Villroel, Gonzalo de, 273.
Vincent, _Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients_, 41.
Vincenzius of Beauvais, 28;
his _Speculum_, 28.
Vinci, Da, acquaintance with Columbus, 31;
his alleged map, 124-126.
_See_ Da Vinci.
Viranque, 251.
Viraratu, 582.
Virchow and Holtzendorff, _Verträge_, 69.
Virgil on western lands, 25.
_Virginia richly valued_, 289.
Viscaino, Seb., 504;
his voyage, 460;
his map of the Pacific coast, 461.
Visscher, his map of Pacific coast, 466.
Vitet, _Anc. villes de France_, 39;
_Hist. de Dieppe_, 34.
Vivien de Saint-Martin, _Hist. de la géog._, 472.
Viscaino, Juan. _See_ Cosa.
“Vizcaino”, ship, 20.
Volafan (_see_ Varnhagen), 47.
Von Murr, C. G., _Ritter Behaim_, 105;
_Memorabilia_, 96.
Vopellio, Gaspar, his map, 438, 448;
fac-simile of his map, 436.
Vorsterman, W., 158.
Voss, _Nachricht von dem neuen Welt_, 162.
_Voyages au nord_, 294.
_Voyagie ofte Schipvaert_, 460.
WAGENSEIL, J. C., _Sacra parentalia_, 35;
_Historia_, 35.
Wagner, _Colombo und seine Entdeckungen_, iv.
Walckenaer, dies, 107.
Waldseemüller, Martin (Waltzemüller, Hylacomylus, Ilacomylus), 113,
147, 220;
his _Cosmographiæ introductio_, 145, 148;
at Saint-Dié, 164;
edits Ptolemy, 264;
bibliography of his _Cosmographiæ introductio_, 164, etc.;
his maps, 125.
Wallace, _Amazon and Rio Negro_, 585.
Waltzemüller. _See_ Waldseemüller.
Warburton, _Conquest of Canada_, 298.
Warden, _Chron. hist. de l’Amérique_, 296.
_Warwickshire Historical Collections_, 466.
Washburn, J. D., reviews Wilson’s _New History_, 427.
Washita River, 251.
Water-clocks, 101.
Wateree River, 240;
(Guatari), 285.
Watling’s Island, 54.
Watson, Paul Barron, _Bibliography of Pre-Columbian Discoveries_, 34.
Watson, R. G., _Spanish and Portuguese South America_, 578.
Watt, Joachim. _See_ Vadianus.
Weimar globe, 118.
Weinhold, Moritz, “Federmann’s Reise”, 580.
Weise, A. J., _Discoveries of America_, 94.
Weissenburger, 182.
Weller, _Repertorium_, 159.
Wells, Edward, _New Sett of Maps_, 467.
_Welt-Kugel, Der_, 171.
Werner, John, of Nuremberg, 101.
West Indies, when named, 169.
Wheat introduced into Peru, 518, 547.
Wheeler, George M., 504;
_Report of Survey_, 443.
Whiddon, Jacob, explores the Orinoco, 586.
Whipple, A. W., _Pacific R. R. Reports_, 502.
White Sea (South America), 589.
Whitney, J. D., 446; on California, 443.
Wiesener, _Vespuce et Colomb_, 178.
Wieser, Franz, _Magalhâes-Strasse_, 617;
_Der Portulan des Königs Philipp_, ii, 178, 222.
Will und Nopitsch, _Lexicon_, 117.
Williams, Helen Maria, 206.
Williams’s _Florida_, 296.
Wilmer, L. A., _Life of De Soto_, 296, 427.
Wilson, R. A., _New History of the Conquest of Mexico_, 427;
_Mexico and its Religion_, 427;
_Mexico, its Peasants and its Priests_, 427;
_Mexico, Central America, and California_, 427;
criticised by George Ticknor, 427;
by Kirk, 427;
by J. D. Washburn, 427.
Winds, names of, 94.
Winnepeg, Lake, 469.
Winsor, Justin, “Columbus”, 1;
“Cortés and his Companions”, 349;
“Discoveries on the Pacific Coast of North America”, 431;
“Documentary Sources of Early Spanish-American History”, i;
on editions of Cieza de Leon, 573;
Garcillasso de la Vega, 575;
_Kohl’s Collection of Early Maps_, 94;
on Las Casas, 343;
“Sources of information” about Magellan’s voyages, 613;
“Vespucius and the naming of America”, 153;
_Bibliography of Ptolemy’s Geography_, 28, 438;
“Early Cartography of the Gulf of Mexico”, 217;
“The Amazon and Eldorado”, 579.
Wolfenbüttel map, 222.
Wood, W. M., 66.
Wright, Edw., _Certain Errors of Navigation_, 466, 470.
Wuttke, Heinrich, _Gesch. der Erdkunde_, 40, 224.
Wyse, Lieutenant, 352.
Wytfliet, Cornelius, 472;
_Descriptionis Ptolemaïcæ augmentum_, 457;
map of California, 458;
map of America, 459;
his map of Peru, 558;
of Chili, 559;
_Rerum Danicarum historia_, 34.
XABA, 492.
Xahila, E. A., _Tecpan Atitlan_, 419.
Xalisco, 228.
Xaquixaguana, war of, 574.
Xauxa, 520, 558;
(river), 519.
Xeres, Francisco de, with Pizarro, 564;
_Verdadera relacion_, 564;
title of Venice (1535), edition, 565;
a version by Jacques Gohory, 345;
_L’histoire_, 345.
Ximenes, Cardinal, 307, 311;
opposes African slavery, 312.
Ximenes, _Origen de los Indios_, 415.
Ximenes, pilot, killed, 442.
Xivrey, B. de, _Des premières relations_, 68.
Xlicia, Mark de, 320.
Xoloc, 369, 376.
Xualla, 247.
Xuarez, Father Juan, 242, 244;
likeness of, 287.
YAGUNA, 233.
Yanez, picture of Columbus, 72.
Yazoo River, 250.
Yça, 519, 543.
Yemassee, 295.
Yéméniz, Nic., his sale, 166.
Yncas, Empire of. _See_ Peru.
Yncas, likenesses of, 515.
Young, Alex., on Ternaux, vi.
Yucatan, 109, 177;
its name, 220;
(Iucatan), 220, 221, 223;
(Lucatan), 225;
(Luchatan), 219;
(Iuchita), 219;
coasted, 203;
Cordoba at, 214, 217;
discovered by Pinzon, 209;
authorities on, 429; maps of, 220, 231, 353, 384, 404;
as an island, 128, 220;
_Trois lettres sur la découverte_, 402.
Yucay, 524, 547.
Yupaha, 246.
Yuque-Yunque, 495.
ZABALLOS, 280.
Zacalula built, 380.
Zacatula, 439, 441.
Zach, _Correspondance_, v, 84, 221.
Zalango, 509.
Zaltieri, map, (1566), 449;
fac-simile, 451.
Zamacois, N. de, _Hist. de Méjico_, 428.
Zamal, 612.
Zamudio, 193, 194.
Zapata y Mendoza, J. V., _Cronica_, 481.
Zaragoza, Justo, 419.
Zarate, Aug. de, 537;
career, 567;
his _Historia_, 568;
translations, 568;
_Conquista de México_, 430;
_De Wonderlijcke ende Warachtighe Historie_, 512.
_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, 404.
_Zeitschrift für wissensch. Geog._, 55.
Zeni explorations and Columbus, 33;
their map, 28, 437, 472.
Zeri, Augusto, _Tre lettere di Colombo_, etc., ix.
Zhaual, 576.
Ziegler, Alex., _Regiomontanus_, 96.
Ziegler, his _Schondia_, 433;
map, 434.
Ziletti, 574.
Zoa-na-me-la, on Reisch’s map, 114.
Zorgi, Alessandro, 117.
Zuazo, 385.
_See_ Cuaço.
Zuazo, Diego M. de, 213.
Zucatepec, 383.
Zumarraga, Bishop, 400.
Zuñi, 501, 502;
pueblos of, 483.
Zúñiga, _Anales ecles._, 65, 68.
Zuñiga y Velasco, Diego Lopes de (Conde de Nieva), Viceroy of Peru,
547.
Zurla, _Fra Mauro_, 31;
_Di Marco Polo_, 30.
Zurita, 256;
on New Spain, 417.
Zurotus, 180.
Zutugils, 383.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See further on Herrera _post_, p. 67.
[2] J. C. Brevoort, on “Spanish-American documents, printed or
inedited,” in _Magazine of American History_, March, 1879; Prescott,
_Mexico_, ii. 91.
[3] “Of all the narratives and reports furnished to Herrera for his
History, and of which he made such scanty and unintelligent use, very
few have been preserved.”—Markham, _Rites and Laws of the Yncas_, p.
vii.
[4] An overcrowding of archives in the keeping of the Council of the
Indies was sometimes relieved by sending part of them to Simancas.
Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 281. Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, i.
33, says all, or nearly all, the papers relating to Columbus have been
removed to Seville.
[5] Some of the documents at Simancas and in other repositories,
beginning with 1485, have been edited in the Rolls Series (published
for the English Government) by G. A. Bergenroth and by Gayangos
(London, 1862-1879), in the _Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State
Papers relating to Negotiations between England and Spain_, contained
in five volumes. Vol. i. comes through 1509; and the first paper in
it is a complaint of Ferdinand and Isabella against Columbus for his
participancy in the piratical service of the French in 1485. Various
documents from the archives of Simancas are given in Alaman’s _La
República Megicana_, three volumes, 1844-1849. We get glimpses in the
_Historia_ of Las Casas of a large number of the letters of Columbus,
to which he must have had access, but which are now lost. Harrisse
thinks it was at Simancas, that Las Casas must have found them; for
when engaged on that work he was living within two leagues of that
repository. It seems probable, also, that Las Casas must have had use
of the Biblioteca Colombina, when it was deposited in the convent of
San Pablo (1544-1552), from whose Dominican monks Harrisse thinks it
possible that Las Casas obtained possession of the Toscanelli map. He
regrets, however, that for the personal history of Columbus and his
family, Las Casas furnishes no information which cannot be found more
nearly at first hand elsewhere. See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, i.
122, 125-127, 129, 133.
[6] Robertson prefixes to his _History_ a list of the Spanish books and
manuscripts which he had used.
“The English reader,” writes Irving in 1828, when he had published his
own _Life of Columbus_, “hitherto has derived his information almost
exclusively from the notice of Columbus in Dr. Robertson’s _History_;
this, though admirably executed, is but a general outline.”—_Life of
Irving_, ii. 313.
[7] Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, i. 35. He also refers to the
notarial records preserved at Seville, as having been but partially
explored for elucidations of the earliest exploration. He found among
them the will of Diego, the younger brother of Columbus (p. 38). Alfred
Demersay printed in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_, June,
1864, a paper, “Une mission geographique dans les archives d’Espagne
et de Portugal,” in which he describes, particularly as regards
their possessions of documents relating to America, the condition at
that time of the archives of the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon (of which,
after 1842 and till his death, Santarem was archivist); those of the
Kingdom of Aragon at Barcelona, and of the Indies at Seville; and
the collections of Muñoz, embracing ninety-five vols. in folio, and
thirty-two in quarto, and of Mata-Lanares, included in eighty folios,
in the Academy of History at Madrid. He refers for fuller details to
Tiran’s _Archives d’Aragon et de Simancas_ (1844), and to Joáo Pedro
Ribeiro’s _Memorias Authenticas para a Historia do real Archivo_,
Lisbon, 1819.
[8] This authority to search was given later, in 1781 and 1788.
[9] This volume is worth about five dollars.
[10] It was he who allowed Irving to use them.
[11] J. C. Brevoort, in the _Magazine of American History_, March,
1879. Cf. Prescott’s _Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1873), ii. 508, and his
_Mexico_, preface.
[12] Vol. i. p. 56, referring to Fuster’s “Copia de los manuscritos
que recogió D. Juan Bautista Muñoz,” in _Biblioteca Valenciana_, ii.
202-238.
[13] Harrisse, in his _Notes on Columbus_, p. 5, describes a collection
of manuscripts which were sold by Obadiah Rich, in 1848 or 1849, to
James Lenox, of New York, which had been formed by Uguina, the friend
of Muñoz. There is in the Academy of History at Madrid a collection of
documents said to have been formed by Don Vargas Ponçe.
[14] Harrisse (_Christophe Columb_, i. 65) refers to an unpublished
fragment in the Lenox Library. The _Ticknor Catalogue_ (p. 244) shows a
discourse on Muñoz read before the Academy of History in 1833, as well
as a criticism by Iturri on his single volume. Harrisse (_Christophe
Colomb_, i. 65) gives the titles of other controversial publications on
the subject of Muñoz’s history. Muñoz died in 1799. It is usually said
that the Spanish Government prevented the continuation of his work.
[15] _Christophe Colomb_, i. 20.
[16] See _post_, p. 77. A third copy, made by Columbus’ direction was
sent to his factor in Hispaniola, Alonzo Sanchez de Carvajal. This
is not known; and Harrisse does not show that the archives of Santo
Domingo offer much of interest of so early a date. A fourth copy was
deposited in the monastery of the Cuevas at Seville, and is probably
the one which his son, Diego, was directed to send to Gaspar Gorricio.
Cf. Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, i. 16-23, 41, 46.
[17] This letter is given in fac-simile in the Navarrete Collection,
French translation, vol. iii.
[18] This book was reprinted at Genoa in 1857, with additions, edited
by Giuseppe Banchero, and translated into English, and published in
1823 in London, as _Memorials of a Collection of Authentic Documents_,
etc. A Spanish edition was issued at Havana in 1867 (Leclerc, nos. 134,
135). Wagner, in his _Colombo und seine Entdeckungen_ (Leipsic, 1825),
makes use of Spotorno, and translates the letters. These and other
letters are also given in Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo_; in the _Lettere
autografe di Colombo_, Milan, 1863; and in Navarrete’s _Coleccion_,
vol. ii. following the text of those in the Veraguas collections. Cf.
_North American Review_, xviii. 417; xxi. 398.
[19] Dodge also translated the other letters. Photographic fac-similes
of these letters are in the Harvard College Library and in the Library
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. See the _Proceedings_ of the
latter Society, February, 1870.
[20] _Christophe Colomb_, p. 11.
[21] Prescott, in the preface to his _Mexico_, speaks of him as
“zealously devoted to letters; while his reputation as a scholar was
enhanced by the higher qualities which he possessed as a man,—by his
benevolence, his simplicity of manners, and unsullied moral worth.”
[22] His projected work on the Spanish navy was never printed, though
a fragment of it appeared in the _Memorias_ of the Academy of History
(_Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 247).
[23] Leclerc says it is “difficile à trouver,” and prices it
at 80 francs. The English price is from £2 to £3. A letter by
Navarrete, descriptive of his _Coleccion_, is to be found in Zach’s
_Correspondance_, xi. 446. Cf. also Duflot de Mofras, _Mendoza et
Navarrete_, Paris, 1845, quoted by Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, i. 67.
[24] There is a memoir of him, with a catalogue of his works, in the
_Coleccion de documentos inéditos_, vol. vi.; and of those published
and unpublished in his _Biblioteca marítima Española_, ii. 458-470.
These sixth and seventh volumes have never been published. The sixth
was to cover the voyages of Grijalva and Lopes de Villalobos. Harrisse
(_Christophe Colomb_, i. 68) learned that the _Cartas de Indias_
(Madrid, 1877) contains some parts of what was to appear in vol. vii.
[25] Columbus, Vespucius, Ojeda, Magellan, etc.
[26] It is an alphabetical (by Christian names,—a not uncommon Spanish
fashion) record of writers on maritime subjects, with sketches of their
lives and works.
[27] Cf. an article in the _North American Review_, xxiv. 265, by Caleb
Cushing.
[28] These form vols. i. and ii. of Marmocchi’s Collection (Leclerc,
no. 133).
[29] Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 199.
[30] _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 247.
[31] _Magazine of American History_, iii. 176. Cf., however,
Navarrete’s generous estimate of Irving’s labors in the Introduction to
the third volume of his _Coleccion_.
[32] The story of this undertaking is told in Pierre Irving’s _Life of
Washington Irving_, vol. ii. chaps. xiv., xv., xvi. The book was kindly
reviewed by Mr. A. H. Everett in the _North American Review_, January,
1829 (vol. xxviii). Cf. other citations and references in Allibone’s
_Dictionary_, 942, and Poole’s _Index_, p. 280. A portion, at least, of
the manuscript of the book is in existence (_Massachusetts Historical
Society’s Proceedings_, xx. 201). Longfellow testified to Irving’s
devotion to his subject (_Proc._, iv. 394). See _post_, p. 68.
[33] Irving also early made an abridged edition, to forestall the
action of others.
[34] Their bibliography is fully given in Sabin, vol. ix. p. 150.
[35] It was completed in twenty volumes, and is now worth from 250
to 300 francs. See Leclerc, no. 562, for contents; Field’s _Indian
Bibliography_, no. 1,540; Alexander Young in _North American Review_,
xlv. 222. Ternaux died in 1864. Santarem speaks of “the sumptuous
stores of his splendid American library.” Cf. H. H. Bancroft, _Central
America_, ii. 759.
[36] Now worth from $12 to $15.
[37] Cf. contents in _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 87.
[38] Cf. _Magazine of American History_, i. 256; ii. 256; (by Mr.
Brevoort), iii. 175 (March, 1879); Sabin, _Dictionary_, vol. xiv. no.
58,072. Leclerc, _Bibliotheca Americana, Supplément_, no. 3,016, for
22 vols. (300 francs). Harrisse, referring to this collection, says:
“It is really painful to see the little method, discrimination, and
knowledge displayed by the editors.” The documents on Columbus largely
repeat those given by Navarrete.
[39] Sabin, _Dictionary_, vol. xiv. no. 58,270.
[40] H. H. Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 484; ii. 736.
[41] Collections like that of Icazbalceta on Mexico may be barely
mentioned in this place, since their characteristics can better
be defined in more special relations. Prescott had eight thousand
manuscript pages of copies of documents relating to Mexico and Peru.
Cf. Preface to his _Mexico_. In 1792 Father Manuel de la Vega collected
in Mexico thirty-two folio volumes of papers, in obedience to an
order of the Spanish Government to gather all documents to be found
in New Spain “fitted to illustrate the antiquities, geography, civil,
ecclesiastical, and natural history of America,” and transmit copies of
them to Madrid (Prescott, Mexico, iii. 409).
[42] This book was privately printed (ninety-five copies) for Mr. S.
L. M. Barlow, of New York. It has thrice, at least, occurred in sales
(Menzies, no. 894,—$57.50; J. J. Cooke, vol. iii. no. 580; Brinley, no.
17). It is an extremely valuable key to the documentary and printed
references on Columbus’ career. To a very small number (nine) of a
separate issue of the portion relating to the letters of Columbus, a
new Preface was added in 1865. Cf. Ernest Desjardin’s _Rapport sur les
deux ouvrages de bibliographie Américaine de M. Henri Harrisse_ (Paris,
1867, p. 8), extracted from the _Bullétin de la Société de Géographie_.
The article on Columbus in Sabin’s _Dictionary_ (iv. 274, etc.) is
based on Harrisse, with revisions. Cf. references in H. H. Bancroft,
_Central America_, i. 238; Saint-Martin, _Histoire de la géographie_
(1873), p. 319; F. G. Cancellieri’s _Dessertazioni epistolari
bibliografiche sopra Colombo_, etc. (Rome, 1809).
[43] The Archives of Venice, at the beginning of this century,
contained memorials of Columbus which can no longer be found (Marin,
_Storia civile e politica del commercio de’ Veneziani_, Venezia, 1800;
Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet. Additions_, p. xxi). This is perhaps owing
to the Austrian depredation upon the Venetian archives in the Frari
and Marciana in 1803-1805, and in 1866. Not a little, however, of use
has been preserved in the _Calendar of State Papers in the Archives
of Venice_ published by the British Government, in the Rolls Series,
since 1864. They primarily illustrate English history, but afford some
light upon American affairs. Only six volumes (the last volume in three
parts) have been printed. Mr. Rawdon Brown, who edited them, long a
resident of Italy, dying at Venice, Aug. 25, 1883, at eighty, has sent,
during his labors in this field, one hundred and twenty-six volumes of
manuscript copies to the English Public Record Office.
