita

est.”[429]

This “Admiral’s map” seems to have been closely followed in the map

which Gregor Reisch annexed to his popular encyclopædia,[430] the

_Margarita philosophica_, in 1515; though there is some difference in

the coast-names, and the river mouths and deltas on the coast west of

Cuba are left out.

[Illustration: PART OF REISCH’S MAP, 1515.

There is another fac-simile in Stevens’s _Historical and Geographical

Notes_, pl. 4. An edition of Reisch appeared at Freiburg in 1503

(Murphy, no. 3,089); but in 1504 there were two editions, with a

mappemonde which had no other reference to America than in the legend:

“Hic non terra sed mare est in quo miræ magnitudinis insulæ sed

Ptolemæo fuerunt incognitæ.” Some copies are dated 1505. (Murphy, no.

3,090.) A copy dated 1508, Basle, “cum additionibus novis” (Quaritch,

no. 12,363; Baer’s _Incunabeln_, 1884, no. 64, at 36 marks; and Murphy,

no. 2,112*) had the same map. The 1515 edition had the map above given.

(Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 82; _Additions_, no. 45, noting a

copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Kohl copies in his Washington

Collection from one in the library at Munich.) The Basle edition of

1517 has a still different woodcut map. (Beckford, _Catalogue_, vol.

iii. no. 1,256; Murphy, no. 2,112**.) Not till 1535 did an edition

have any reference to America in the text. (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no.

208.) The latest edition is that of 1583, Basle, with a mappamonde

showing America. (Leclerc, no. 2,926.) Cf. further in D’Avezac’s

_Waltzemüller_, p. 94; Kunstmann’s _Entdeckung Amerikas_, p. 130;

Stevens’s Notes, p. 52; Kohl, _Die beiden ältesten General-Karten von

America_, p. 33.]

[Illustration: RUYSCH, 1508.[431]]

Stevens and others have contended that this represents Columbus’

Ganges; but Varnhagen makes it stand for the Gulf of Mexico and the

Mississippi,—a supposition more nearly like Reisch’s interpretation,

as will be seen by his distinct separation of the new lands from Asia.

Reisch is, however, uncertain of their western limits, which are cut

off by the scale, as shown in the map; while on the other side of the

same scale Cipango is set down in close proximity to it.

[Illustration: STOBNICZA, 1512.

It is held that this map shows the earliest attempt to represent on a

plane a sphere truncated at the poles. Wieser (_Magalhaês-Strasse_,

p. 11) speaks of a manuscript copy of Stobnicza’s western hemisphere,

made by Glareanus, which is bound with a copy of Waldseemüller’s

_Cosmographiæ introductio_, preserved in the University Library at

Munich. Cf. Vol. III. p. 14, with references there, and Winsor’s

_Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno 1512; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_,

p. 178, and _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, nos. 69 and 95, and _Additions_, no.

47. The only copies of the Stobnicza _Introductio_ in this country lack

the maps. One in the Carter-Brown Library has it in fac-simile, and the

other was sold in the Murphy sale, no. 2,075.]

[Illustration: SCHÖNER.

Fac-simile of a cut in Reusner’s _Icones_ (Strasburg, 1590), p. 127.

Cf. on Schöner’s geographical labors, Doppelmayr’s _Historische

Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematikern und Künstlern_ (1730);

Will und Nopitsch’s _Nürnbergisches Gelehrten-Lexicon_ (1757);

Ghillany’s _Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner_; and Varnhagen’s

_Schöner e Apianus_ (Vienna, 1872).]

It has been supposed that it was a map of this type which Bartholomew

Columbus, when he visited Rome in 1505, gave to a canon of St. John

Lateran, together with one of the printed accounts of his brother’s

voyage; and this canon gave the map to Alessandro Strozzi, “suo amico e

compilatore della raccolta,” as is stated in a marginal note in a copy

of the _Mundus novus_ in the Magliabecchian library.[432]

Columbus is said to have had a vision before his fourth voyage, during

which he saw and depicted on a map a strait between the regions

north and south of the Antillian Sea. De Lorgues, with a convenient

alternative for his saintly hero, says that the mistake was only in

making the strait of water, when it should have been of land!