[44] Of these, twenty-nine are also given in fac-simile; there are
besides about two hundred and fifty fac-similes of autographs. The
volume is priced at 150 marks and 300 francs. Cf. Leclerc, no. 2,688.
H. H. Bancroft (_Mexico_, ii. 606) says of the volume: “There are about
two hundred and twenty-four pages of geographical notes, vocabulary,
biographical data, a glossary, and cuts, maps, and indexes. The
letters and fac-similes, from the first to the last, are valuable in
a historic sense, and the vocabulary is useful; but the biographical
and historical data are not always reliable, numerous errors having
been detected in comparing with official records and with memoranda of
witnesses of the events related.” Mr. Bancroft’s own library is said to
contain twelve hundred volumes of manuscript amassed for his own work;
but a large portion of them, it is supposed, do not concern the Spanish
history of the Pacific coast.
[45] Mr. Dexter, a graduate of Harvard in 1858, after most serviceable
labors as Recording Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, resigned that position on account of ill health, and died at
Santa Barbara, California, Dec. 18, 1883. The _Proceedings_ of the
Society for January, 1884, contain tributes to his memory. Various
communications in earlier volumes of the same _Proceedings_ show the
painstaking of his research, and the accuracy of his literary method.
The first chapter in Vol. IV. of the present _History_ was his last
effort in historical study, and he did not live to correct the proofs.
His death has narrowed the circle of those helpful friends who have
been ever ready to assist the Editor in his present labors.
[46] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xvi. 318; also issued separately. The
letters of Columbus are also translated in the _Magazine of American
History_, January, 1883, p. 53.
[47] An Italian version of the letters of Columbus and Vespucius, with
fac-similes of the letters (_Tre lettere di Colombo ed Vespucci_),
edited by Augusto Zeri, was printed (six hundred copies) at Rome in
1881. Cf. _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 642.
[48] Irving’s _Life of Columbus_, app. no. vii.
[49] Ferdinand Columbus tried to make his readers believe that his
father was of some kinship with this corsair. The story of Columbus
escaping on an oar from a naval fight off Cape St. Vincent, and
entering Portugal by floating to the shore, does not agree with known
facts in his life of the alleged date. (Harrisse, _Les Colombo_, p.
36.) Allegri Allegretti, in his _Ephemerides Senenses ab anno 1450
usque ad 1496_ (in Muratori, xxiii. 827), gives a few particulars
regarding the early life of Columbus. (Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_,
p. 41.) Some of the latest researches upon his piratical life are given
by Rawdon Brown in the _Calendar of State Papers_, 1864, covering
1202-1509, vol. i.
[50] This name is sometimes given _Palestrello_.
[51] Rawdon Brown’s _Calendar of State Papers in the Archives of
Venice_, vol. i. (1864).
[52] Prescott (_Ferdinand and Isabella_, ed. 1873, vol. ii. p. 123)
says: “The discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to
render hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of
Columbus’s movements previous to his first voyage.”
[53] It cannot but be remarked how Italy, in Columbus, Cabot, and
Vespucius, not to name others, led in opening the way to a new stage
in the world’s progress, which by making the Atlantic the highway of a
commerce that had mainly nurtured Italy on the Mediterranean, conduced
to start her republics on that decline which the Turk, sweeping through
that inland sea, confirmed and accelerated.
[54] Notwithstanding this disappointment of Columbus, it is claimed
that Alfonso V., in 1474, had consulted Toscanelli as to such a western
passage “to the land where the spices grow.”
[55] There is great uncertainty about this English venture. Benzoni
says Columbus’s ideas were ridiculed; Bacon (_Life of Henry VII._)
says the acceptance of them was delayed by accident; Purchas says they
were accepted too late. F. Cradock, in the Dedication of his _Wealth
Discovered_, London, 1661, regrets the loss of honor which Henry VII.
incurred in not listening to the project. (Sabin, v. 55.) There is
much confusion of statement in the early writers. Cf. Las Casas, lib.
i. cap. 29; Barcia, _Hist. del Almirante_, cap. 10; Herrera, dec. i.
lib. 2; Oviedo, lib. i. cap. 4; Gomara, cap. 15; Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer.
Vet._, p. 4.
[56] As, for instance, Oviedo and Bossi.
[57] The same whom Isabella advised Columbus to take “as an astrologer”
on one of his later voyages. Cf. P. Augustin d’Osimo’s _Christophe
Colomb et le Père Juan Perez de Marchena; ou, de la co-opération des
franciscains à la découverte de l’Amérique_, 1861, and P. Marcellino da
Civezza’s _Histoire générale des missions franciscaines_, 1863.
[58] Cf. Schanz on “Die Stellung der beiden ersten Tudors zu den
Entdeckungen,” in his _Englische Handelspolitik_.
[59] Stevens, _Historical Collection_, vol. i. no. 1,418; Leclerc, no.
235 (120 francs); Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 376; Sabin, vol. vii. no.
27,116; Murphy, no. 1,046. This book, which in 1832 Rich priced at £1
10_s._, has recently been quoted by Quaritch at £5 5_s._ Harrisse calls
the book mendacious (_Notes on Columbus_, p. 37). The book was written
in 1522; its author was born in 1465, and died in 1525 as bishop of
Santo Domingo.
[60] There are two views of Seville in Braun and Hogenberg’s _Civitates
orbis terrarum_, published at Antwerp in 1572, and again at Brussels
(in French) in 1574. In one of the engravings a garden near the Puerta
de Goles is marked “Guerta de Colon;” and in the other the words “Casa
de Colon” are attached to the top of one of the houses. Muller, _Books
on America_, 1877, no. 712. The book is in the Harvard College Library.
[61] Santangel supplied about seventeen thousand florins from
Ferdinand’s treasury. Bergenroth, in his Introduction to the Spanish
State Papers, removes not a little of the mellow splendor which
admirers have poured about Isabella’s character.
[62] Palos is no longer a port, such has been the work of time and
tide. In 1548 the port is described in Medina’s _Libro de grandezas
y cosas de España_. (Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 281.) Irving
described it in 1828. Its present unmaritime character is set forth
by E. E. Hale in _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, ii. 159; _Seven Spanish
Cities_, p. 17; and _Overland Monthly_, Jan., 1883, p. 42.
[63] Cf. Irving, app. no. xvi., on the route of Columbus. Brevoort
in his _Verrazzano_, p. 101, describes the usual route of the early
navigators from Spain to the West Indies. Columbus kept two records of
his progress. One was an unworthily deceitful one (reminding us of an
earlier deceit, when he tampered with the compass to mislead his crew),
by which he hoped to check the apprehensions of his men arising from
his increasing longitude; and the other a dead reckoning of some kind,
in which he thought he was approximately accurate. The story of his
capitulating to his crew, and agreeing to turn back in three days in
case land was not reached, is only told by Oviedo on the testimony of a
pilot hostile to Columbus.
[64] It may have been on some island or in some canoe; or just as
likely a mere delusion. The fact that Columbus at a later day set
up a claim for the reward for the first discovery on the strength
of this mysterious light, to the exclusion of the poor sailor who
first actually saw land from the “Pinta,” has subjected his memory,
not unnaturally, to some discredit at least with those who reckon
magnanimity among the virtues. Cf. _Navarrete_, iii. 612.
[65] The prayer used was adopted later in similar cases, under
Balboa, Cortes, Pizarro, etc. It is given in C. Clemente’s _Tablas
chronologicas_, Valencia, 1689. Cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p.
140; Sabin, vol. iv. no. 13,632; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,376;
Murphy, no. 599; and H. H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 371.
[66] Humboldt in his _Cosmos_ (English translation, ii. 422) has
pointed out how in this first voyage the descriptions by Columbus of
tropical scenes convince one of the vividness of his impressions and of
the quickness of his observation.
[67] Pinzon’s heirs at a later day manifested hostility to Columbus,
and endeavored to magnify their father’s importance in the voyage.
Cf. Irving, App. x. In the subsequent lawsuit for the confirmation of
Columbus’s right, the Pinzons brought witnesses to prove that it was
their urgency which prevented Columbus from giving up the voyage and
turning back.
[68] This Latin name seems to have been rendered by the Spaniards La
Española, and from this by corruption the English got Hispaniola.
[69] There is a wide difference as reported by the early writers as to
the number of men which Columbus had with him on this voyage. Ferdinand
Columbus says ninety; Peter Martyr, one hundred and twenty; others say
one hundred and eighty. The men he left at Hayti are reckoned variously
at thirty-nine, forty-three, forty-eight, fifty-five, etc. Major,
_Select Letters_, p. 12, reckons them as from thirty-seven to forty.
The lists show among them an Irishman, “Guillermo Ires, natural de
Galney, en Irlanda,” and an Englishman, “Tallarte de Lajes, Ingles.”
These are interpreted to mean William Herries—probably “a namesake of
ours,” says Harrisse—and Arthur Lake. Bernaldez says he carried back
with him to Spain ten of the natives.
[70] The line of 1494 gave Portugal, Brazil, the Moluccas, the
Philippines, and half of New Guinea. Jurien de la Gravière, _Les marins
du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_, i. 86.
[71] Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 496, describes the procedures
finally established in laying out towns.
[72] Navarrete, ii. 143. It is the frequent recurrence of such
audacious and arrogant acts on the part of Columbus which explains his
sad failure as an administrator, and seriously impairs the veneration
in which the world would rejoice to hold him.
[73] The question of the priority of Columbus’ discovery of the
mainland over Vespucius is discussed in the following chapter.
M. Herrera is said to have brought forward, at the Congrès des
Américanistes held at Copenhagen in 1883, new evidence of Columbus’s
landing on the mainland. Father Manoel de la Vega, in his _Historia del
descobrimiento de la America septentrional_, first published in Mexico
in 1826 by Bustamante, alleges that Columbus in this southern course
was intending to test the theory of King John of Portugal, that land
blocked a westerly passage in that direction.
[74] Irving, app. xxxiii.
[75] H. H. Bancroft, _Central America_, vol. i. chap. iv., traces
with some care the coast-findings of this voyage and the varying
cartographical records.
[76] Helps says: “The greatest geographical discoveries have been made
by men conversant with the book-knowledge of their own time.” The age
of Columbus was perhaps the most illustrious of ages. “Where in the
history of nations,” says Humboldt, “can one find an epoch so fraught
with such important results as the discovery of America, the passage
to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and Magellan’s first
circumnavigation, simultaneously occurring with the highest perfection
of art, the attainment of intellectual and religious freedom, and with
the sudden enlargement of the knowledge of the earth and the heavens?”
_Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 673.
[77] This manuscript is the _Libro de las profecias_, of which parts
are printed in Navarrete. Cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 156,
who calls it a “curious medley of quotations and puerile inferences;”
and refers for an analysis of it to Gallardo’s _Ensayo_, ii. 500.
Harrisse thinks the hand is that of Ferdinand Columbus when a boy, and
that it may have been written under the Admiral’s direction.
[78] Irving, book i. chap. v.; Humboldt, _Examen critique_ and
_Cosmos_; Major, _Prince Henry of Portugal_, chap. xix. and
_Discoveries of Prince Henry_, chap. xiv.; Stevens, _Notes_; Helps,
_Spanish Conquest_; and among the early writers, Las Casas, not to name
others.
[79] Columbus, it is well known, advocated later a pear-shape, instead
of a sphere. Cf. the “Tercer viage” in Navarrete.
[80] Robertson’s _America_, note xii. Humboldt cites the ancients;
_Examen critique_, i. 38, 61, 98, etc.
[81] Ferdinand Columbus says that the Arab astronomer, Al Fergani,
influenced Columbus to the same end; and these views he felt were
confirmed by the reports of Marco Polo and Mandeville. Cf. Yule’s
_Marco Polo_. vol. i. p. cxxxi.
[82] By a great circle course the distance would have been reduced to
something short of five thousand eight hundred miles. (Fox in _U. S.
Coast Survey Report_, 1880, app. xviii.) Marco Polo had not distinctly
said how far off the coast of China the Island of Cipango lay.
[83] Cf. D’Avezac in _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris_,
August-October, 1857, p. 97. Behaim in his globe placed China 120° west
of Cape St. Vincent; and Columbus is supposed to have shared Behaim’s
views and both were mainly in accord with Toscanelli. Humboldt, _Examen
Critique_, ii. 357.
[84] Not long from the time of his first voyage the _Orbis breviarium_
of Lilius, which later passed through other editions and translations,
summarized the references of the ancients (Stevens, _Bibl. Geog._ no.
1,670). But Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 180, holds that the
earliest instance of the new found islands being declared the parts
known to the ancients, and referred to by Virgil in the 6th book of the
Æneid,—
“Jacet extra sidera tellus,” etc.,
is in the _Geographia_ of Henricus Glareanus, published at Basle in
1527. Cf. also Gravier, _Les Normands sur la route des Indes_, Rouen,
1880, p. 24; Harrisse, _Bibl. Am. Vet._ 262. Mr. Murphy, in placing the
1472 edition of Strabo’s _De Situ orbis_ in his American collection,
pointed to the belief of this ancient geographer in the existence of
the American continent as a habitable part of the globe, as shown when
he says: “Nisi Atlantici maris obstaret magnitudo, posse nos navigare
per eundem parallelum ex Hispania in Indiam, etc.” Cf. further, Charles
Sumner’s _Prophetic Voices concerning America_; also in his _Works_;
Bancroft’s _Native Races_, v. 68, 122; Baldwin’s _Prehistoric Nations_,
399; Fontaine’s _How the World was peopled_, p. 139; Las Casas,
_Historia general_; Sherer, _Researches touching the New World_, 1777;
_Recherches sur la géographie des anciens_, Paris, 1797-1813; _Memoirs_
of the Lisbon Academy, v. 101; Paul Gaffarel, _L’Amérique avant
Colomb_, and his “Les Grecs et les Romains, ont ils connu l’Amérique?”
in the _Revue de Géographie_ (1881), ix. 241, etc.; Ferdinand Columbus’
life of his father, and Humboldt’s examination of his views in his
_Examen critique_; Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Introduction to his
_Popul-Vuh_.
Glareanus, above referred to, was one of the most popular of the
condensed cosmographical works of the time; and it gave but the
briefest reference to the New World, “de regionibus extra Ptolemæum.”
Its author was under thirty when he published his first edition in 1527
at Basle. There is a copy in the Carter-Brown Library (_Catalogue_, i.
90). Cf. also _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 142; Huth, ii. 602; Weigel, 1877,
p. 82, priced at 18 marks. It was reprinted at Basle, the next year,
1528 (Trömel, 3), and again in 1529. (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 143, 147.)
Another edition was printed at Freiburg (Brisgau) in 1530, of which
there are copies in Harvard College and Carter-Brown (_Catalogue_, no.
95) libraries. (Cf. _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 147; Muller, 1877, no. 1,232.)
There were other Freiburg imprints in 1533, 1536, 1539, 1543, and 1551.
(_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 183, 212, 248; _Additions_, 121; Carter-Brown, i.
160; White Kennett, p. 12; Trömel, no. 12; Murphy, 1049.) There were
Venice imprints in 1534, 1537, 1538, 1539, and 1544. (_Bibl. Amer.
Vet._, 225, 228, 259; _Additions_, 120; Lancetti, _Buchersaal_, i. 79.)
An edition of Venice, without date, is assigned to 1549. (_Catalogue
of the Sumner Collection in Harvard College Library._) Editions were
issued at Paris in 1542, with a folded map, “Typus cosmographicus
universalis,” in 1550 (Court, 144), and in 1572, the last repeating
the map. (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 139.) The text of all these editions is
in Latin. Sabin, vol. vii. no. 27,536, etc., enumerates most of the
editions.
[85] Such as Plato’s in his _Critias_ and _Timæus_, and Aristotle’s in
his _De Mundo_, cap. iii., etc.
[86] Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima; Additions_, no. 36.
[87] Bernaldez tells us that Columbus was a reader of Ptolemy and of
John de Mandeville. Cf. on the spreading of Ptolemy’s views at this
time Lelewel, _Géographie du moyen âge_, ii. p. 122; Thomassy, _Les
papes géographes_, pp. 15, 34. There are copies of the 1475 edition of
Ptolemy in the Library of Congress and the Carter-Brown Library (cf.
also _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,044); of the 1478 edition, the only
copy in this country, so far as known, is the one in the Carter-Brown
Library, added to that collection since its catalogue was printed. The
Perkins copy in 1873 brought £80 (cf. _Livres payés en vente publique
1,000 francs_, etc., p. 137). It was the first edition with maps.
Lelewel (vol. ii. p. 124) had traced the influence of the Agathodæmon
(Ptolemean) maps on the cartography of the Middle Ages. The maps
representing the growth of geographical ideas anterior to Columbus
will be examined in another place. The Ulm edition of Ptolemy, 1482,
showed in its map of the world a part of what is now called America in
representing Greenland; but it gave it a distinct relation to Europe,
by making Greenland a peninsula of the Scandinavian north. There seems
reason to believe that this map was made in 1471, and it passes for the
earliest engraved map to show that northern region,—“Engrone-land,”
as it is called. If we reject the Zeno map with its alleged date of
1400 or thereabout (published long after Columbus, in 1558), the
oldest known delineations of Greenland (which there is no evidence
that Columbus ever saw, and from which if he had seen them, he could
have inferred nothing to advantage) are a Genoese manuscript map in
the Pitti palace, which Santarem (_Histoire de la Cartographie_,
vol. iii. p. xix) dates 1417, but which seems instead to be properly
credited to 1447, the peninsula here being “Grinlandia” (cf. Lelewel,
_Epilogue_, p. 167; _Magazine of American History_, April, 1883, p.
290); and the map of Claudius Clavus, assigned to 1427, which belongs
to a manuscript of Ptolemy, preserved in the library at Nancy. This,
with the Zeno map and that in the Ptolemy of 1482, is given in _Trois
cartes précolombiennes représentant Groenland, fac-simile présentés
au Congrès des Américanistes à Copenhague; par A. E. Nordenskiöld_,
Stockholm, 1883. In the Laon globe (1486-1487) “Grolandia” is put
down as an island off the Norway coast. There is a copy of this 1482
edition of Ptolemy in the Carter-Brown Library, and another is noted in
the _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,046. Its maps were repeated in the 1486
edition, also published at Ulm; and of this there was a copy in the
Murphy Collection (no. 2,047,—bought by President White, of Cornell);
and another belongs to the late G. W. Riggs, of Washington. In 1490 the
Roman edition of 1478 was reproduced with the same maps; and of this
there is a copy in the Carter-Brown Library; and another is shown in
the _Murphy Catalogue_ (no. 2,048). A splendidly illuminated copy of
this edition sold in the Sunderland sale (part v. no. 13,770) has since
been held by Quaritch at _£_600. See further on these early editions of
Ptolemy in Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy’s Geography_, published by
Harvard University.
[88] Gravier, _Les Normands sur la route des Indes_, Rouen, 1880, p. 37.
[89] Humboldt, _Cosmos_ (Eng. ed.), ii. 619. The _Speculum naturale_
of Vincenzius (1250) is an encyclopædic treatise, closely allied
with other treatises of that time, like the _De rerum natura_ of
Cantipratensis (1230), and the later work of Meygenberg (1349).
[90] Humboldt, _Examen Critique_, i. 61, 65, 70; ii. 349. Columbus
quoted this passage in October, 1498, in his letter from Santo Domingo
to the Spanish monarch. Margry, _Navigations Françaises_, Paris, 1867,
p. 71, “Les deux Indes du XV^e siècle et l’influence Française sur
Colomb,” has sought to reflect credit on his country by tracing the
influence of the _Imago mundi_ in the discovery of the New World; but
the borrowing from Bacon destroys his case. (Major, _Select Letters of
Columbus_, p. xlvii; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 84.) If Margry’s
claim is correct, that there was an edition of the _Imago mundi_
printed at Nuremberg in 1472, it would carry it back of the beginning
of Columbus’s advocacy of his views; but bibliographers find no edition
earlier than 1480 or 1483, and most place this _editio princeps_ ten
years later as Humboldt does. It is generally agreed that the book was
written in 1410. A copy of this first edition, of whatever date, is
preserved in the Colombina Library in Seville; and it was the copy used
by Columbus and Las Casas. Its margins are annotated, and the notes,
which are by most thought to be in the hand of Columbus, have been
published by Varnhagen in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie
de Paris_, January, 1858, p. 71, and by Peschel in his _Geschichte
des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 112,—who, however, ascribes the
notes to Bartholomew Columbus. A fac-simile of part of them is given
on p. 31. Cf. Major, _Prince Henry_, p. 349; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no.
3; _Murphy catalogue_, no. 27, bought by Cornell Univ. and Dinaux,
_Cardinal P. d’Ailly_, Cambray, 1824.
[91] Mandeville had made his Asiatic journey and long sojourn
(thirty-four years) thirty or forty years later than Marco Polo, and
on his return had written his narrative in English, French, and Latin.
It was first printed in French at Lyons, in 1480. The narrative is,
however, unauthentic.
[92] A copy of this edition is in the Colombina Library, with marginal
marks ascribed to Columbus, but of no significance except as aids to
the memory. Cf. _Harper’s Monthly_, xlvi. p. 1.
[93] There were other editions between his first voyage and his
death,—an Italian one in 1496, and a Portuguese in 1502. For later
editions, cf. Harrisse, _Bibl. Am. Vet._, no. 89; Navarrete, _Bibl.
maritima_, ii. 668; Brunet, iii. 1,406; Saint-Martin, _Histoire de
la Géographie_, p. 278. The recent editions of distinctive merit
are those, in English, of Colonel Yule; the various texts issued in
the _Recueil de voyages et de mémoires publiés par la Société de
Géographie de Paris; and Le livre de Marco Polo, rédigé, en Français
sous sa dictée en 1298 par Rusticien de Pise, publ. pour la 1^e fois
d’après 3 MSS. inéd., av. variantes, comment. géogr. et histor.,
etc._, par G. Pauthier. 2 vols. Paris: Didot, 1865. Cf. Foscarini,
_Della lett. Ven._ 239; Zurla, _Di Marco Polo_; Maltebrun, _Histoire
de la Géographie_; Tiraboschi, _Storia della lett. Ital._, vol. iv.;
Vivien de Saint-Martin, _Histoire de la Géographie_, p. 272; and the
bibliography of the MSS. and printed editions of the _Milione_ given
in Pietro Amat di S. Filippo’s _Studi biog. e bibliog._, published by
the Società Geografica Italiana in 1882 (2d ed.). A fac-simile of a
manuscript of the fourteenth century of the _Livre de Marco Polo_ was
prepared under the care of Nordenskiöld, and printed at Stockholm in
1882. The original is in the Royal Library at Stockholm.
[94] The actual distance from Spain westerly to China is two hundred
and thirty-one degrees.
[95] Cf. Zurla, _Fra Mauro_, p. 152; Lelewel, ii. 107.
[96] The Italian text of Toscanelli’s letter has been long known
in Ferdinand Columbus’ Life of his father; but Harrisse calls it
“très-inexact et interpolée;” and, in his _Bibl. Am. Vet. Additions_
(1872), p. xvi, Harrisse gives the Latin text, which he had already
printed, in 1871, in his _Don Fernando Colon_, published at Seville,
from a copy made of it which had been discovered by the librarian of
the Colombina, transcribed by Columbus himself in a copy of Æneas
Sylvius’ (Pius II.’s) _Historia rerum ubique gestarum_, Venice,
1477, preserved in that library. Harrisse also gives a photographic
fac-simile of this memorial of Columbus. Cf. D’Avezac, in the _Bulletin
de la Société de Géographie de Paris_, October, 1873, p. 46; and
Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, p. 41. The form of the letter, as given
in Navarrete, is translated into English in Kettell’s _Journal of
Columbus_, p. 268, and in Becher’s _Landfall of Columbus_, p. 183. Cf.
Lelewel, _Géographie du moyen âge_, ii. 130; _Bulletin de la Société
de Géographie_, 1872, p. 49; Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der
Entdeckungen_, p. 225. H. Grothe, in his _Leonardo da Vinci_, Berlin,
1874, says that Da Vinci in 1473 had written to Columbus respecting a
western passage to the Indies.
[97] Navarrete, iii. 28.
[98] Note xvii.
[99] Appendix xi.
[100] Stevens, _Bibl. Geog._, no. 1147, and Sabin, _Dictionary_, vii.
no. 26,342, give different dates.
[101] Goodrich’s _Life of the so-called Christopher Columbus_. Cf.
Luciano Cordeiro, “Les Portugais dans la découverte de l’Amérique,” in
Congrès des Américanistes, 1875, i. 274.
[102] Humboldt sees no reason to doubt that Iceland was meant.
(_Examen critique_, i. 105; v. 213; _Cosmos_, ii. 611.) It may be
remarked, however, that “Thyle” and “Islanda” are both laid down in
the Ptolemy map of 1486, which only signifies probably that the old
and new geography were not yet brought into accord. Cf. _Journal of
the American Geographical Society_, xii. 170, 177, where it is stated
that records prove the mild winter for Iceland in 1477, which Columbus
represents at Thule.
[103] A like intimation is sustained by De Costa in _Columbus and the
Geographers of the North_, Hartford, 1872; and it is distinctly claimed
in Anderson’s _America not discovered by Columbus_, 3d edition, 1883,
p. 85. It is also surmised that Columbus may have known the Zeni map.
[104] Humboldt discusses the question whether Columbus received any
incentive from a knowledge of the Scandinavian or Zeni explorations,
in his _Examen critique_, ii. 104; and it also forms the subject of
appendices to Irving’s _Columbus_.
[105] This problem is more particularly examined in Vol. I. Cf. also
Vol. IV. p. 3.
[106] Harrisse, _Les Cortereals_, p. 25, who points out that Behaim’s
globe shows nothing of such a voyage,—which it might well have done if
the voyage had been made; for Behaim had lived at the Azores, while
Cortereal was also living on a neighboring island. Major, _Select
Letters of Columbus_, p. xxviii, shows that Faria y Sousa, in _Asia
Portuguesa_, while giving a list of all expeditions of discovery from
Lisbon, 1412-1460, makes no mention of this Cortereal. W. D. Cooley, in
his _Maritime and Island Discovery_, London, 1830, follows Barrow; but
Paul Barron Watson, in his “Bibliography of pre-Columbian Discoveries”
appended to the 3d edition (Chicago, 1883) of Anderson’s _America
not discovered by Columbus_, p. 158, indicates how Humboldt (_Examen
critique_, i. 279), G. Folsom (_North American Review_, July, 1838),
Gaffarel (_Études_, p. 328), Kohl (_Discovery of Maine_, p. 165), and
others dismiss the claim. If there was any truth in it, it would seem
that Portugal deliberately cut herself off from the advantages of it in
accepting the line of demarcation in 1493.
[107] Edition of 1597, folio 188.
[108] Follows Wytfliet in his _Rerum Danicarum historia_, 1631, p. 763.
[109] _Ulyssea_, Lugduni, 1671, p. 335.
[110] _Journal of the American Geographical Society_, xii. 170. Asher,
in his _Henry Hudson_, p. xcviii, argues for Greenland.
[111] Gomara, _Historia general de las Indias_, Medina, 1553, and
Anvers, 1554, cap. xxxvii, folio 31; and Herrera, _Historia general_,
Madrid, 1601, dec. 1, lib. 6, cap. 16. Later writers have reiterated
it. Cf. Humboldt, _Examen critique_, ii. 152, who is doubtful;
Lelewel, iv. 106, who says he reached Labrador; Kunstmann, _Entdeckung
Amerikas_, p. 45. Watson, in his _Bibliography of the pre-Columbian
Discoveries_, cites also the favorable judgment of Belleforest,
_L’histoire universelle_, Paris, 1577; Morisotus’ _Orbis maritimi_,
1643; Zurla’s _Marco Polo_, 1818; C. Pingel in _Grönlands Historisk
Mindesmaeker_, 1845; Gaffarel, _Étude_, 1869; and De Costa, _Columbus
and the Geographers of the North_, 1872, p. 17.
[112] _America not discovered by Columbus_, p. 164. Estancelin, in his
_Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des navigateurs Normands
en Afrique, dans les Indes orientales, et en Amérique; suivies
d’observations sur la marine, le commerce, et les établissemens
coloniaux des Français_, Paris, 1832, claims that Pinzon, represented
as a companion of Cousin, was one of the family later associated with
Columbus in his voyage in 1492. Léon Guérin, in _Navigateurs Français_,
1846, mentions the voyage, but expresses no opinion. Parkman, _Pioneers
of France_, p. 169, does not wholly discredit the story. Paul Gaffarel,
_Étude sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien continent avant
Colomb_, Paris, 1869, and _Découverte du Brésil par Jean Cousin_,
Paris, 1874, advocates the claim. Again, in his _Histoire du Brésil
Français_, Paris, 1878, Gaffarel considers the voyage geographically
and historically possible. (Cf. also a paper by him in the _Revue
politique et littéraire_, 2 mai, 1874.) It is claimed that the white
and bearded men whom, as Las Casas says, the natives of Hispaniola
had seen before the coming of the Spaniards, were the companions of
Cousin. Cf. Vitet’s _Histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1833, vol. ii.; David
Asseline’s _Antiquitéz et chroniques de Dieppe, avec introduction
par Hardy, Guérillon, et Sauvage_, Paris, 1874, two vols.; and the
supplemental work of Michel Claude Guibert, _Mémoires pour servir à
l’histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1878, two vols. Cf. Sabin, vol. xii. no.
47,541; Dufossé, _Americana_, nos. 4,735, 9,027.
[113] The ordinary designation of Hartmann Schedel’s _Registrum huius
operis libri cronicarum cū figuris et ymagībus ab inicio mūdi_,
Nuremberg, 1493, p. 290. The book is not very rare, though much sought
for its 2,250 woodcuts; and superior copies of it bring from $75 to
$100, though good copies are often priced at from $30 to $60. Cf.
_Bibliotheca Spenceriana_; Leclerc, no. 533; Carter-Brown, vol. i. nos.
12, 18; Huth, iv. 1305; Sunderland, no. 2,796; Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer.
Vet._, no. 13; Muller, _Books on America_, 1872, no. 1,402; Cooke, no.
2,961; Murphy, no. 2,219, with a note by that collector.
[114] Cf. Von Murr, _Memorabilia bibliothecarum Norimbergensium_, vol.
i. pp. 254-256: “nec locus ille de America loquitur, sed de Africa.”
[115] Watson’s _Bibliography of pre-Columbian Discoveries of America_,
p. 161, enumerates the contestants; and Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._,
nos. 13, 14, epitomizes the authorities. The earliest reference,
after Schedel, seems to be one in Guillaume Postel’s _Cosmographicæ
disciplinæ compendium_, Basle, 1561, in which a strait below South
America is named Behaim’s Strait; but J. Chr. Wagenseil, in his _Sacra
parentalia_, 1682, earliest urged the claim, which he repeated in
his _Historia universalis_, while it was reinforced in Stüven’s or
Stuvenius’ _De vero novi orbis inventore_, Frankfort, 1714. (Copy
in Harvard College Library; cf. Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 195.)
The first important counter-argument appeared in E. Tozen’s _Der
wahre und erste Entdecker der Neuen Welt, Christoph Colon, gegen die
ungegründeten Ausprüche, welche Americus Vespucci and Martin Behaim
auf diese Ehre machen, vertheidiget_, Göttingen, 1761. (Sabin, xii.
489.) Robertson rejected the claim; and so, in 1778, did C. G. von
Murr, in his _Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim_, published
at Nuremberg (2d ed., Gotha, 1801; Jansen’s French translation, Paris,
1801 and Strasburg, 1802; also appended to Amoretti’s _Pigafetta_;
English in Pinkerton’s _Voyages_, 1812). A letter from Otto to Benjamin
Franklin, in the _American Philosophical Society’s Transactions_, 1786,
ii. 263, urged the theory. Dr. Belknap, in 1792, in the Appendix to his
_Discourse on Columbus_, dismissed it. Cladera, in his _Investigaciones
históricas sobre los principales descubrimientos de los Españoles_,
Madrid, 1794, was decidedly averse, replying to Otto, and adding a
translation of Von Murr’s essay. (Leclerc, nos. 118, 2,505.) Amoretti,
in his Preface to _Pigafetta’s Voyage_, Paris, 1801, argues that
Columbus’ discoveries convinced Behaim of his own by comparison.
Irving says the claim is founded on a misinterpretation of the Schedel
passage. Humboldt, in his _Examen critique_, i. 256, enters into a long
adverse argument. Major, in his _Select Letters of Columbus_, and in
his _Prince Henry_, is likewise decided in opposition. Ghillany, in
his _Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin Behaim_, is favorable.
Gaffarel, _Étude sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien
continent avant Colomb_, Paris, 1869, is sceptical.
It seems to be a fact that Behaim made a map showing the straits
passed by Magellan, which Pigafetta refers to; and it is also clear
that Schöner, in globes made earlier, also indicated a similar strait;
and Schöner might well have derived his views from Behaim. What we
know of Behaim’s last years, from 1494 to 1506, is not sufficient
to fill the measure of these years; and advocates are not wanting
who assign to them supposed voyages, on one of which he might have
acquired a personal knowledge of the straits which he delineated. Such
advocates are met, and will continue to be answered, with the likelier
supposition, as is claimed, of the Straits in question being a happy
guess, both on Behaim’s and Schöner’s part, derived from the analogy
of Africa,—a southern extremity which Behaim had indeed delineated on
his globe some years before its actual discovery, though not earlier
than the existence of a prevalent belief in such a Strait. Cf. Wieser,
_Magalhâes-Strasse_.
[116] Las Casas is said to have had a manuscript by Columbus respecting
the information derived by him from Portuguese and Spanish pilots
concerning western lands.
[117] These were accounted for by the westerly gales, the influence
of the Gulf Stream not being suspected. Humboldt, _Cosmos_, English
translation, ii. 662; _Examen critique_, ii. 249.
[118] See Major’s Preface to his _Prince Henry_. Cf. H. H. Bancroft,
_Central America_, i. 373, for the successive names applied to the
Atlantic.
[119] Cf. _Les voyages merveilleux de Saint-Brandan à la recherche
du paradis terrestre. Légende en vers du XI^e siècle, publiée avec
introduction par Francisque-Michel_, Paris, 1878; and references in
Poole’s _Index_, p. 159.
[120] Humboldt points this island out on a map of 1425.
[121] Cf. Humboldt, _Examen critique_, ii. 156-245; Kunstmann,
_Entdeckung Amerikas_, pp. 6, 35; D’Avezac on the “Isles fantastiques,”
in _Nouvelles annales des voyages_, April, 1845, p. 55. Many of these
islands clung long to the maps. Becher (_Landfall of Columbus_) speaks
of the Isle of St. Matthew and Isle Grande in the South Atlantic being
kept in charts till the beginning of this century. E. E. Hale tells
amusingly of the Island of Bresil, lying off the coast of Ireland
and in the steamer’s track from New York to England, being kept on
the Admiralty charts as late as 1873. _American Antiquarian Society
Proceedings_, Oct. 1873. Cf. Gaffarel, _Congrès des Américanistes_,
1877, i. 423, and Formalconi’s _Essai sur la marine ancienne des
vénitiens; dans lequel on a mis au jour plusieurs cartes tirées de la
bibliothèque de St. Marc, antérieures à la découverte de Christophe
Colomb, & qui indiquent clairement l’existence des isles Antilles.
Traduit de l’italien par le chevalier d’Hénin_, Venise, 1788.
[122] There are seven inhabitable and six desert islands in the group.
[123] Cf. _Die Entdeckung der Carthager und Griechen auf dem
Atlantischen Ocean_, by Joachim Lelewel, Berlin, 1831, with two maps
(Sabin, x. 201) one of which shows conjecturally the Atlantic Ocean of
the ancients (see next page).
[124] Two priests, Bontier and Le Verrier, who accompanied him, wrote
the account which we have. Cf. Peter Martyr, dec. i. c. 1; Galvano, p.
60; Muñoz, p. 30; Kunstmann, p. 6.
[125] Charton (_Voyageurs_, iii. 75) gives a partial bibliography of
the literature of the discovery and conquest. The best English book is
Major’s _Conquest of the Canaries_, published by the Hakluyt Society,
London, 1872, which is a translation, with notes, of the Béthencourt
narrative; and the same author has epitomized the story in chapter ix.
of his _Discoveries of Prince Henry_. There is an earlier English book,
George Glas’s _Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands_, London,
1764, 1767, which is said to be based on an unpublished manuscript
of 1632, the work of a Spanish monk, J. de Abreu de Galineo, in the
island of Palma. The Béthencourt account was first published in Paris,
1630, with different imprints, as _Histoire de la première descovverte
et conqueste des Canaries_. Dufossé prices it at from 250 to 300
francs. The original manuscript was used in preparing the edition,
_Le Canarien_, issued at Rouen in 1874 by G. Gravier (Leclerc, no.
267). This edition gives both a modern map and a part of that of Mecia
de Viladestes (1413); enumerates the sources of the story; and (p.
lxvi) gives D’Avezac’s account of the preservation of the Béthencourt
manuscript. The Spanish translation by Pedro Ramirez, issued at Santa
Cruz de Tenerife in 1847, was rendered from the Paris, 1630, edition.
Cf. Nuñez de la Peña’s _Conquista y antiguedades de las Islas de la
Gran Canaria_, Madrid, 1676, and reprint, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1847;
Cristóval Perez de el Christo, _Las siete Islas de Canaria_, Xeres,
1679 (rare, Leclerc, no. 644,—100 francs); Viera y Clavijo, _Historia
general de las Islas de Canaria_, Madrid, four volumes, 1772-1783
(Leclerc, no. 647, calls it the principal work on the Canaries); Bory
de Saint Vincent, _Essais sur les Isles Fortunées_, Paris, an xi.
(1803); _Les Iles Fortunées_, Paris, 1869. D’Avezac, in 1846, published
a _Note sur la première expéditien de Béthencourt aux Canaries_, and
his “Isles d’Afrique” in the _Univers pittoresque_ may be referred to.
[126] It is given by Lelewel, _Géographie du Moyen Age_; and has been
issued in fac-simile by Ongania at Venice, in 1881. It is also given in
Major, _Prince Henry_, 1868 edition, p. 107, and in Marco Polo, edition
by Boni, Florence, 1827. Cf. Winsor’s _Kohl Collection of Early Maps_,
issued by Harvard University.
[127] This chart is given by Jomard, pl. x., and Santarem, pl. 40.
Ongania published in 1881 a Pizigani chart belonging to the Ambrosian
Library in Milan, dated 1373.
[128] This map is given in _Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi_,
vol. xiv. part 2; in Santarem, pl. 31, 40; Lelewel, pl. xxix.;
Saint-Martin’s _Atlas_, pl. vii.; Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der
Entdeckungen_, 1881, and full size in fac-simile in _Choix de documents
géographiques conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale_, Paris, 1883.
[129] Winsor’s _Kohl Collection of early maps_, part i., no. 17.