[Illustration: SCHÖNER, 1515.

According to Wieser (_Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 19) this globe, which

exists in copies at Weimar (of which Wieser gives the above sketch from

Jomard’s fac-simile of the one at Frankfort, but with some particulars

added from that at Weimar) and at Frankfort (which is figured in

Jomard), was made to accompany Schöner’s _Luculentissima quædam terræ

totius descriptio_, printed in 1515. Cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_,

p. 179, and _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, nos. 80, 81; Murphy, no. 2,233. Copies

of Schöner’s _Luculentissima_, etc., are in the Harvard College,

Carter-Brown, and Lenox libraries.

In 1523 Schöner printed another tract, _De nuper sub Castiliæ, ac

Portugaliæ regibus serenissimis repertis insulis ac regionibus_,

descriptive of his globe, which is extremely rare. Wieser reports

copies in the great libraries of Vienna and London only. Varnhagen

reprinted it from the Vienna copy, at St. Petersburg in 1872 (forty

copies only), under the designation, _Réimpression fidèle d’une lettre

de Jean Schöner, à propos de son globe, écrite en 1523_. The Latin

is given in Wieser’s _Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 118. Johann Schoner or

Schöner (for the spelling varies) was born in 1477, and died in 1547.

The testimony of this globe to an early knowledge of the straits

afterward made known by Magellan is examined on a later page. The

notions which long prevailed respecting a large Antarctic continent

are traced in Wieser’s _Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 59, and in Santarem,

_Histoire de la cartographie_, ii. 277.

Cf. on the copy at Frankfort,—Vol. III. p. 215, of the present

_History_; Kohl’s _General-Karten von Amerika_, p. 33, and his

_Discovery of Maine_, p. 159; _Encyclopædia Britannica_, x. 681; Von

Richthofen’s _China_, p. 641; _Journal_ of the Royal Geographical

Society, xviii. 45. On the copy at Weimar, see Humboldt, _Examen

critique_, and his Introduction to Ghillany’s _Ritter Behaim_.]

[Illustration: SCHÖNER, 1520.

This globe, which has been distinctively known as Schöner’s globe,

is preserved at Nuremberg. There are representations of it in

Santarem, Lelewel, Wieser, Ghillany’s _Behaim_, Kohl’s _Geschichte der

Entdeckungsreisen zur Magellan’s-Strasse_ (Berlin, 1877), p. 8; H.

H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 137; and in _Harper’s Magazine_,

February, 1871, and December, 1882, p. 731. The earliest engraving

appeared in the _Jahresbericht der technischen Anstalten in Nürnberg

für 1842_, accompanied by a paper by Dr. Ghillany; and the same writer

reproduced it in his _Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner_ (1842).

The globe is signed: “Perfecit eum Bambergæ 1520, Joh. Schönerus.” Cf.

Von Murr, _Memorabilia bibliothecarum Noribergensium_ (1786), i. 5;

Humboldt, _Examen critique_, ii. 28; Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_

sub anno 1522; and Vol. III. p. 214, of the present _History_.]

We have a suspicion of this strait in another map which has been held

to have had some connection with the drafts of Columbus, and that is

the Ruysch map, which appeared in the Roman Ptolemy of 1508,[433] the

earliest published map, unless the St. Dié map takes precedence, to

show any part of the new discoveries.

[Illustration: THE TROSS GORES, 1514-1519.

Twelve gores of a globe found in a copy of the _Cosmographiæ

introductio_, published at Lugduni, 1514 (?), and engraved in a

catalogue of Tross, the Paris bookseller, in 1881 (nos. xiv. 4,924).