[130] Cf. Santarem, _Histoire de la Cartographie_, iii. 366, and
the references in Winsor’s _Kohl Collection_, part i. no. 19; and
_Bibliography of Ptolemy_, sub anno 1478. A sea-chart of Bartolomeus
de Pareto, A. D. 1455, shows “Antillia” and an island farther west
called “Roillo.” Antillia is supposed also to have been delineated
on Toscanelli’s map in 1474. In 1476 Andreas Benincasa’s portolano,
given in Lelewel, pl. xxxiv. and Saint-Martin, pl. vii. shows an
island “Antilio;” and again in the portolano belonging to the Egerton
manuscripts in the British Museum, and supposed to represent the
knowledge of 1489, just previous to Columbus’s voyage, and thought
by Kohl to be based on a Benincasa chart of 1463, the conventional
“Antillia” is called “Y de Sete Zitade.” It is ascribed to Christofalo
Soligo. Behaim’s globe in 1492 also gives “Insula Antilia genannt Septe
Citade.” Cf. Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, p. 116. The name “Antilhas”
seems first to have been transferred from this problematical mid-ocean
island to the archipelago of the West Indies by the Portuguese, for
Columbus gave no general name to the group.
[131] Cf. Kunstmann, _Entdeckung Amerikas_, pp. 1, etc.; Drummond,
_Annales da Ilha Terceira_; Ernesto do Canto, _Archivo dos Açores_;
Major’s _Discoveries of Prince Henry_, chap. x.; _Quarterly Review_,
xi. 191; Cordeyro’s _Historia insulana_, Lisbon, 1717.
[132] Appendix xxv.
[133] Vol. ii. part 2, p. 1; also Purchas, ii. 1672.
[134] Edition of 1868, pp. xvii and 69; Kunstmann, _Entdeckung
Amerikas_, p. 4.
[135] Cf. Gaspar Fructuoso’s _Historia das Ilhas do Porto-Santo,
Madeira, Desertas e Selvagens_, Funchal, 1873.
[136] Cf. _Studi biog. e bibliog._ i. 137, which places Perestrello’s
death about 1470.
[137] It has sometimes been put as early as 1440; but 1460 is the
date Major has determined after a full exposition of the voyages of
this time. _Prince Henry_ (1868 edition), p. 277. D’Avezac _Isles de
l’Afrique_, Paris, 1848.
[138] Prince Henry, edition of 1868, pp. xxiv and 127. Guibert, in
his _Ville de Dieppe_, i. 306 (1878), refers, for the alleged French
expedition to Guinea in 1364, to Villault de Belfond, _Relation
des costes d’Afrique appelées Guinée_, Paris, 1669, p. 409; Vitet,
_Anciennes villes de France_, ii. 1, Paris, 1833; D’Avezac _Découvertes
dans l’océan atlantique antérieurement aux grands explorations du XV^e
siècle_, p. 73, Paris, 1845; Jules Hardy, _Les Dieppois en Guinée en
1364_, 1864; Gabriel Gravier, _Le Canarien_, 1874.
[139] Cf. Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les marins du XV^e et du XVI^e
siècle_, vol. i. chap. 2.
[140] Humboldt, _Examen critique_, i. 144, 161, 329; ii. 370; _Cosmos_,
ii. 561; Jules Codine’s _Mémoire géoqraphique sur la mer des Indes_,
Paris, 1868.
[141] Irving, app. xiv.
[142] _Prince Henry_, p. 116 (1868). Cf. _Studi biog. e bibliog. della
Soc. Geog. Ital._, ii. 57.
[143] The author tells, in his preface, the condition of knowledge
regarding his subject which he found when he undertook his work, and
recounts the service the Royal Academy of Sciences at Lisbon has
done since 1779 in discovering and laying before the world important
documents.
[144] Gustav de Veer’s _Prinz Heinrich der Seefahrer, und seine Zeit_,
Dantzig, 1864, is a more popular work, and gives lists of authorities.
Cf. H. Monin in the _Revue de géographie_, December, 1878.
[145] There is some question if the school of Sagres had ever an
existence; at least it is doubted in the _Archivo dos Açores_, iv. 18,
as quoted by Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, p. 40.
[146] Cf. Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, 261; _adds_ 154.
[147] Major (p. xvi) has more or less distrust of Cadamosto’s story as
given in the _Paese novamente_. Cf. the bibliography in _Studi biog. e
bibliog. della Soc. Geog. Ital._, i. 149 (1882); and Carter-Brown, i.
101, 195, 202, 211; also _Bibl. Amer. Vet. Add._, no. 83.
[148] “Through all which I was present,” said Bartholomew, in a note
found by Las Casas.
[149] The original is now preserved at Venice, in the Biblioteca
Marciana. A large photographic fac-simile of it was issued at Venice,
in 1877, by Münster (Ongania); and engraved reproductions can be found
in Santarem, Lelewel, and Saint-Martin, besides others in Vincent’s
_Commerce and Navigations of the Ancients_, 1797 and 1807; and in
Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, 1881. A copy on
vellum, made in 1804, is in the British Museum.
[150] Cf. G. Gravier’s _Recherches sur les navigations Européennes
faites an moyen-âge_, Paris, 1878.
[151] Navarrete, i. 304, ii. 280; Bandini’s _Amerigo Vespucci_, pp.
66, 83; Humboldt, _Examen critique_, i. 26, iv. 188, 233, 250, 261, v.
182-185; and his preface to Ghillany’s _Behaim_; Harrisse, _Ferdinand
Colomb_, pp. 121-127; Major’s _Prince Henry_, p. 420; Stevens’s
_Notes_, p. 372. When the natives of Cuba pointed to the interior of
their island and said “Cubanacan,” Columbus interpreted it to mean
“Kublai Khan;” and the Cuban name of Mangon became to his ear the Mangi
of Sir John Mandeville.
[152] Dec. i. c. 8.
[153] Da Gama’s three voyages, translated from the narrative of Gaspar
Correa, with other documents, was edited for the Hakluyt Society by
H. E. J. Stanley, in 1869. Correa’s account was not printed till
1858, when the Lisbon Academy issued it. Cf. Navarrete, vol. i. p.
xli; Ramusio, i. 130; Galvano, p.93; Major, _Prince Henry_, p. 391;
Cladera, _Investigaciones históricas_; Saint-Martin, _Histoire de la
géographie_, p. 337; Clarke, _Progress of Maritime Discovery_, p. 399;
Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_ pp. 109, 135, 188,
189; Lucas Rem’s _Tagebuch_, 1494-1542, Augsburg, 1861; Charton’s
_Voyageurs_, iii. 209 (with references), etc.
“Portugal,” says Professor Seeley, “had almost reason to complain of
the glorious intrusion of Columbus. She took the right way, and found
the Indies; while he took the wrong way, and missed them.... If it be
answered in Columbus’s behalf, that it is better to be wrong and find
America, than to be right and find India, Portugal might answer that
she did both,”—referring to Cabral’s discovery of Brazil (_Expansion of
England_, p. 83).
[154] The Bull is printed in Navarrete, ii. 23, 28, 130; and in the
app. of Oscar Peschel’s _Die Theilung der Erde unter Papst Alexander
VI. und Julius II._, Leipsic, 1871. Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet.,
Additions_, gives the letter of May 17, 1493, which Alexander VI.
sent with the Bulls to his nuncio at the court of Spain, found in the
archives of the Frari at Venice. Cf. also Humboldt, _Examen critique_,
iii. 52; Solorzano’s _Política Indiana_; Sabin’s _Dictionary_, vol. i.
no. 745; and the illustrative documents in Andres Garcia de Céspedes’
_Reg. de nav._, Madrid, 1606.
[155] There is more or less confusion in the estimates made of the
league of this time. D’Avezac, _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie
de Paris_, September and October, 1858, pp. 130-164, calls it 5,924
metres. Cf. also Fox, in the _U. S. Coast Survey Report_, 1880, p. 59;
and H. H. Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 190.
[156] Cf. Humboldt, _Examen critique_, iii. 17, 44, 56, etc.
[157] Humboldt, _Examen critique_, iii. 54; _Cosmos_, v. 55. Columbus
found this point of no-variation, Sept. 13, 1492. In the latter part
of the sixteenth century, for a similar reason, St. Michael’s in the
Azores was taken for the first meridian, but the no-variation then
observable at that point has given place now to a declination of
twenty-five degrees.
[158] See the documents in Navarrete, ii. 116, and Peschel’s _Theilung
der Erde unter Papst Alexander VI. und Julius II._
[159] Cf., however, Juan y Ulloa’s _Dissertacion sobre el meridiano de
demarcation_, Madrid, 1749, in French, 1776. Carter-Brown, vol. iii.
no. 910; and “Die Demarcations-linie” in Ruge’s _Das Zeitalter der
Entdeckungen_, p. 267.
[160] In 1495 Jaume Ferrer, who was called for advice, sent a
manuscript map to the Spanish Monarchs to be used in the negotiations
for determining this question. (Navarrete; also Amat, _Diccionario de
los escritores Catalanes_.) Jaume’s different treatises are collected
by his son in his _Sentencias cathólicas_, 1545. (Leclerc, no. 2,765,
1,000 francs; Harrisse, _Bibl. Am. Vet._, no. 261; _Additions_, no.
154.) This contains Jaime’s letter of Jan. 27, 1495, and the Monarchs’
reply of Feb. 28, 1495; and a letter written at the request of Isabella
from Burgos, Aug. 5, 1495, addressed to “Christofol Colō en la gran
Isla de Cibau.”
[161] Cf. _North American Review_, nos. 53 and 55.
[162] Cf. portions in German in _Das Ausland_, 1867, p. 1.
[163] It is in Italian in Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo_.
[164] Brunet, _Supplément_, col. 277.
[165] It appeared in the series _Biblioteca rara_ of G. Daelli.
[166] Cf. _Historical Magazine_, September, 1864.
[167] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet. Additions_, p. vi., calls this
reproduction extremely correct.
[168] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, p. xii.
[169] _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 387; Stevens, _Hist. Coll._, vol. i. no.
1,380; Sabin, iv. 277; Leclerc, no. 132. It was noticed by Don Pascual
de Gayangos in _La America_, April 13, 1867. Cf. another of Varnhagen’s
publications, _Carta de Cristóbal Colon enviada de Lisboa á Barcelona
en Marzo de 1493_, published at Vienna in 1869. It has a collation of
texts and annotations (Leclerc, no. 131). A portion of the edition was
issued with the additional imprint, “Paris, Tross, 1870.” Of the 120
copies of this book, 60 were put in the trade. Major, referring to
these several Spanish texts, says: “I have carefully collated the three
documents, and the result is a certain conclusion that neither one nor
the other is a correct transcript of the original letter,”—all having
errors which could not have been in the original. Major also translates
the views on this point of Varnhagen, and enforces his own opinion
that the Spanish and Latin texts are derived from different though
similar documents. Varnhagen held the two texts were different forms of
one letter. Harrisse dissents from this opinion in _Bibl. Amer. Vet.
Additions_, p. vi.
[170] Cf. Irving’s _Columbus_, app. xxix.
[171] Prescott’s _Ferdinand and Isabella_, revised edition, ii. 108;
Sabin, vol. ii. no. 4,918; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, no. 7, who
reprints the parts in question, with a translation.
[172] _Cosmos_, English translation, ii, 641.
[173] _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 32.
[174] He points out how the standard _Chronicles_ and _Annals_
(Ferrebouc, 1521; Regnault, 1532; Galliot du Pré, 1549; Fabian, 1516,
1533, 1542, etc.), down to the middle of the sixteenth century, utterly
ignored the acts of Columbus, Cortes, and Magellan (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._
p. ii).
[175] Murr, _Histoire diplomatique de Behaim_, p. 123.
[176] They are mentioned in Senarega’s “De rebus Genuensibus,” printed
in Muratori’s _Rerum Italicarum scriptores_, xxiv. 534. Cf. Harrisse,
_Notes on Columbus_, p. 41.
[177] Harrisse says that when Tross, of Paris, advertised a copy at a
high price in 1865, there were seven bidders for it at once. Quaritch
advertised a copy in June, 1871. It was priced in London in 1872 at
£140.
[178] This view is controverted in _The Bookworm_, 1868, p. 9. Cf.
1867, p. 103. The ships are said to be galleys, while Columbus sailed
in caravels.
[179] But compare his _Cooke Catalogue_, no. 575; also,
_Pinart-Bourbourg Catalogue_, p. 249.
[180] M. de Rosny was born in 1810, and died in 1871. M. Geslin
published a paper on his works in the _Actes de la Société
d’Ethnologie_, vii. 115. A paper by Rosny on the “Lettre de Christoph
Colombe,” with his version, is found in the _Revue Orientale et
Américaine_, Paris, 1876, p. 81.
[181] The earliest English version of this letter followed some one
edition of the Cosco-Sanchez text, and appeared in the _Edinburgh
Review_ in 1816, and was reprinted in the _Analectic Magazine_, ix.
513. A translation was also appended by Kettell to his edition of the
_Personal Narrative_. There is another in the _Historical Magazine_,
April, 1865, ix. 114.
[182] It was priced by Rich in 1844 at £6 6s.; and by Robert Clarke, of
Cincinnati, in 1876, at $200. There was a copy in the J. J. Cooke sale
(1883), vol. iii. no. 574, and another in the Murphy sale, no. 2,602.
[183] Sabin, vol. v. no. 18,656; Major, p. xc, where the poem is
reprinted, as also in Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_, p. 186; _Bibl.
Amer. Vet._, no. 8, p. 461. This first edition has sixty-seven octaves;
the second, sixty-eight. Stevens’s _Hist. Coll._, vol. i. no. 129,
shows a fac-simile of the imperfect first edition.
[184] _Notes on Columbus_, p. 185; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 9;
_Additions_, no. 3; Lenox’s _Scyllacius_, p. lii. The last stanza is
not in the other edition, and there are other revisions. A fac-simile
of the cut on the title of this Oct. 26, 1493, edition is annexed.
Other fac-similes are given by Lenox, and Ruge in his _Geschichte des
Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 247. This edition was reprinted at
Bologna, 1873, edited by Gustavo Uzíelli, as no. 136 of _Scelta di
curiosità letterarie inedite_, and a reprint of Cosco’s Latin text was
included.
[185] Lenox’s _Scyllacius_, p. lv, with fac-similes of the cuts;
_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 19; _Notes on Columbus_, p. 123; _Huth_, i.
337. The elder Harris made a tracing of this edition, and Stevens had
six copies printed from stone; and of these, copies are noted in the
C. Fiske-Harris Catalogue, no. 553; Murphy, no. 632; Brinley, no. 14;
Stevens’s (1870) _Catalogue_, no. 459; and _Hist. Coll._, vol. i. nos.
130, 131. The text was reprinted in the _Rheinisches Archiv_, xv. 17.
It was also included in _Ein schöne newe Zeytung_, printed at Augsburg
about 1522, of which there are copies in the Lenox and Carter-Brown
libraries. _Scyllacius_, p. lvi; Brunet, _Supplément_, col. 277;
Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 115. The latest enumeration of these
various editions is in the _Studi biog. e bibliog. della Soc. Geog.
Ital._, 2d edition, Rome, 1882, p. 191, which describes some of the
rare copies.
[186] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 175; _Carter-Brown_, no. 105;
Lenox, _Scyllacius_, p. lviii; Stevens, _Hist. Coll._, vol. i. no. 163,
and _Bibl. Geog._, no. 2,383; Muller (1872), no. 387; J. J. Cooke,
no. 2,183; O’Callaghan, no. 1,836. The letter is on pages 116-121 of
the _Bellum_, etc. The next earliest reprint is in Andreas Schott’s
_Hispaniæ illustratæ_, Frankfort, 1603-1608, vol. ii. (Sabin, vol.
viii. no. 32,005; Muller, 1877, no. 2,914; Stevens, 1870, no. 1,845).
Of the later reproductions in other languages than English, mention may
be made of those in Amati’s _Ricerche Storico-Critico-Scientifiche_,
1828-1830; Bossi’s _Vita di Colombo_, 1818; Urano’s edition of Bossi,
Paris, 1824 and 1825; the Spanish rendering of a collated Latin text
made by the royal librarian Gonzalez for Navarrete, and the French
version in the Paris edition of Navarrete; G. B. Torre’s _Scritti di
Colombo_, Lyons, 1864; _Cartas y testamento di Colon_, Madrid, 1880.
There is in Muratori’s _Rerum Italicarum scriptores_ (iii. 301) an
account “De navigatione Columbi,” written in 1499 by Antonio Gallo, of
Genoa; but it adds nothing to our knowledge, being written entirely
from Columbus’s own letters.
The earliest compiled account from the same sources which appeared in
print was issued, while Columbus was absent on his last voyage, in
the _Nouissime Hystoriarum omnium repercussiones, que supplementum
Supplementi Cronicarum nuncupantur ... usque in annum 1502_, of Jacopo
Filippo Foresti (called Bergomenses, Bergomas, or some other form),
which was dated at Venice, 1502 (colophon, 1503), and contained a
chapter “De insulis in India,” on leaf 441, which had not been included
in the earlier editions of 1483, 1484, 1485, 1486, and 1493, but is
included in all later editions (Venice, 1506; Nuremberg, 1506; Venice,
1513, 1524; Paris, 1535), except the Spanish translation (Harrisse,
_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, nos. 42, 138, 204, and _Additions_, nos. 11,
75; Sabin, vol. vi. nos. 25,083, 25,084; Stevens, 1870, no. 175,
$11; Carter-Brown, vol. i. nos. 19, 27; Murphy, no. 226; Quaritch,
no. 11,757, £4). There are copies in the Library of Congress, the
Carter-Brown and Lenox libraries, and in the National Library in Paris.
[187] _Sull’importanza d’un manoscritto inedito della Biblioteca
Imperiale di Vienna per verificare quale fu la prima isola scoperta dal
Colombo, ... Con una carta geographica_, Vienna, 1869, sixteen pages.
Varnhagen’s paper first appeared in the _Anales de la Universedad de
Chile_, vol. xxvi. (January, 1864).
[188] Evora, 1545, and often reprinted. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_,
p. 45; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 265.
[189] A fac-simile of Irving’s manuscript of his account of this
reception is given in the _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ xx. 201.
[190] Prescott, _Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1873), ii. 170; Major’s
_Select Letters_, p. lxvi; Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions_, p.
ix.
[191] Irving’s _Columbus_, app. xxxii.
[192] Humboldt (_Examen critique_, ii. 279-294) notes the letters
referring to Columbus; and Harrisse, (_Notes on Columbus_, p. 129)
reprints these letters, with translations. In the 1670 edition the
Columbus references are on pp. 72-77, 81, 84, 85, 88-90, 92, 93, 96,
101, 102, 116.
[193] There are eight hundred and sixteen in all (1488 to 1525), and
about thirty of them relate to the New World. He died in 1526.
[194] Prescott, _Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1873), ii. 76.
[195] _Literature of Europe_, vol. i. cap. 4, § 88.
[196] _Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1873), ii. 507, and p. 77. Referring to
Hallam’s conclusion, he says: “I suspect this acute and candid critic
would have been slow to adopt it had he perused the correspondence in
connection with the history of the times, or weighed the unqualified
testimony borne by contemporaries to Martyr’s minute accuracy.”
[197] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, p. 282; Irving, _Columbus_, app.
xxvii.; Brevoort’s _Verrazano_, p. 87; H. H. Bancroft’s _Central
America_, i. 312. A bibliography of Martyr’s works is given on another
page.
[198] _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 255; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p.
135; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 10; Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,714.
[199] It is not certain when this discourse was printed, for the
publication is without date. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 136;
_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 11; Sabin, vol. iii. no. 11,175; _Carter-Brown
Catalogue_, vol. i. no. 4. There are copies of this little tract of
eight leaves in the Force Collection (Library of Congress), and in the
Lenox and Carter-Brown libraries. Others are in the Vatican, Grenville
Collection, etc. Cf. Court, no. 255.