The book is now owned by Mr. C. H. Kalbfleisch, of New York. Harrisse

(_Cabots_, p. 182) says the map was engraved in 1514, and ascribes it

to Louis Boulenger. (Cf. Vol. III. p. 214, of the present _History_.)

There are two copies of this edition of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_

in the British Museum; and D’Avezac (_Waltzemüller_, p. 123) says

the date of it cannot be earlier than 1517. Harrisse says he erred

in dating it 1510 in the _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 63. Cf. Winsor’s

_Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno 1522.]

It seems from its resemblance to the La Cosa chart to have been kept

much nearer the Columbian draft than the geographer of St. Dié, with

his Portuguese helps, was contented to leave it in his map. In La Cosa

the vignette of St. Christopher had concealed the mystery of a westerly

passage;[434] Ruysch assumes it, or at least gives no intimation of

his belief in the inclosure of the Antillian Sea. Harrisse[435] has

pointed out how an entirely different coast-nomenclature in the two

maps points to different originals of the two map-makers. The text

of this 1508 edition upon “Terra Nova” and “Santa Cruz” is by Marcus

Beneventanus. There are reasons to believe that the map may have been

issued separately, as well as in the book; and the copies of the map

in the Barlow Collection and in Harvard College Library are perhaps of

this separate issue.[436]

[Illustration: MÜNSTER, 1532.

The distinctive features both of the La Cosa and the Ruysch drafts, of

the Cantino map and of the Waldseemüller or St. Dié map of 1513, were

preserved, with more or less modifications in many of the early maps.

The Stobnicza map—published in an _Introductio_ to Ptolemy at Cracow in

1512—is in effect the St. Dié map, with a western ocean in place of

the edge of the plate as given in the 1513 Ptolemy, and is more like

the draft of Reisch’s map published three years later.

There are other drawings of this map in Stevens’s _Notes_; in

Nordenskiöld’s _Bröderna Zenos_ (Stockholm, 1883); etc.]

The Schöner globe of 1515, often cited as the Frankfort globe; the

Schöner globe of 1520; the so-called Tross gores of 1514-1519; the

map of Petrus Apianus[437]—or Bienewitz, as he was called in his

vernacular—which appeared in the _Polyhistoria_ of Solinus, edited

by the Italian monk Camers, and also in 1522 in the _De orbis situ_

of Pomponius Mela, published by Vadianus,—all preserve the same

characteristics with the St. Dié map, excepting that they show the

western passage referred to in Columbus’ dream, and so far unite some

of the inferences from the map of Ruysch. There was a curious survival

of this Cantino type, particularly as regards North America for many

years yet to come, as seen in the map which Münster added to the Basle

edition of the _Novus orbis_ in 1532 and 1537, and in the drawing which

Jomard gives[438] as from “une cassette de la Collection Trivulci, dite

Cassettina all’Agemina.” This last drawing is a cordiform mappemonde,

very like another which accompanied Honter’s _Rudimenta cosmographica_

in 1542, and which was repeated in various editions to as late a period

as 1590. Thus it happened that for nearly a century geographical

views which the earliest navigators evolved, continued in popular

books to convey the most inadequate notion of the contour of the new

continent.[439]

[Illustration: SYLVANUS’ MAP, 1511.

The map is given in its original projection in Lelewel, pl. xlv., and

on a greatly reduced scale in Daly’s _Early Cartography_, p. 32. There

are copies of this 1511 Ptolemy in the Lenox, Carter-Brown, Astor,

Brevoort, Barlow, and Kalbfleisch collections. Cf. _Murphy Catalogue_,

no. 2,051, for a copy now in the American Geographical Society’s

Library, and references in Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno

1511.]