[200] It is given in Italian in Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo_, p. 372;
and in English in Major’s _Select Letters of Columbus_, repeated in
the appendix of Lenox’s reprint of Scyllacius. The “Memorial ... sobre
el suceso de su segundo viage á las Indias,” in Navarrete, is also
printed, with a translation, by Major, p. 72.
[201] They were all presentation-copies; but one in Leclerc, no. 2,960,
is priced 400 francs. The Menzies copy brought $35.
[202] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 16; _Notes on Columbus_, p.
125. Cf. _Intorno ad un rarissimo opusculo di Niccolò Scillacio_,
Modena, 1856, by Amadeo Ronchini, of Parma.
[203] Cf. _ante_ a note for the bibliography of Martyr, in Vol. I.
[204] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 36, refers, for curious details
about Buell, to Pasqual’s _Descubrimiento de la situacion de la
América_, Madrid, 1789, and the letter of the Pope to Boil in Rossi’s
_Del discacciamento di Colombo dalla Spagnuola_, Rome, 1851, p. 76.
[205] There are two copies in Harvard College Library. Cf. Rich (1832),
no. 159, £2 2_s._; Carter-Brown, ii. no. 252; Quaritch, £6 16_s._
6_d._; O’Callaghan, no. 1,841; Murphy, no. 1,971; Court, nos. 271, 272.
[206] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 2.
[207] Carter-Brown, vol. i. nos. 16, 17, 276, 356; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._,
nos. 5, 6.
[208] Folios 11 and 40. Cf. _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 17; Sabin, vol. x.
no. 41,067. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 55, says Rich errs in
stating that an earlier work of Lilio (1493) has a reference to the
discovery.
[209] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 7.
[210] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, no. 126. The _Coronica de Aragon_,
of Fabricius de Vagad, which was published in 1499, makes reference to
the new discoveries (_Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions_, no. 9), as does
the _Coronica van Coellen_, published at Cologne, 1499, where, on the
verso of folio 339, it speaks of “new lands found, in which men roam
like beasts” (Murphy, no. 254; Baer, _Incunabeln_, 1884, no. 172, at
160 marks; London Catalogue (1884), £12 10_s._). In 1498, at Venice,
was published Marc. Ant. Sabellicus’ _In rapsodiam historiarum_ (copy
in British Museum), which has a brief account of Columbus’ family and
his early life. This was enlarged in the second part, published at
Venice in 1504 (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 21). An anchor lost by Columbus
on this voyage, at Trinidad, is said to have been recovered in 1880
(_Bulletin de la Société Géographique d’Anvers_, v. 515).
[211] _Que escribió D. Cristóbal Colon á los ... Rey y Reina de
España._ Cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 127. It is given, with
an English translation, in Major’s _Select Letters_; also in the
_Relazione delle scoperte fatte da C. Colombo, da A. Vespucci, e da
altri dal_ 1492 _al_ 1506, _tratta dai manoscritti della Biblioteca
di Ferrara e pubblicata per la prima volta ed annotata dal Prof. G.
Ferraro_, at Bologna, in 1875, as no. 144 of the _Scelta di curiosità
letterarie inedite o rare dal secolo_ xiii _al_ xvii. A French
translation is given in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 174.
[212] It is usually said that Ferdinand Columbus asserts it was
printed; but Harrisse says he can find no such statement in Ferdinand’s
book.
[213] Vol. i. pp. 277-313.
[214] It is a little quarto of six leaves and an additional blank
leaf (Lenox, _Scyllacius_, p. lxi; Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no.
36). There is a copy in the Marciana, which Harrisse compared with
the Morelli reprint, and says he found the latter extremely faithful
(_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 17).
[215] Leclerc, no. 129.
[216] In Italian in Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo_, p. 396.
[217] This is also in Italian in Torre, p. 401, and in English in
Major’s _Select Letters_.
[218] Stevens (_Notes_, etc., p. 31) is said by Harrisse (_Bibl.
Amer. Vet., Additions_, p. 35) to be in error in saying that Valentim
Fernandez’s early collection of Voyages, in Portuguese, and called
_Marco Paulo_, etc., has any reference to Columbus.
[219] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, nos. 43, 67, and p. 463; _Additions_, nos.
22, 40; Thomassy, _Les papes géographes_.
[220] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 49. See the chapter on Vespucius.
[221] Ibid., _Additions_, no. 27.
[222] Ibid., no. 28.
[223] Ibid., no. 30.
[224] Sabin, vol. vi. no. 24,395.
[225] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, nos. 51, 52; Murphy, no. 2,353; Stevens,
_Bibl. Geog._, no. 2,609. There are copies in the Library of Congress,
Harvard College Library, etc.
[226] Sabin, vol. vii. no. 26,140; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 39; _Bibl.
Amer. Vet._, no. 34; Graesse, ii. 645; Brunet, ii. 1421. There were
later editions in 1518, 1565, 1567, 1578, 1604, 1726, etc.
[227] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 35.
[228] See Vol. III. pp. 16, 199; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, pp. 464, 518; and
_Additions_, no. 38.
[229] In the section “inventio novarum insularum,” _Bibl. Amer. Vet.,
Additions_, no. 39.
[230] Brunet, iv. 915; _Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions_, no. 44.
[231] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 57; _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 73.
There is a copy in the Boston Athenæum.
[232] Carter-Brown, no. 48; Murphy, no. 32.
[233] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 75.
[234] Cf. bibliographical note on Columbus in Charton’s _Voyageurs_,
iii. 190.
[235] _Historical Collections_, vol. i. no. 1,554; _Bibl. Hist._
(1870), no. 1,661; J. J. Cooke, no. 2,092; Murphy, no. 2,042 (bought
by Cornell University); Panzer, vii. 63; Graesse, v. 469; Brunet,
iv. 919; Rosenthal (1884); Baer, _Incunabeln_ (1884), no. 116. Cf.
Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 74, for the note and translation;
and other versions in _Historical Magazine_, December, 1862, and in
the _Christian Examiner_, September, 1858. Also, see _Bibl. Amer.
Vet._, no. 88, for a full account; and the reduced fac-simile of title
in Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 51. The book is not very rare, though
becoming so, since, as the French sale-catalogues say, referring to
the note, “Cette particularité fait de ce livre un objet de haute
curiosité pour les collectionneurs Américains.” Harrisse says of
it: “Although prohibited, confiscated, and otherwise ill-treated by
the Court of Rome and the city authorities of Genoa, this work is
frequently met with,—owing, perhaps, to the fact that two thousand
copies were printed, of which only five hundred found purchasers, while
the fifty on vellum were distributed among the sovereigns of Europe
and Asia.” (Cf. Van Praet, _Catalogue des livres sur vélin_, i. 8.)
Its price is, however, increasing. Forty years ago Rich priced it at
eighteen shillings. Recent quotations put it, in London and Paris, at
£7, 100 marks, and 110 francs. The Editor has used the copy in the
Harvard College Library, and in the Boston Public Library,—which last
belonged to George Ticknor, who had used George Livermore’s copy before
he himself possessed the book. Ticknor’s _Spanish Literature_, i. 188;
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, x. 431.
[236] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 220; Stevens, _Historical Collections_,
vol. i. no. 242. There is a copy in Harvard College Library.
[237] We know that Ferdinand bought a copy of this book in 1537; cf.
Harrisse, _Fernand Colomb_, p. 27.
[238] _Historical Collections_, vol. i, no. 1,554.
[239] On the question of the connection of Columbus with his second
companion, Donna Beatrix Enriquez who was of a respectable family in
Cordova,—that there was a marriage tie has been claimed by Herrera,
Tiraboschi, Bossi, Roselly de Lorgues, Barry, and Cadoret (_Vie
de Colomb_, Paris, 1869, appendix); and that there was no such
tie, by Napione (_Patria di Colombo_ and Introduction to _Codice
Colombo-Americano_), Spotorno, Navarrete, Humboldt, and Irving. Cf.
_Historical Magazine_ (August, 1867), p. 225; _Revue des questions
historiques_ (1879), XXV. 213; Angelo Sanguinetti’s _Sull’origine di
Ferdinando Colombo_ (Genoa, 1876), p. 55; Giuseppe Antonio Dondero’s
_L’onestá di Cristoforo Colombo_ (Genoa, 1877), p. 213; Harrisse,
_Fernand Colomb_, p. 2; D’Avezac, in _Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie_ (1872), p. 19. It may be noted that Ferdinand de Galardi,
in dedicating his _Traité politique_ (Leyden, 1660) to Don Pedro Colon,
refers to Ferdinand Colon as “Fernando Henriquez.” (Stevens, _Bibl.
Geog._, no. 1,147).
The inference from Columbus’ final testamentary language is certainly
against the lady’s chastity. In his codicil he enjoins his son Diego
to provide for the respectable maintenance of the mother of Ferdinand,
“for the discharge of my conscience, for it weighs heavy on my soul.”
Irving and others refer to this as the compunction of the last hours
of the testator. De Lorgues tries to show that this codicil was made
April 1, 1502 (though others claim that the document of this date was
another will, not yet found), and only copied at Segovia, Aug. 25,
1505, and deposited in legal form with a notary at Valladolid, May
19, 1506. Columbus dying May 20,—the effect of all which is only to
carry back, much to Columbus’ credit, the compunction to an earlier
date. The will (1498), but not the codicil, is given in Irving, app.
xxxiv. Cancellieri, in his _Dissertazioni_, gives it imperfectly; but
it is accurately given in the _Transactions_ of the Genoa Academy. Cf.
Harrisse (_Notes on Columbus_) p. 160; Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo;
Colon en Quisqueya_, Santo Domingo (1877), pp. 81, 99; _Cartas y
testamento_, Madrid, 1880; Navarrete, _Coleccion_; and elsewhere.
[240] De Lorgues, on the authority of Zúñiga (_Anales eclesiásticos_,
p. 496), says he was born Aug. 29, 1487, and not Aug. 15, 1488, as
Navarrete and Humboldt had said. Harrisse (_Fernand Colomb_, p. 1)
alleges the authority of the executor of his will for the date Aug. 15,
1488. The inscription on his supposed grave would make him born Sept.
28, 1488.
[241] Prescott (_Ferdinand and Isabella_, ii. 507) speaks of Ferdinand
Columbus’ “experience and opportunities, combined with uncommon
literary attainments.” Harrisse calculates his income from the bequest
of his father, and from pensions, at about 180,000 francs of the
present day. (_Fernand Colomb_, p. 29.)
[242] There has been close scrutiny of the publications of Europe in
all tongues for the half century and more following the sketch of
Guistiniani in 1516, till the publication of the earliest considerable
account of Columbus in the Ulloa version of 1571, to gather some
records of the growth or vicissitudes of the fame of the great
discoverer, and of the interest felt by the European public in the
progress of events in the New World. Harrisse’s _Bibliotheca Americana
Vetustissima_, and his _Additions_ to the same, give us the completest
record down to 1550, coupled with the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ for the
whole period.
[243] A copy of the inscription on his tomb in Seville, with a
communication by George Sumner, is printed in Major’s _Select Letters
of Columbus_, p. lxxxi.
[244] Cf. Edwards, _Memoirs of Libraries_, and a Memoir of Ferdinand,
by Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete, in _Colec. de doc. inéd._, vol.
xvi. A fac-simile of the first page of the manuscript catalogue of the
books, made by Ferdinand himself, is given in Harrisse’s _D. Fernando
Colon_, of which the annexed is the heading:—
[Illustration]
There is a list of the books in B. Gallardo’s _Ensayo de una
bibliotheca de libros españoles raros_. Harrisse gives the fullest
account of Ferdinand and his migrations, which can be in part traced by
the inscriptions in his books of the place of their purchase; for he
had the habit of so marking them. Cf. a paper on Ferdinand, by W. M.
Wood, in _Once a Week_, xii. 165.
[245] Barcia says that Baliano began printing it simultaneously in
Spanish, Italian, and Latin; but only the Italian seems to have been
completed, or at least is the only one known to bibliographers. (_Notes
on Columbus_, p. 24.) Oettinger (_Bibl. biog._, Leipsic, 1850) is in
error in giving an edition at Madrid in 1530. The 1571 Italian edition
is very rare; there are copies in Harvard College, Carter-Brown, and
Lenox libraries. Rich priced it in 1832 at £1 10_s._ Leclerc (no. 138)
prices it at 200 francs. The Sobolewski copy (no. 3,756) sold in 1873
for 285 francs, was again sold in 1884 in the Court Sale, no. 77.
The _Murphy Catalogue_ (no. 2,881) shows a copy. This Ulloa version
has since appeared somewhat altered, with several letters added,—in
1614 (Milan, priced in 1832, by Rich, at £1 10_s._; recently, at 75
francs; Carter-Brown, ii. 165); in 1676 (Venice, Carter-Brown, vol.
ii. no. 1,141, priced at 35 francs and 45 marks); in 1678 (Venice,
Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,181, priced at 50 francs); in 1681 (Paris,
Court Sale, no. 79); in 1685 (Venice, Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,310,
priced at £1 8_s._); and later, in 1709 (Harvard College Library),
1728, etc.; and for the last time in 1867, revised by Giulio Antimaco,
published in London, though of Italian manufacture. Cancellieri cites
editions of 1618 and 1672. A French translation, _La Vie de Cristofle
Colomb_, was made by Cotolendi, and published in 1681 at Paris. There
are copies in the Harvard College and Carter-Brown (_Catalogue_, vol.
ii. no. 1,215) libraries. It is worth from $6 to $10. A new French
version, “traduite et annotée par E. Muller,” appeared in Paris
in 1879, the editor calling the 1681 version “tronqué, incorrect,
décharné, glacial.” An English version appears in the chief collections
of Voyages and Travels,—Churchill (ii. 479), Kerr (iii. 1), and
Pinkerton (xii. 1). Barcia gave it a Spanish dress after Ulloa’s,
and this was printed in his _Historiadores primitivos de las Indias
occidentales_, at Madrid, in 1749, being found in vol. i. pp. 1-128.
(Cf. Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 893.)
[246] _Historical Collections_ (1881), vol. i. no. 1,379.
[247] The Spanish title of Harrisse’s book is _D. Fernando Colon,
historiador de su padre: Ensayo crítico, Sevilla_, 1871. It was not
published as originally written till the next year (1872), when it bore
the title, _Fernand Colomb: sa vie, ses œuvres; Essai critique_. Paris,
Tross, 1872. Cf. Arana, _Bibliog. de obras anónimas_ Santiago de Chile
(1882), no. 176.
[248] Le Comte Adolphe de Circourt in the _Revue des questions
historiques_, xi. 520; and _Ausland_ (1873). p. 241, etc.
[249] Harrisse, _Fernand Colomb_, p. 152.
[250] Sabin, vol. vii. no. 27,478. Also in 1558, 1559.
[251] Sabin, vol. v. no. 17,971.
[252] Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 293.
[253] Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 340; Leclerc, nos. 226-228; J. J.
Cooke, no. 575. There were other editions in 1583 and 1585; they have a
map of Columbus’ discoveries. Sabin, vol. vii. no. 26,500.
[254] Sabin, vol. ii. no. 6,161-6,162; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 509.
There was a second edition, _Bibliotheca, sive thesaurus virtutis et
gloriæ_, in 1628.
[255] Sabin, vol. iii. no. 9,195.
[256] He assumed his mother’s name, but sometimes added his
father’s,—Herrera y Tordesillas. Irving (app. xxxi. to his _Life of
Columbus_) says he was born in 1565.
[257] _Life of Columbus_, app. xxxi.; Herrera’s account of Columbus is
given in Kerr’s _Voyages_, iii. 242.
[258] _Central America_, i. 317; cf. his _Chroniclers_, p. 22.
[259] _Dictionary_; also issued separately with that of Hennepin.
[260] In comparing Rich’s (1832, £4 4_s._) and recent prices, there
does not seem to be much appreciation in the value of the book during
the last fifty years for ordinary copies; but Quaritch has priced the
Beckford (no. 735, copy so high as £52. There are copies in the Library
of Congress, Carter-Brown, Harvard College, and Boston Public Library.
Cf. _Ticknor Catalogue_; Sabin, no. 31,544; Carter-Brown, ii. 2;
Murphy, 1206; Court, 169.
[261] Sabin, no. 31,539. This _Descripcion_ was translated into
Latin by Barlæus, and with other tracts joined to it was printed at
Amsterdam, in 1622, as _Novus orbis sive descriptio Indiæ occidentalis_
(Carter-Brown) vol. ii., no. 266; Sabin, no. 31,540; it is in our
principal libraries, and is worth $10 or $15). It copies the maps of
the Madrid edition, and is frequently cited as Colin’s edition. The
Latin was used in 1624 in part by De Bry, part xii. of the _Grands
voyages_. (Camus, pp. 147, 160; Tiele, pp. 56, 312, who followed other
engravings than Herrera’s for the Incas). There was a Dutch version,
_Nieuwe Werelt_, by the same publisher, in 1622 (Sabin, no. 31,542;
Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 264), and a French (Sabin, no. 31,543;
Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 265; Rich, 1832, £1 10_s._; Quaritch, £2
12_s._ 6_d._).
[262] There are copies in the Boston Athenæum, Boston Public, and
Harvard College libraries (Sabin, nos. 31,541, 31,546; Carter-Brown,
vol. iii. nos. 376, 450; Huth, vol. ii. no. 683; Leclerc, no. 278, one
hundred and thirty francs; Field, no. 689; ordinary copies are priced
at £3 or £4; large paper at £10 or £12). A rival but inferior edition
was issued at Antwerp in 1728, without maps, and with De Bry’s instead
of Herrera’s engravings (Sabin, no. 31,545). A French version was
begun at Paris in 1659, but was reissued in 1660-1670 in three volumes
(Sabin, nos. 31,548-31,550; Field, no. 690; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no.
875; Leclerc, no. 282, sixty francs), including only three decades.
Portions were included in the Dutch collection of Van der Aa (Sabin,
nos. 31,551, etc.; Carter-Brown, iii. 111). It is also included in
Hulsius, part xviii. (Carter-Brown, i. 496). The English translation of
the first three decades, by Captain John Stevens, is in six volumes,
London, 1725-1726; but a good many liberties are taken with the text
(Sabin, no. 31,557; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 355). New titles were
given to the same sheets, in 1740, for what is called a second edition
(Sabin, no. 31,558). “How many misstatements are attributed to Herrera
which can be traced no nearer that author than Captain John Stevens’s
English translation? It is absolutely necessary to study this latter
book to see where so many English and American authors have taken
incorrect facts” (H. Stevens, _Bibliotheca Hist._, p. xiii.).
[263] Such as the _Anales de Aragon_, 1610; the _Compendio historial
de las chrónicas y universal historia de todos los reynos de España_,
1628; Zúñiga’s _Annales eclesiasticos y seculares de Seville_, 1677;
_Los reyes de Aragon, por Pedro Abarca_, 1682; and the _Monarquía de
España, por Don Pedro Salazar de Mendoza_, 1770. The _Varones ilustres
del nuevo mondo_ of Pizarro y Orellana, published at Madrid in 1639,
contained a Life of Columbus, as well as notices of Ojeda, Cortes,
Pizarro, etc.
[264] Sabin, vol. ii. no. 6,440; Asher, no. 355; Trömel, no. 366;
Muller (1872), no. 126.
[265] Sabin, vol. v. no. 21,418. Cf. Arana’s _Bibliografía de obras
anónimas_, Santiago de Chile (1882), no. 143.
[266] Sabin, vol. x. no. 38,879. Harrisse (_Notes on Columbus_, p.
190) enumerates some of the earlier and later poems, plays, sonnets,
etc., wholly or incidentally illustrating the career of Columbus. Cf.
also his _Fernand Colomb_, p. 131, and Larousse’s _Grand dictionnaire
universel_, vol. iv. The earliest mention of Columbus in English poetry
is in Baptist Goodall’s _Tryall of Trauell_, London, 1630.
[267] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, i. 45; xii. 65.
[268] A French version, by C. M. Urano, was published at Paris in
1824; again in 1825. It is subjected to an examination, particularly
as regards the charge of ingratitude against Ferdinand, in the French
edition of Navarrete, i. 309 (Sabin, vol. ii. no. 6,464).
[269] There was a Spanish translation, made by José Garcia de Villalta,
published in Madrid in 1833.
[270] In vol. iii., “De quelques faits relatifs à Colomb et à Vespuce.”
In vol. i. he reviews the state of knowledge on the subject in
1833. The German text, _Kritische Untersuchungen_, was printed in a
translation by Jules Louis Ideler, of which the best edition is that
of Berlin, 1852, edited by H. Müller. Humboldt never completed this
work. The parts on the early maps, which he had intended, were later
cursorily touched in his introduction to Ghillany’s _Behaim_. Cf.
D’Avezac’s _Waltzemüller_, p. 2, and B. de Xivrey’s _Des premières
relations entre l’Amerique et l’Europe d’après les recherches de A. de
Humboldt_, Paris, 1835,—taken from the _Revue de Paris_.
[271] _History of Spanish Literature_, i. 190.
[272] Harrisse (_Notes on Columbus_, p. 50) speaks of Prescott as
“eloquent but imaginative.”
[273] The work was patronized by the Pope, and was reproduced in great
luxury of ornamentation in 1879. An English abridgment and adaptation,
by J. J. Barry, was republished in New York in 1869. A Dutch
translation, _Leven en reizen van Columbus_, was printed at Utrecht in
1863.
[274] Some of the other contributions of this movement are these:
Roselly de Lorgues, _Satan contre Christophe Colomb, ou la prétendue
chute du serviteur de Dieu_, Paris, 1876; Tullio Dandolo’s _I secoli di
Dante e Colombo_, Milan, 1852, and his _Cristoforo Colombo_, Genovese,
1855; P. Ventura de Raulica’s _Cristoforo Colombo rivendicato alla
chiesa_; Eugène Cadoret, _La vie de Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1869,—in
advocacy of canonization; Le Baron van Brocken, _Des vicissitudes
posthumes de Christophe Colomb, et de sa béatification possible_,
Paris, 1865,—which enumerates most of the publications bearing on
the grounds for canonization; Angelo Sanguineti, _La Canonizzazione
di Cristoforo Colombo_, Genoa, 1875,—the same author had published a
_Vita di Colombo_ in 1846; _Sainteté de Christophe Colomb, résumé des
mérites de ce serviteur de Dieu, traduit de l’Italien_, twenty-four
pages; _Civiltà cattolica_, vol. vii.; a paper, “De l’influence de la
religion dans les découvertes du XV^e siècle et dans la découverte
de l’Amérique,” in _Etudes par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus_,
October, 1876; Baldi, _Cristoforo Colombo glorificato dal voto
dell’Episcopato Cattolico_, Genoa, 1881. A popular Catholic Life is
Arthur George Knight’s _Christopher Columbus_, London, 1877.
[275] There are various reviews of it indicated in Poole’s _Index_, p.
29; cf. H. H. Bancroft’s _Mexico_, ii. 488.
[276] A somewhat similar view is taken by Maury, in _Harpers’ Monthly_,
xlii. 425, 527, in “An Examination of the Claims of Columbus.”
[277] From which the account of Columbus’ early life is translated in
Becher’s _Landfall of Columbus_, pp. 1-58.
[278] An English translation, by R. S. H., appeared in Philadelphia
in 1878. We regret not being able to have seen a new work by Henry
Harrisse now in press: _Christophe Colomb, son origine, sa vie, ses
voyages, sa famille, et ses descendants, d’après documents inédits,
avec cinq tableaux généalogiques et un appendice documentaire_. [See
_Postscript_ following this chapter.]
[279] Fr. Forster, _Columbus, der Entdecker der Neuen Welt_, second
edition, 1846.
[280] Oscar Peschel, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_,
second edition, 1877.
[281] Sophus Ruge, _Die Weltanschauung des Columbus_, 1876; _Das
Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, 1883. Cf. Theodor Schott’s “Columbus und
seine Weltanschauung,” in Virchow and Holtzendorff’s _Vorträge_, xiii.
308.
[282] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 50.
[283] It appeared in the _Revue contemporaine_, xxiv. 484, and was
drawn out by a paper on a newly discovered portrait of Columbus,
which had been printed by Jomard in the _Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie_; by Valentin Carderera’s _Informe sobre los retratos
de Cristóbal Colon_, printed by the Royal Academy of History at
Madrid, in 1851, in their _Memorias_, vol. viii.; and by an article,
by Isidore Löwenstern, of the Academy of Sciences at Turin, in the
_Revue Archéologique_, x. 181. The paper by Jomard was the incentive
of Carderera. both treatises induced the review of Löwenstern; while
Feuillet de Conches fairly summed up the results. There has been
no thorough account in English. A brief letter on the subject by
Irving (printed in the _Life of Irving_, vol. iv.) was all there
was till Professor J. D. Butler recently traced the pedigree of
the Yanez picture, a copy of which was lately given by Governor
Fairchild to the Historical Society of Wisconsin. Cf. Butler’s paper
in the _Collections_ of that Society, vol. ix. p. 76 (also printed
separately); and articles in _Lippincott’s Magazine_, March, 1883, and
_The Nation_, Nov. 16, 1882.
[284] The vignette is given in colored fac-simile in Major’s _Select
Letters of Columbus_, 2d edition. Herrera’s picture was reproduced in
the English translation by Stevens, and has been accepted in so late
a publication as Gay’s _Popular History of the United States_, i. 99.
Cf. also the portrait in the 1727-1730 edition of Herrera, and its
equivalent in Montanus, as shown on a later page. There is a vignette
portrait on the titlepage of the 1601 edition of Herrera.
[285] The edition of Florence, 1551, has no engravings, but gives the
account of Columbus on p. 171.
[286] _Magazine of American History_, June, 1884, p. 554.
[287] Cf. _Boletin de la Sociedad geográfica de Madrid_, vol. vi. A
portrait in the collection of the Marquis de Malpica is said closely to
resemble it. One belonging to the Duke of Veraguas is also thought to
be related to it, and is engraved in the French edition of Navarrete.
It is thought Antonio del Rincon, a painter well known in Columbus’
day, may have painted this Yanez canvas, on the discoverer’s return
from his second voyage. Carderera believed in it, and Banchero, in his
edition of the _Codice Colombo Americano_, adopted it (_Magazine of
American History_, i. 511). The picture now in the Wisconsin Historical
Society’s Rooms is copied directly from the Yanez portrait.
[288] This Capriolo cut is engraved and accepted in Carderera’s
_Informe_. Löwenstern fails to see how it corresponds to the written
descriptions of Columbus’ person. It is changed somewhat from the
1575 cut; cf. _Magasin pittoresque_, troisième année, p. 316. The two
cuts, one or the other, and a mingling of the two, have given rise
apparently to a variety of imitations. The head on panel preserved now,
or lately, at Cuccaro, and belonging to Fidele Guglielmo Colombo, is
of this type. It was engraved in Napione’s _Della patria di Colombo_,
Florence, 1808. The head by Crispin de Pas, in the _Effigies regum
ac principum_, of an early year in the seventeenth century, is also
traced to these cuts, as well as the engraving by Pieter van Opmeer
in his _Opus chronographicum_, 1611. Landon’s _Galerie historique_
(Paris, 1805-1809), also shows an imitation; and another is that on
the title of Cancellieri’s _Notizia di Colombo_. Navarrete published
a lithograph of the 1575 cut. Cf. Irving’s letter. A likeness of this
type is reproduced in colors, in a very pleasing way, in Roselly de
Lorgues’ _Christophe Colomb_, 1879, and in woodcut, equally well done,
in the same work; also in J. J. Barry’s adaptation of De Lorgues, New
York, 1869. Another good woodcut of it is given in _Harpers’ Monthly_
(October, 1882), p. 729. It is also accepted in Torre’s _Scritti di
Colombo_.
[289] See 3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 285; _Proc._, vol. ii. pp. 23,
25, 289.
[290] There are two portraits thought to have some relation with this
Florentine likeness. One was formerly in the Collection d’Ambras, in
the Tyrol, which was formed by a nephew of Charles V., but was in 1805
removed to the museum in Vienna. It is on panel, of small size, and has
been engraved in Frankl’s German poem on Columbus. The other is one
whose history Isnardi, in his _Sulla patria di Colombo_, 1838, traces
back for three centuries. It is now, or was lately, in the common
council hall at Cogoleto.
[291] What is known as the Venetian mosaic portrait of Columbus,
resembling the De Bry in the head, the hands holding a map, is engraved
in _Harpers’ Monthly_, liv. 1.
[292] A proof-copy of this engraving is among the Tosti Engravings in
the Boston Public Library.
[293] Engravings from De Bry’s burin also appeared, in 1597, in
Boissard’s _Icones quinquaginta virorum ad vivum effictæ_; again,
in the _Bibliotheca sive thesaurus virtutis et gloriæ_ (Frankfort,
1628-1634), in four volumes, usually ascribed jointly to De Bry and
Boissard; and, finally, in the _Bibliotheca chalcographica_ (Frankfort,
1650-1664), ascribed to Boissard; but the plates are marked Jean
Théodore de Bry. The De Bry type was apparent in the print in Isaac
Bullart’s _Académie des Sciences et des Arts_, Paris, 1682; and a few
years later (1688), an aquaforte engraving by Rosaspina came out in
Paul Freherus’ _Théâtre des hommes célèbres_. For the later use made of
this De Bry likeness, reference may be made, among others, to the works
of Napione and Bossi, Durazzo’s _Eulogium_, the _Historia de Mexico_
by Francisco Carbajal Espinosa, published at Mexico, in 1862, tome i,
J. J. Smith’s _American Historical and Literary Curiosities_, sundry
editions of Irving’s _Life of Columbus_, and the London (1867) edition
of Ferdinand Columbus’ Life of his father. There is a photograph of
it in Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_. De Bry engraved various other
pictures of Columbus, mostly of small size,—a full-length in the corner
of a half-globe (part vi.); a full-length on the deck of a caravel
(in part iv., re-engraved in Bossi, Charton, etc.); a small vignette
portrait, together with one of Vespucius, in the Latin and German
edition of part iv. (1594); the well-known picture illustrating the
anecdote of the egg (part iv.). Not one of these has any claim to be
other than imaginative. His larger likeness he reproduced in a small
medallion as the title of the Herrera narrative (part xii., German and
Latin, 1623-1624), together with likenesses of Vespucius, Pizarro, and
Magellan. Another reminiscence of the apocryphal egg story is found in
a painting, representing a man in a fur cap, holding up an egg, the
face wearing a grin, which was brought forward a few years ago by Mr.
Rinck, of New York, and which is described and engraved in the _Compte
rendu_ of the Congrès des Américanistes, 1877, ii. 375.
[294] There was a movement at this time (1845) to erect a monument in
Genoa.
[295] _Ticknor Catalogue_, p. 95. The medallion on the tomb in the
cathedral at Havana is usually said to have been copied from this
picture; but the picture sent to Havana to be used as a model is
said, on better authority, to have been one belonging to the Duke
of Veraguas,—perhaps the one said to be in the Consistorial Hall at
Havana, which has the garb of a familiar of the Inquisition; and
this is represented as the gift of that Duke (_Magazine of American
History_, i. 510).
[296] It is re-engraved in the English and German translations.
Carderera rejects it; but the portrait in the Archives of the Indies at
Seville is said to be a copy of it; and a copy is in the Pennsylvania
Academy of Arts in Philadelphia. A three-quarters length of Columbus,
representing him in ruff and armor, full face, mustache and imperial,
right hand on a globe, left hand holding a truncheon, called “Cristoval
Colon: copiado de un Quadro origl. que se conserva en la familia,” was
engraved, and marked “Bart. Vazque. la Grabo, 1791.”
[297] It is still unaccountably retained in the revised 1873 edition.
[298] Cf. their _Proceedings_, April, 1853.
[299] It was restored in 1850 (_Magazine of American History_, v. 446).
[300] Such are the following: (1) In full dress, with ruff and rings,
said to have been painted by Sir Anthony More for Margaret of the
Netherlands, and taken to England in 1590,—engraved in one of the
English editions of Irving, where also has appeared an engraving of a
picture by Juan de Borgoña, painted in 1519 for the Chapter-room of
the Cathedral of Toledo. (2) A full-length in mail, with ruff, in the
Longa or Exchange at Seville, showing a man of thirty or thirty-five
years, which Irving thinks may have been taken for Diego Columbus.
(3) An engraving in Fuchsius’ _Metoposcopia et ophthalmoscopia_,
Strasburg, 1610 (Sabin’s _Dictionary_, vii. 89). (4) An engraving in
N. De Clerck’s _Tooneel der beroemder hertogen_, etc., Delft, 1615,—a
collection of portraits, including also Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan,
Montezuma, etc. (5) A full-length, engraved in Philoponus, 1621. (6) An
old engraving, with pointed beard and ruff, preserved in the National
Library at Paris. (7) The engraving in the _Nieuwe en onbekende
Weereld_ of Montanus, 1671-1673, repeated in Ogilby’s _America_, and
reproduced in Bos’s _Leven en Daden_, and in Herrera, edition 1728.
A fac-simile of it is given herewith. Cf. Ruyter’s _See-Helden_,
Nuremberg, 1661. (8) A copper plate, showing a man with a beard,
with fur trimmings to a close-fitting vestment, one hand holding an
astrolabe, the other pointing upward,—which accompanies a translation
of Thevet’s account of Columbus in the appendix to the Cambridge, 1676,
edition of North’s _Plutarch_. (9) An old woodcut in the _Neueröffnetes
Amphitheatrum_, published at Erfurt in 1723-1724 (_Brinley Catalogue_,
no. 48). (10) A man with curly hair, mustache and imperial, ruff and
armor, with a finger on a globe,—engraved in Cristóbal Cladera’s
_Investigaciones históricas, sobre los principales descubrimientos de
los Españoles en el mar Oceano en el siglo XV. y principios del XVI._,
Madrid, 1794. (11) Columbus and his sons, Diego and Ferdinand, engraved
in Bryan Edwards’ _The History, civil and commercial, of the British
Colonies in the West Indies_, 1794; again, 1801. Feuillet de Conches in
his essay on the portraits calls it a pure fantasy.
[301] A view of this receptacle of the papers, with the bust and the
portfolio, is given in _Harpers’ Monthly_, vol. liv., December, 1876.
[302] It is engraved in the first edition of the _Codice diplomatico
Colombo-Americano_, and in the English translation of that book. It is
also re-engraved in the Lenox edition of _Scyllacius_. Another bust in
Genoa is given in the French edition of Navarrete. Of the bust in the
Capitoline Museum at Rome—purely ideal—there is a copy in the New York
Historical Society’s Gallery, no. 134. The effigies on the monument at
Seville, and the bust at Havana, with their costume of the latter part
of the sixteenth century, present no claims for fidelity. Cf. _Magazine
of American History_, i. 510.
[303] There is a model of it in the Public Library of Boston, a
photograph in Harrisse’s _Notes_, p. 182, and engravings in De Lorgues,
Torri, etc. There is also a view of this monument in an article on
Genoa, the home of Columbus, by O. M. Spencer, in _Harpers’ Monthly_,
vol. liv., December, 1876. The mailed figure on the Capitol steps at
Washington, by Persico, is without claim to notice. There is a colossal
statue at Lima, erected in 1850 by Salvatore Revelli, a marble one at
Nassau (New Providence), and another at Cardeñas, Cuba.
[304] Navarrete, ii. 316.
[305] The _Informe de la Real Academia_ says there is no proof of it;
and of the famous inscription.—
“A Castilla y á Leon Nuevo Mundo dió Colon,”—
said to have been put on his tomb, there is no evidence that it ever
was actually used, being only proposed in the _Elegías_ of Castellanos,
1588.
[306] They are in the Archives at Madrid. Harrisse found one in the
Archives of the Duke of Veraguas (_Los restos_, etc., p. 41). The
orders are printed by Roque Cocchia, Prieto, Colmeiro, etc.
[307] Harrisse, _Los restos_, p. 44.
[308] Pricto, _Exámen_, etc., p. 18.
[309] Colmeiro, p. 160.
[310] Quoted in Harrisse, _Les sépultures_, etc., p. 22.
[311] _Synodo Diocesan del Arzobispado di Santo Domingo_, p. 13.
[312] Plans of the chancel, with the disposition of the tombs in 1540
or 1541, as now supposed, are given in Tejera, p. 10; Cocchia, p. 48,
etc.
[313] Published both in French and English at Philadelphia in 1796.
[314] Harrisse, _Los restos_, p. 47.
[315] Navarrete, ii. 365; Prieto’s _Exámen_, p. 20; Roque Cocchia, p.
280; Harrisse, _Los restos_, app. 4.
[316] Irving’s account of this transportation is in his _Life of
Columbus_, app. i. Cf. letter of Duke of Veraguas (March 30, 1796) in
_Magazine of American History_, i. 247. At Havana the reinterment took
place with great parade. An oration was delivered by Caballero, the
original manuscript of which is now in the Massachusetts Historical
Society’s Library (cf. _Proceedings_, ii. 105, 168). Prieto (_Los
restos_) prints this oration; Navarrete (vol. ii. pp. 365-381) gives
extracts from the official accounts of the transfer of the remains.
[317] The Spanish consul is said to have been satisfied with the
precautions. Cf. _Do existen depositadas las cenizas de Colon?_ by Don
José de Echeverri (Santander, 1878). There are views of the Cathedral
in Hazard’s _Santo Domingo_, p. 224, and elsewhere.
[318] Which some have supposed was received in Columbus’ body in his
early piratical days.
[319] This plate was discovered on a later examination.
[320] Both of these inscriptions are given in fac-simile in Cocchia,
p. 290; in Tejera, p. 30; and in Armas, who calls it “inscripcion
auténtica—escritura gótica-alemana” of the sixteenth century.
[321] Fac-similes of these are given in the _Informe de la Real
Academia_, Tejera (pp. 33, 34), Prieto, Cocchia (pp. 170, 171), Shea’s
paper, and in Armas, who calls the inscription, “Apócrifas—escritura
inglesa de la épocha actual.”
[322] _Descubrimiento de los verdaderos restos de Cristóbal Colon:
carta pastoral_, Santo Domingo, 1877,—reprinted in _Informe de la Real
Academia_, p. 191, etc.
[323] The Bishop, in his subsequent _Los restos de Colon_ (Santo
Domingo, 1879), written after his honesty in the matter was impugned,
and with the aim of giving a full exposition, shows, in cap. xviii.
how the discovery, as he claimed it, interested the world. Various
contemporaneous documents are also given in _Colon en Quisqueya,
Coleccion de documentos_, etc., Santo Domingo, 1877. A movement was
made to erect a monument in Santo Domingo, and some response was
received from the United States. _New Jersey Historical Society’s
Proceedings_, v. 134; _Pennsylvania Magazine of History_, iii. 465.
[324] Mr. J. C. Brevoort, in “Where are the Remains of Columbus?” in
_Magazine of American History_, ii. 157, suggests that the “D. de la
A.” means “Dignidad de la Almirantazgo.”
[325] This was a view advanced by J. I. de Armas in a Caracas
newspaper, later set forth in his _Las cenizas de Cristóbal Colon
suplantadas en la Catedral de Santo Domingo_, Caracas, 1881. The same
view is taken by Sir Travers Twiss, in his _Christopher Columbus: A
Monograph on his True Burial-place_ (London, 1879), a paper which
originally appeared in the _Nautical Magazine_. M. A. Baguet, in “Où
sont ces restes de Colomb?” printed in the _Bulletin de la Société
d’Anvers_ (1882), vi. 449, also holds that the remains are those of the
grandson, Cristoval Colon. For an adverse view, see the _Informe_ of
the Amigos del Pais, published at Santo Domingo, 1882. Cf. also Juan
Maria Asensio, _Los restos de Colon_, segunda ed., Sevile, 1881.