In the same year with the publication of the Peter Martyr map of 1511,

an edition of Ptolemy, published at Venice and edited by Bernardus

Sylvanus, contained a mappemonde on a cordiform projection,—which is

said to be the first instance of the use of this method in drafting

maps. What is shown of the new discoveries is brought in a distorted

shape on the extreme western verge of the map; and to make the

contour more intelligible, it is reduced in the sketch annexed to

an ordinary plane projection. It is the earliest engraved map to

give any trace of the Cortereal discoveries[440] and to indicate the

Square, or St. Lawrence, Gulf. It gives a curious Latinized form to

the name of the navigator himself in “Regalis Domus” (Cortereal), and

restores Greenland, or Engronelant, to a peninsular connection with

northwestern Europe as it had appeared in the Ptolemy of 1482.

[Illustration: THE LENOX GLOBE.]

It will be seen that, with the exception of the vague limits of the

“Regalis Domus,” there was no sign of the continental line of North

America in this map of Sylvanus. Much the same views were possessed by

the maker of the undated Lenox globe, which probably is of nearly the

same date, and of which a further account is given elsewhere.[441]

[Illustration: DA VINCI, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE (_original draft

reduced_).]

Another draft of a globe, likewise held to be of about the same date,

shows a similar configuration, except that a squarish island stands in

it for Florida and adjacent parts of the main. This is a manuscript

drawing on two sheets preserved among the Queen’s collections at

Windsor; and since Mr. R. H. Major made it known by a communication,

with accompanying fac-similes, in the _Archæologia_,[442] it has been

held to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci, though this has been recently

questioned.[443]

[Illustration: DA VINCI, SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE (_original draft reduced_).

Another sketch of this hemisphere is given in _Harper’s Monthly_,

December, 1882, p. 733.]

If deprived of the associations of that august name, the map loses much

of its attraction; but it still remains an interesting memorial of

geographical conjecture. It is without date, and can only be fixed in

the chain of cartographical ideas by its internal evidence. This has

led Major to place it between 1512 and 1514, and Wieser to fix it at

1515-1516.[444] A somewhat unsatisfactory map, since it shows nothing

north of “Ysabella” and “Spagnollo,” is that inscribed _Orbis typus

universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem exactissime depicta_,

1522, L. F., which is the work of Laurentius Frisius, and appeared in

the Ptolemy of 1522.[445]

[Illustration: DA VINCI (_newly projected_).

This follows the projection as given by Wieser in his

_Magalhaês-Strasse_, who dates it 1515-1516.]

A new element appears in a map which is one of the charts belonging

to the _Yslegung der Mer-Carthen oder Cartha Marina_, said also to be

the work of Frisius, which was issued in 1525, in exposition of his

theories of sea-charts.[446]

[Illustration: CARTA MARINA OF FRISIUS, 1525.]

[Illustration: COPPO, 1528.

This is drawn from a sketch given by Kohl in his manuscript, “On the

Connection of the New and Old World on the Pacific Side,” preserved in

the American Antiquarian Society’s Library. There is another copy in

his Washington Collection.

The map is explained by the following key: 1. Asia. 2. India.

3. Ganges. 4. Java major. 5. Cimpangi [Japan]. 6. Isola verde

[Greenland?]. 7. Cuba. 8. Iamaiqua. 9. Spagnola. 10. Monde nuova [South

America].]

The map is of interest as the sole instance in which North America

is called a part of Africa, on the supposition that a continental

connection by the south enclosed the “sea toward the sunset.” The

insular Yucatan will be observed in the annexed sketch, and what

seems to be a misshapen Cuba. The land at the east seems intended for

Baccalaos, judging from the latitude and the indication of fir-trees

upon it. This map is one of twelve engraved sheets constituting

the above-named work, which was published by Johannes Grieninger in

1530. Friess, or Frisius, who was a German mathematician, and had,

as we have seen, taken part in the 1522 Ptolemy, says that he drew

his information in these maps from original sources; but he does not

name these sources, and Dr. Kohl thinks the maps indicate the work of

Waldseemüller.

Among the last of the school of geographers who supposed North America

to be an archipelago, was Pierro Coppo, who published at Venice in 1528

what has become a very rare _Portolano delli lochi maritimi ed isole

der mar_.[447]