[326] Originally in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_,
October, 1878. Cf. also his paper in the _Revue critique_, Jan. 5,
1878, “Les restes mortels de Colomb.”
[327] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, p. 3.
[328] Pages 1177-1181: “Ueber das Geburtsjahre des Entdeckers von
America.”
[329] _Année véritable de la naissance de Christophe Colomb, et revue
chronologique des principales époques de sa vie_, in _Bulletin de la
Société de Géographie_, Juillet, 1872; also printed separately in 1873,
pp. 64.
[330] Based on a statement in the Italian text of Peter Martyr (1534)
which is not in the original Latin.
[331] Also in Prévost’s _Voyages_, and in Tiraboschi’s _Letteratura
Italiana_.
[332] Humboldt, _Examen critique_, iii. 252.
[333] _Nouvelle biographie générale_, xi. 209.
[334] _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1862.
[335] _Christopher Colomb._
[336] _Les marins du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_, i. 80.
[337] _Patria di Colombo._
[338] _Storia universale._
[339] _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p. 97; _Ausland_, 1866, p. 1178.
[340] _Investigaciones históricas_, p. 38.
[341] _Annali di Genova_,1708, p. 26.
[342] _Annotationes ad Tacitum._
[343] These various later arguments are epitomized in Ruge, _Das
Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p. 219.
[344] Charles Malloy’s _Treatise of Affairs Maritime_, 3d ed., London,
1682; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 69.
[345] Documentary proof, as it was called, has been printed in the
_Revue de Paris_, where (August, 1841) it is said that the certificate
of Columbus’ marriage has been discovered in Corsica. Cf. Margry,
_Navigations Françaises_, p. 357. The views of the Abbé Martin
Casanova, that Columbus was born in Calvi in Corsica, and the act of
the French President of Aug. 6, 1883, approving of the erection of a
monument to Columbus in that town, have been since reviewed by Harrisse
in the _Revue critique_ (18 Juin, 1883), who repeats the arguments for
a belief in Genoa as the birthplace, in a paper, “Christophe Colomb et
la Corse,” which has since been printed separately.
[346] Domingo de Valtanas, _Compendio de cosas notables de España_,
Seville, 1550; _Bibl. Amer. Vet.,_ no. 183.
[347] The claim is for Pradello, a village neighboring to Placentia.
Cf. Campi, _Historia ecclesiastica di Piacenza,_, Piacenza, 1651-1662,
which contains a “discorso historico circa la nascita di Colombo,”
etc.; Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 67; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no.
711.
[348] Napione, in _Mémoires de l’Académie de Turin_ (1805), xii. 116,
and (1823) xxvii. 73,—the first part being printed separately at
Florence, in 1808, as _Della Patria di Colombo_, while he printed, in
1809, _Del primo scopritore del continente del nuovo mondo_. In the
same year J. D. Lanjuinais published at Paris, in reference to Napione,
his _Christophe Colomb, ou notice d’un livre Italien concernant cet
illustre navigateur_. Cf. the same author’s _Etudes_ (Paris, 1823),
for a sketch of Columbus, pp. 71-94; _Dissertazioni di Francesco
Cancellieri sopra Colombo_, Rome, 1809; and Vicenzio Conti’s historical
account of Montferrat. In 1853 Luigi Colombo, a prelate of the Roman
Church, who claimed descent from an uncle of the Admiral, renewed the
claim in his _Patria e biografia del grande ammiraglio D. Cristoforo
Colombo de’ conti e signori di Cuccaro_, Roma, 1853. Cf. _Notes on
Columbus_, p. 73.
[349] _Ragionamento nel quale si confirma l’opinione generale intorno
al patria di Cristoforo Colombo_, in vol. iii. of the _Transactions_ of
the Society.
[350] A view of the alleged house and chamber in which the birth took
place is given in _Harpers’ Monthly_, vol. liv., December, 1876.
[351] In his _Clarorum Ligurum elogia_, where the Genoese were taunted
for neglecting the fame of Columbus.
[352] See his will in Navarrete, and in Harrisse’s _Fernan Colon_.
[353] _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, pp. xix, 2.
[354] The claims of Savona have been urged the most persistently. The
Admiral’s father, it seems to be admitted, removed to Savona before
1469, and lived there some time; and it is found that members of the
Colombo family, even a Cristoforo Colombo, is found there in 1472; but
it is at the same time claimed that this Cristoforo signed himself
as of Genoa. The chief advocate is Belloro, in the _Corres. Astron.
Géograph. du Baron de Zach_, vol. xi., whose argument is epitomized by
Irving, app. v. Cf. Giovanni Tommaso Belloro, _Notizie d’atti esistenti
nel publico archivio de’ notaj di Savona, concernenti la famiglia di
Cristoforo Colombo_, Torino, 1810, reprinted by Spotorno at Genoa in
1821. Sabin (vol. ii. no. 4,565), corrects errors of Harrisse, _Notes
on Columbus_, p. 68. Other claims for these Genoese towns are brought
forward, for which see Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_; J. R. Bartlett,
in _Historical Magazine_, February, 1868, p. 100; Felice Isnardi’s
_Dissertazione_, 1838, and _Nuovi documenti_, 1840, etc. Caleb
Cushing in his _Reminiscences of Spain_, i. 292 (Boston, 1833), gave
considerable attention to the question of Columbus’ nativity.
[355] Bernardo Pallastrelli’s _Il suocero e la moglie di C. Colombo_
(Modena, 1871; second ed., 1876), with a genealogy, gives an account
of his wife’s family. Cf. also _Allgemeine Zeitung_, Beilage no. 118
(1872), and _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, October, 1873.
[356] Philip Casoni’s _Annali di Genova_, Genoa, 1708.
[357] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 73. Harrisse, in his _Les
Colombo de France et d’Italie, fameux marins du XV^e siècle_, 1461-1492
(Paris, 1874), uses some new material from the archives of Milan,
Paris, and Venice, and gathers all that he can of the Colombos; and
it does not seem probable that the Admiral bore anything more than a
very remote relationship to the family of the famous mariners. Major
(_Select Letters_, p. xliii) has also examined the alleged connection
with the French sea-leader, Caseneuve, or Colon. Cf. Desimoni’s
_Rassegna del nuovo libro di Enrico Harrisse: Les Colombo de France
et d’Italie_ (Parigi, 1874, pp. 17); and the appendices to Irving’s
_Columbus_ (nos. iv. and vi.) and Harrisse’s _Les Colombo_ (no. vi).
[358] Conferred by the Convention of 1492; ratified April 23, 1497;
confirmed by letter royal, March 14, 1502.
[359] Such as New Andalusia, on the Isthmus of Darien, intrusted to
Ojeda; and Castilla del Oro, and the region about Veragua, committed to
Nicuessa. There was a certain slight also in this last, inasmuch as Don
Diego had been with the Admiral when he discovered it.
[360] The ruins of Diego Columbus’ house in Santo Domingo, as they
appeared in 1801, are shown in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 186, and
Samuel Hazard’s _Santo Domingo_, p. 47; also pp. 213, 228.
[361] Papers relating to Luis Colon’s renunciation of his rights as
Duke of Veraguas, in 1556, are in Peralta’s _Costa Rica, Nicaragua y
Panamá_, Madrid, 1883, p. 162.
[362] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 3. Leclerc (_Bibl. Amer._, no.
137) notes other original family documents priced at 1,000 francs.
[363] The arms granted by the Spanish sovereigns at Barcelona, May 20,
1493, seem to have been altered at a later date. As depicted by Oviedo,
they are given on an earlier page. Cf. Lopez de Haro, _Nobiliario
general_ (Madrid, 1632), pt. ii. p. 312; Muñoz, _Historia del nuevo
mundo_, p. 165; _Notes and Queries_ (2d series), xii. 530; (5th series)
ii. 152; _Mem. de la Real Academia de Madrid_ (1852), vol. viii.;
Roselly de Lorgues, _Christophe Colomb_ (1856); _Documentos inéditos_
(1861), xxxi. 295; _Cod. diplom. Colombo-Americano_, p. lxx; Harrisse,
_Notes on Columbus_, p. 168; Charlevoix, _Isle Espagnole_, i. 61, 236,
and the engraving given in Ramusio (1556), iii. 84. I am indebted to
Mr. James Carson Brevoort for guidance upon this point.
[364] Vol. i. of the _Studi_ is a chronological account of Italian
travellers and voyages, beginning with Grimaldo (1120-1122), and
accompanied by maps showing the routes of the principal ones. Cf.
Theobald Fischer, “Ueber italienische Seekarten und Kartographen des
Mittelalte’s,” in _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu_
Berlin, xvii. 5.
As to the work which has been done in the geographical societies
of Germany, we shall have readier knowledge when Dr. Johannes
Müller’s _Die wissenschaftlichen Vereine und Gesellschaften
Deutschlands,—Bibliographie ihrer Veröffentlichungen_, now announced
in Berlin, is made public. One of the most important sale-catalogues
of maps is that of the Prince Alexandre Labanoff Collection, Paris,
1823,—a list now very rare. Nos. 1-112 were given to the world, and
1480-1543 to America separately.
[365] Santarem, _Histoire de la cartographie_, etc., vol. i., preface,
pp. xxxix, 1, and 194. After the present volume was printed to this
point, and after Vols. III. and IV. were in type, Mr. Arthur James
Weise’s _Discoveries of America to the year 1525_ was published in
New York. A new draft of the Maiollo map of 1527 is about its only
important feature.
[366] See an enumeration of all these earlier maps and of their
reproductions in part i. of _The Kohl Collection of Early Maps_, by the
present writer. Bianco’s map was reproduced in 1869 at Venice, with
annotations by Oscar Peschel; and Mauro’s in 1866, also at Venice.
[367] _Literature of Europe_, chap. iii. sect. 4.
[368] Cf., on the instruments and marine charts of the Arabs, Codine’s
_La mer des Indes_, p. 74; Delambre, _Histoire de l’astronomie du
moyen-âge_; Sédillot’s _Les instruments astronomiques des Arabes_, etc.
[369] Major, _Prince Henry_ (1868 ed.), pp. 57, 60. There is some
ground for believing that the Northmen were acquainted with the
loadstone in the eleventh century. Prescott (_Ferdinand and Isabella_,
1873 ed., ii. III) indicates the use of it by the Castilians in 1403.
Cf. Santarem, _Histoire de la cartographie_, p. 280; _Journal of the
Franklin Institute_, xxii. 68; _American Journal of Science_, lx. 242.
Cf. the early knowledge regarding the introduction of the compass
in Eden’s Peter Martyr (1555), folio 320; and D’Avezac’s _Aperçus
historiques sur la boussole_, Paris, 1860, 16 pp.; also Humboldt’s
_Cosmos_, Eng. tr. ii. 656.
[370] For instance, the map of Bianco. The variation in Europe was
always easterly after observations were first made.
[371] Hakluyt, i. 122.
[372] _Journal of the American Geographical Society_, xii. 185.
[373] It is supposed to-day to be in Prince Albert Land, and to make
a revolution in about five hundred years. Acosta contended that there
were four lines of no variation, and Halley, in 1683, contended for
four magnetic poles.
[374] Cf. notes on p. 661, _et seq._, in Bunbury’s _History of Ancient
Geography_, vol. i., on the ancients’ calculations of latitude and
measurements for longitude. Ptolemy carried the most northern parts
of the known world sixty-three degrees north, and the most southern
parts sixteen degrees south, of the Equator, an extent north and
south of seventy-nine degrees. Marinus of Tyre, who preceded Ptolemy,
stretched the known world, north and south, over eighty-seven degrees.
Marinus had also made the length of the known world 225 degrees east
and west, while Ptolemy reduced it to 177 degrees; but he did not, nor
did Marinus, bound it definitely in the east by an ocean, but he left
its limit in that direction undetermined, as he did that of Africa in
the south, which resulted in making the Indian Ocean in his conception
an inland sea, with the possibility of passing by land from Southern
Africa to Southern Asia, along a parallel. Marinus had been the first
to place the Fortunate Islands farther west than the limits of Spain in
that direction, though he put them only two and a half degrees beyond,
while the meridian of Ferro is nine degrees from the most westerly part
of the main.
[375] Cf. Lelewel, pl. xxviii., and Santarem, _Histoire de la
cartographie_, iii. 301, and _Atlas_, pl. 15.
[376] Cf. editions of 1482, 1486, 1513, 1535.
[377] The earliest instance in a _published_ Spanish map is thought to
be the woodcut which in 1534 appeared at Venice in the combination of
Peter Martyr and Oviedo which Ramusio is thought to have edited. This
map is represented on a later page.
[378] There was a tendency in the latter part of the sixteenth century
to remove the prime meridian to St. Michael’s, in the Azores, for the
reason that there was no variation in the needle there at that time,
and in ignorance of the forces which to-day at St. Michael’s make
it point twenty-five degrees off the true north. As late as 1634 a
congress of European mathematicians confirmed it at the west edge of
the Isle de Fer (Ferro), the most westerly of the Canaries.
[379] Edmund Farwell Slafter, _History and Causes of the Incorrect
Latitudes as recorded in the Journals of the Early Writers, Navigators,
and Explorers relating to the Atlantic Coast of North America_
(1535-1740). Boston: Privately printed, 1882. 20 pages. Reprinted from
the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ for April, 1882.
[380] Regiomontanus,—as Johannes Müller, of Königsberg, in Franconia,
was called, from his town,—published at Nuremberg his _Ephemerides_
for the interval 1475-1506; and these were what Columbus probably
used. Cf. Alex. Ziegler’s _Regiomontanus, ein geistiger Vorläufer
des Columbus_, Dresden, 1874. Stadius, a professor of mathematics,
published an almanac of this kind in 1545, and the English navigators
used successive editions of this one.
[381] Cf. Kohl, _Die beiden General-Karten von Amerika_, p. 17, and
Varnhagen’s _Historia geral do Brazil_, i. 432.
[382] Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 630, 670; Reisch’s _Margarita
philosophica_ (1535), p. 1416; D’Avezac’s _Waltzemüller_, p. 64.
[383] Cf. Lelewel, _Géographie du moyen-âge_, ii. 160. The rules of
Gemma Frisius for discovering longitude were given in Eden’s _Peter
Martyr_ (1555), folio 360. An earlier book was Francisco Falero’s
_Regimiento para observar in longitud en la mar_, 1535. Cf. E. F. de
Navarrete’s “El problema de la longitud en la mar,” in volume 21 of the
_Doc. inéditos (España)_; and _Vasco da Gama_ (Hakluyt Soc.), pp. 19,
25, 33, 43, 63, 138.
[384] _The Germaniæ, ex variis scriptoribus perbrevis explicatio_ of
Bilibaldus Pirckeymerus, published in 1530, has a reference to this
eclipse. Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 96; _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 1,992.
The paragraph is as follows: “Proinde compertum est ex observatione
eclypsis, quæ fuit in mense Septembri anno salutis 1494. Hispaniam
insulam, quatuor ferme horarum intersticio ab Hyspali, quæ Sibilia est
distare, hoc est gradibus 60, qualium est circulus maximus 360, medium
vero insulæ continet gradus 20 circiter in altitudine polari. Navigatur
autem spacium illud communiter in diebus 35 altitudo vero continentis
oppositi, cui Hispani sanctæ Marthæ nomen indidere, circiter graduum
est 12 Darieni vero terra et sinus de Uraca gradus quasi tenent 7½
in altitudine polari, unde longissimo tractu occidentem versus terra
est, quæ vocatur Mexico et Temistitan, a qua etiam non longa remota est
insula Jucatan cum aliis nuper repertis.” The method of determining
longitude by means of lunar tables dates back to Hipparchus.
[385] These were the calculations of Regiomontanus (Müller), who calls
himself “Monteregius” in his _Tabulæ astronomice Alfonsi regis_,
published at Venice in the very year (1492) of Columbus’ first voyage.
(Stevens, _Bibl. Geog._, no. 83.) At a later day the Portuguese accused
the Spaniards of altering the tables then in use, so as to affect the
position of the Papal line of Demarcation. Barras, quoted by Humboldt,
_Cosmos_, Eng. tr. ii. 671.
Johann Stoeffler was a leading authority on the methods of defining
latitude and longitude in vogue in the beginning of the new era; cf.
his _Elucidatio fabricæ ususque astrolabii_, Oppenheim, 1513 (colophon
1512), and his edition of _In Procli Diadochi sphæram omnibus numeris
longe absolutissimus commentarius_, Tübingen, 1534, where he names one
hundred and seventy contemporary and earlier writers on the subject.
(Stevens, _Bibl. Geog._, nos. 2,633-2,634.)
[386] The polar distance of the North Star in Columbus’ time was 3°
28´; and yet his calculations made it sometimes 5°, and sometimes 10°.
It is to-day 1° 20´ distant from the true pole. _United States Coast
Survey Report_, 1880, app. xviii.
[387] Santarem, _Histoire de la cartographie_, vol. ii. p. lix.
Columbus would find here the centre of the earth, as D’Ailly, Mauro,
and Behaim found it at Jerusalem.
[388] _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 658. Humboldt also points out how
Columbus on his second voyage had attempted to fix his longitude by
the declination of the needle (Ibid., ii. 657; v. 54). Cf. a paper on
Columbus and Cabot in the _Nautical Magazine_, July, 1876.
It is a fact that good luck or skill of some undiscernible sort enabled
Cabot to record some remarkable approximations of longitude in an
age when the wildest chance governed like attempts in others. Cabot
indeed had the navigator’s instinct; and the modern log-book seems to
have owed its origin to his practices and the urgency with which he
impressed the importance of it upon the Muscovy Company.
[389] Appendix xix. of the _Report of the United States Coast Survey_
for 1880 (Washington, 1882) is a paper by Charles A. Schott of “Inquiry
into the Variation of the Compass off the Bahama Islands, at the
time of the Landfall of Columbus in 1492,” which is accompanied by a
chart, showing by comparison the lines of non-variation respectively
in 1492, 1600, 1700, 1800, and 1880, as far as they can be made out
from available data. In this chart the line of 1492 runs through
the Azores,—bending east as it proceeds northerly, and west in its
southerly extension. The no-variation line in 1882 leaves the South
American coast between the mouths of the Amazon and the Orinoco, and
strikes the Carolina coast not far from Charleston. The Azores to-day
are in the curve of 25° W. variation, which line leaves the west coast
of Ireland, and after running through the Azores sweeps away to the St.
Lawrence Gulf.
[390] Navarrete, _Noticia del cosmografo Alonzo de Santa Cruz_.
[391] Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 672; v. 59.
[392] _Cosmos_, v. 55.
[393] _Cosmos_, v. 59.
[394] Charts of the magnetic curves now made by the Coast Survey
at Washington are capable of supplying, if other means fail, and
particularly in connection with the dipping-needle, data of a ship’s
longitude with but inconsiderable error. The inclination or dip was not
measured till 1576; and Humboldt shows how under some conditions it can
be used also to determine latitude.
In 1714 the English Government, following an example earlier set
by other governments, offered a reward of £20,000 to any one who
would determine longitude at sea within half a degree. It was
ultimately given to Harrison, a watchmaker who made an improved
marine chronometer. An additional £3,000 was given at the same time
to the widow of Tobias Meyer, who had improved the lunar tables. It
also instigated two ingenious mechanicians, who hit upon the same
principle independently, and worked out its practical application,—the
Philadelphian, Thomas Godfrey, in his “mariner’s bow” (_Penn. Hist.
Soc. Coll._, i. 422); and the Englishman, Hadley, in his well-known
quadrant.
It can hardly be claimed to-day, with all our modern appliances, that a
ship’s longitude can be ascertained with anything more than approximate
precision. The results from dead-reckoning are to be corrected in three
ways. Observations on the moon will not avoid, except by accident,
errors which may amount to seven or eight miles. The difficulties
of making note of Jupiter’s satellites in their eclipse, under the
most favorable conditions, will be sure to entail an error of a half,
or even a whole, minute. This method, first tried effectively about
1700, was the earliest substantial progress which had been made;
all the attempts of observation on the opposition of planets, the
occultations of stars, the difference of altitude between the moon
and Jupiter, and the changes in the moon’s declination, having failed
of satisfactory results (Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 671). John
Werner, of Nuremberg, as early as 1514, and Gemma Frisius, in 1545,
had suggested the measure of the angle between the altitude of the
moon and some other heavenly body; but it was not till 1615 that it
received a trial at sea, through the assiduity of Baffin. The newer
method of Jupiter’s satellites proved of great value in the hands of
Delisle, the real founder of modern geographical science. By it he cut
off three hundred leagues from the length of the Mediterranean Sea, and
carried Paris two and a half degrees, and Constantinople ten degrees,
farther west. Corrections for two centuries had been chiefly made in a
similar removal of places. For instance, the longitude of Gibraltar had
increased from 7° 50´ W., as Ptolemy handed it down, to 9° 30´ under
Ruscelli, to 13° 30´ under Mercator, and to 14° 30´ under Ortelius. It
is noticeable that Eratosthenes, who two hundred years and more before
Christ was the librarian at Alexandria and chief of its geographical
school, though he made the length of the Mediterranean six hundred
geographical miles too long, did better than Ptolemy three centuries
later, and better even than moderns had done up to 1668, when this sea
was elongated by nearly a third beyond its proper length. Cf. Bunbury,
_History of Ancient Geography_, i. 635; Gosselin, _Géog. des Grecs_, p.
42. Sanson was the last, in 1668, to make this great error.
The method for discovering longitude which modern experience has
settled upon is the noting at noon, when the weather permits a view of
the sun, of the difference of a chronometer set to a known meridian.
This instrument, with all its modern perfection, is liable to an
error of ten or fifteen seconds in crossing the Atlantic, which may
be largely corrected by a mean, derived from the use of more than
one chronometer. The first proposition to convey time as a means of
deciding longitude dates back to Alonzo de Santa Cruz, who had no
better time-keepers than sand and water clocks (Humboldt, _Cosmos_,
Eng. tr., ii. 672).
On land, care and favorable circumstances may now place an object
within six or eight yards of its absolute place in relation to the
meridian. Since the laying of the Atlantic cable has made it possible
to use for a test a current which circles the earth in three seconds,
it is significant of minute accuracy, in fixing the difference of time
between Washington and Greenwich, that in the three several attempts to
apply the cable current, the difference between the results has been
less than 7/100 of a second.
But on shipboard the variation is still great, though the last fifty
years has largely reduced the error. Professor Rogers, of the Harvard
College Observatory, in examining one hundred log-books of Atlantic
steamships, has found an average error of three miles; and he reports
as significant of the superior care of the Cunard commanders that the
error in the logs of their ships was reduced to an average of a mile
and a half.
[395] Lelewel, ii. 130.
[396] Humboldt, _Examen critique_, ii. 210.
[397] The breadth east and west of the Old World was marked
variously,—on the Laon globe, 250°; Behaim’s globe, 130°; Schöner’s
globe, 228°; Ruysch’s map, 224°; Sylvanus’ map, 220°; and the
Portuguese chart of 1503, 220°.
[398] This sea-chart was the first which had been seen in England, and
almanacs at that time had only been known in London for fifteen years,
with their tables for the sun’s declination and the altitude of the
pole-star.
[399] Cf. _Atti della Società Ligure_, 1867, p. 174, Desimoni in
_Giornale Ligustico_, ii. 52. Bartholomew is also supposed to have been
the maker of an anonymous planisphere of 1489 (Peschel, _Ueber eine
alte Weltkarte_, p. 213).
[400] Strabo, i. 65. Bunbury, _Ancient Geography_, i. 627, says the
passage is unfortunately mutilated, but the words preserved can clearly
have no other signification. What is left to us of Eratosthenes are
fragments, which were edited by Seidel, at Göttingen, in 1789; again
and better by Bernhardy (Berlin, 1822). Bunbury (vol. i. ch. xvi.)
gives a sufficient survey of his work and opinions. The spherical shape
of the earth was so generally accepted by the learned after the times
of Aristotle and Euclid, that when Eratosthenes in the third century,
B.C. went to some length to prove it, Strabo, who criticised him two
centuries later, thought he had needlessly exerted himself to make
plain what nobody disputed. Eratosthenes was so nearly accurate in his
supposed size of the globe, that his excess over the actual size was
less than one-seventh of its great circle.
[401] There is a manuscript map of Hispaniola attached to the copy of
the 1511 edition of Peter Martyr in the Colombina Library which is
sometimes ascribed to Columbus; but Harrisse thinks it rather the work
of his brother Bartholomew (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, _Add._, xiii.) A map
of this island, with the native divisions as Columbus found them, is
given in Muñoz. The earliest separate map is in the combined edition of
Peter Martyr and Oviedo edited by Ramusio in Venice in 1534 (Stevens,
_Bibliotheca geographica_, no. 1,778). _Le discours de la navigation de
Jean et Raoul Parmentier, de Dieppe_, including a description of Santo
Domingo, was edited by Ch. Schefer in Paris, 1883; a description of the
“isle de Haity” from _Le grand insulaire et pilotage d’André Thevet_ is
given in its appendix.
[402] _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 647. One of these early engravings is
given on page 15.
[403] Navarrete, i. 253, 264.
[404] Navarrete, i. 5.
[405] Navarrete, iii. 587.
[406] Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 34; Morelli’s _Lettera
rarissima_ (Bassano, 1810), appendix. A “carta nautica” of Columbus is
named under 1501 in the _Atti della Società ligure_, 1867, p. 174, and
_Giornale Ligustico_, ii. 52.
[407] Of La Cosa, who is said to have been of Basque origin, we know
but little. Peter Martyr tells us that his “cardes” were esteemed, and
mentions finding a map of his in 1514 in Bishop Fonseca’s study. We
know he was with Columbus in his expedition along the southern coast
of Cuba, when the Admiral, in his folly, made his companions sign
the declaration that they were on the coast of Asia. This was during
Columbus’ second voyage, in 1494; and Stevens (_Notes_, etc.) claims
that the way in which La Cosa cuts off Cuba to the west with a line of
green paint—the conventional color for “terra incognita”—indicates this
possibility of connection with the main, as Ruysch’s scroll does in his
map. The interpretation may be correct; but it might still have been
drawn an island from intimations of the natives, though Ocampo did not
circumnavigate it till 1508. The natives of Guanahani distinctly told
Columbus that Cuba was an island, as he relates in his Journal. Stevens
also remarks how La Cosa colors, with the same green, the extension
of Cuba beyond the limits of Columbus’ exploration on the north coast
in 1492. La Cosa, who had been with Ojeda in 1499, and with Rodrigo
de Bastidas in 1501, was killed on the coast in 1509. Cf. Enrique
de Leguina’s _Juan de la Cosa, estudio biográfico_ (Madrid, 1877);
Humboldt’s _Examen critique_ and his _Cosmos_, Eng. tr. ii., 639; De
la Roquette, in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris_,
Mai, 1862, p. 298; Harrisse’s _Cabots_, pp. 52, 103, 156, and his _Les
Cortereal_, p. 94; and the references in Vol. III. of the present
_History_, p. 8.
[408] Vol. III. p. 8. The fac-simile there given follows Jomard’s.
Harrisse (_Notes on Columbus_, p. 40), comparing Jomard’s reproduction
with Humboldt’s description, thinks there are omissions in it. Becher
(_Landfall of Columbus_) speaks of the map as “the clumsy production
of an illiterate seaman.” There is also a reproduction of the American
parts of the map in Weise’s _Discoveries of America_, 1884.
[409] Ongania, of Venice, announced some years ago a fac-simile
reproduction in his _Raccolta di mappamundi_, edited by Professor
Fischer, of Kiel. It was described in 1873 by Giuseppe Boni in _Cenni
storici della Reale Biblioteca Estense in Modena_, and by Gustavo
Uzielli in his _Studi bibliografici e biografici_, Rome, 1875.
[410] Pages 143, 158.
[411] He was born about 1450; _Les Cortereal_, p. 36. Cf. E. do Canto’s
_Os Corte-Reaes_ (1883), p. 28.
[412] _Les Cortereal_, p. 45.
[413] See Vol. IV. chap. 1.
[414] Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, p. 50, translates this.
[415] Printed for the first time in Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, app.
xvii. From Pasqualigo and Cantino down to the time of Gomara we find no
mention of these events; and Gomara, writing fifty years later, seems
to confound the events of 1500 with those of 1501. Gomara also seems
to have had some Portuguese charts, which we do not now know, when he
says that Cortereal gave his name to some islands in the entrance of
the gulf “Cuadrado” (St. Lawrence?), lying under 50° north latitude.
Further than this, Gomara, as well as Ramusio, seems to have depended
mainly on the Pasqualigo letter; and Herrera followed Gomara (Harrisse,
_Les Cortereal_, p. 59). Harrisse can now collate, as he does (p. 65),
the two narratives of Pasqualigo and Cantino for the first time, and
finds Cortereal’s explorations to have covered the Atlantic coast from
Delaware Bay to Baffin’s Bay, if not farther to the north.
[416] Harrisse, _Les Cortereal_, p. 71.
[417] Ibid., p. 96.
[418] Some have considered that this Atlantic coast in Cantino may in
reality have been Yucatan. But this peninsula was not visited earlier
than 1506, if we suppose Solis and Pinzon reached it, and not earlier
than 1517 if Cordova’s expedition was, as is usually supposed, the
first exploration. The names on this coast, twenty-two in number, are
all legible but six. They resemble those on the Ptolemy maps of 1508
and 1513, and on Schöner’s globe of 1520, which points to an earlier
map not now known.
[419] These earliest Spanish voyages are,—
1. Columbus, Aug. 3, 1492—March 15, 1493.
2. Columbus, Sept. 25, 1493—June 11, 1496.
3. Columbus, May 30, 1498—Nov. 25, 1500.
4. Alonzo de Ojeda, May 20, 1499—June, 1500, to the Orinoco.
5. Piro Alonzo Niño and Christoval Guerra, June, 1499—April, 1500, to
Paria.
6. Vicente Yañez Pinzon, December, 1499—September, 1500, to the Amazon.
7. Diego de Lepe, December, 1499 (?)—June, 1500, to Cape St. Augustin.
8. Rodrigo de Bastidas, October, 1500—September, 1502, to Panama.
[420] The Greenland peninsula seems to have been seen by Cortereal in
1500 or 1501, and to be here called “Ponta d’Asia,” in accordance with
the prevalent view that any mainland hereabout must be Asia.
[421] See fac-simile on page 112, _post._
[422] Plate 43 of his _Géographie du Moyen-âge_.
[423] De Costa points out that La Cosa complains of the Portuguese
being in this region in 1503.
[424] _Catalogue_ of February, 1879, pricing a copy of the book,
with the map, at £100. This Quaritch copy is now owned by Mr. C.
H. Kalbfleisch, of New York, and its title is different from the
transcription given in Sabin, the Carter-Brown and Barlow catalogues,
which would seem to indicate that the title was set up three times at
least.
[425] _Verrazano_, p. 102.
[426] The editions of 1516 and 1530 have no map, and no _official_ map
was published in Spain till 1790. The Cabot map of 1544 is clearly from
Spanish sources, and Brevoort is inclined to think that the single copy
known is the remainder after a like suppression. The Medina sketch of
1545 is too minute to have conveyed much intelligence of the Spanish
knowledge, and may have been permitted.
[427] Vol ii. p. 143.
[428] This edition will come under more particular observation in
connection with Vespucius. There are copies in the Astor Library and
in the libraries of Congress, of the American Antiquarian Society,
and of Trinity College, Hartford (Cooke sale, no. 1,950), and in the
Carter-Brown, Barlow, and Kalbfleisch collections. There was a copy in
the Murphy sale, no. 2,052.
[429] Cf. Santarem in _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris_
(1837), viii. 171, and in his _Recherches sur Vespuce et ses voyages_,
p. 165; Wieser’s _Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 10. It will be seen that
in the Latin quoted in the text there is an incongruity in making a
“Ferdinand” king of Portugal at a time when no such king ruled that
kingdom, but a Ferdinand did govern in Spain. The Admiral could hardly
have been other than Columbus, but it is too much to say that he made
the map, or even had a chief hand in it.
[430] Cf. Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Eng. tr., ii. 620, 621.
[431] A heliotype fac-simile is given in Vol. III. p. 9, where are
various references and a record of other fac-similes; to which may be
added Varnhagen’s _Novos estudos_ (Vienna, 1874); Ruge’s _Geschichte
des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_; Weise’s _Discoveries of America_; and
on a small scale in H. H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, vol. i.
[432] This supposition is not sustained in Wieser’s _Karte des B.
Colombo_ (1893).
[433] Pope Julius II. (July 28, 1506) gave to Tosinus, the publisher,
the exclusive sale of this edition for six years. It was first issued
in 1507, and had six new maps, besides those of the editions of 1478
and 1490, but none of America. There are copies in the Carter-Brown
Library; and noted in the _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,049; and one
was recently priced by Rosenthal, of Munich, at 500 marks. It was
reissued in 1508, with a description of the New World by Beneventanus,
accompanied by this map of Ruysch; and of this 1508 edition there are
copies in the Astor Library, the Library of Congress, of the American
Geographical Society, of Yale College (Cooke sale, vol. ii. no. 1,949),
and in the Carter-Brown and Kalbfleisch collections. One is noted in
the Murphy sale, no. 2,050, which is now at Cornell University.
[434] H. H. Bancroft (_Central America_, p. 116) curiously intimates
that the dotted line which he gives in his engraving to mark the place
of this vignette, stands for some sort of a _terra incognita_!
[435] _Les Cortereal_, p. 118.
[436] Harrisse, Cabots, p. 164. In his _Notes on Columbus_, p. 56, he
conjectures that it sold for forty florins, if it be the same with the
map of the New World which Johannes Trithemus complained in 1507 of his
inability to buy for that price (_Epistolæ familiares_, 1536).
[437] Its date was altered to 1530 when it appeared in the first
complete edition of Peter Martyr’s _Decades_. There are fac-similes
in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ and in Santarem’s Atlas. It will be
considered further in connection with the naming of America. See
_post_, p. 183.
[438] Pl. xviii.
[439] The bibliography of Honter has been traced by G. D. Teutsch in
the _Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde_, neue Folge,
xiii. 137; and an estimate of Honter by F. Teutsch is given in Ibid.,
xv. 586. The earliest form of Honter’s book is the _Rudimentorum
cosmographiæ libri duo_, dated 1531, and published at Cracow, in a
tract of thirty-two pages. It is a description of the world in verse,
and touches America in the chapter, “Nomina insularum oceani et maris.”
It is extremely rare, and the only copy to be noted is one priced
by Harrassowitz (_Catalogue_ of 1876, no. 2), of Leipsic, for 225
marks, and subsequently sold to Tross, of Paris. Most bibliographers
give Cracow, with the date 1534 as the earliest (Sabin, no. 32,792;
Muller, 1877, no. 1,456,—37.50 fl.); there was a Basle edition of
the same year. (Cf. Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 194; Wieser,
_Magalhâes-Strasse_, p. 22.) Editions seem to have followed in 1540
(queried by Sabin, no. 32,793); in 1542 (if Stevens’s designation of
his fac-simile of the map is correct, _Notes_, pl. 3); in 1546, when
the map is inscribed “Universalis cosmographia ... Tiguri, J. H. V.
E. [in monogram], 1546.” (Harrisse, no. 271; Muller, 1877, no. 1,457;
Carter-Brown, no. 143; Sabin, no. 32,794.) The same map, which is part
of an appendix of thirteen maps, was repeated in the Tiguri edition of
1548, and there was another issue the same year at Basle. (Harrisse,
no. 287; Sabin, no. 32,795; Weigel, 1877, no. 1,268.) The maps were
repeated in the 1549 edition. (Sabin, no. 32,796; Carter-Brown, no.
153.) The edition at Antwerp in 1552 leaves off the date. (Harrisse,
no. 287; Weigel, no. 1,269; Murphy, no. 1,252.) It is now called,
_Rvdimentorvm cosmographicorum libri III. cum tabellis geographicis
elegantissimis. De uariarum rerum nomenclaturis per classes, liber I_.
There was a Basle edition the same year. The maps continued to be used
in the Antwerp edition of 1554, the Tiguri of 1558, and the Antwerp of
1660.
In 1561 the edition published at Basle, _De cosmogaphiæ rudimentis
libri VIII._, was rather tardily furnished with new maps better
corresponding to the developments of American geography. (Muller, 1877,
no. 1,459.) The Tiguri publishers still, however, adhered to the old
plates in their editions of 1565 (Carter-Brown, no. 257; Sabin, no.
32,797); and the same plates again reappeared in an edition, without
place, published in 1570 (Muller, 1877, no. 1,457), in another of
Tiguri in 1583, and in still another without place in 1590 (Murphy, no.
1,253; Muller, 1872, no. 763; Sabin, no. 32,799).
[440] Harrisse (_Les Cortereal_, p. 121) says there is no Spanish map
showing these discoveries before 1534.
[441] Vol. III. p. 212, and the present volume, page 170.
[442] Vol. xl.; also Major’s _Prince Henry_, p. 388.
[443] J. P. Richter, _Literary Works of Da Vinci_, London, 1883,
quoting the critic, who questions its assignment to the great Italian.
[444] The Portuguese portolano of about this date given in Kunstmann,
pl. 4, is examined on another page.
[445] This Strasburg edition is particularly described in D’Avezac’s
_Waltzemüller_, p. 159. (Cf. Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_, 176;
his _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 117; and Winsor’s _Bibliography of
Ptolemy’s Geography_ sub anno 1522.) The maps closely resemble those
of Waldseemüller in the edition of 1513; and indeed Frisius assigns
them as re-engraved to Martin Ilacomylus, the Greek form of that
geographer’s name. There are copies of this 1522 Ptolemy in the Harvard
College, Carter-Brown, Cornell University, and Barlow libraries, and
one is noted in the _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,054, which is now in the
Lenox Library. The map of Frisius (Lorenz Friess, as he was called in
unlatinized form) was reproduced in the next Strasburg edition of 1525,
of which there are copies in the Library of Congress, in the New York
Historical Society, Boston Public, Baltimore Mercantile, Carter-Brown,
Trinity College, and the American Antiquarian Society libraries, and in
the collections of William C. Prime and Charles H. Kalbfleisch. There
were two copies in the Murphy sale, nos. 2,055 and 2,056, one of which
is now at Cornell University. Cf. references in Winsor’s _Bibliography
of Ptolemy_.
This “L. F. 1522” map (see p. 175), as well as the “Admiral’s map,”
was reproduced in the edition of 1535, edited by Servetus, of which
there are copies in the Astor, the Boston Public, and the College of
New Jersey libraries, and in the Carter-Brown and Barlow collections. A
copy is also noted in the _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,057, which is now
at Cornell University.
The American maps of these editions were again reproduced in the
Ptolemy, published at Vienna in 1541, of which there are copies in
the Carter-Brown, Brevoort, and Kalbfleisch collections. Cf. Winsor’s
_Bibliography of Ptolemy_.
[446] Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 133. The edition of 1530 has no
maps (ibid., no. 158).
[447] There is a copy in the Grenville Collection in the British
Museum. Cf. Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 144; Zurla, _Fra Mauro_,
p. 9, and his _Marco Polo_, ii. 363. Harrisse, in his _Notes on
Columbus_, p. 56, cites from Morelli’s _Operette_, i. 309, a passage in
which Coppo refers to Columbus.
[448] Harrisse (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._) gives the various ways of spelling
the name by different authors as follows: “Albericus (_Madrignano_,
_Ruchamer_, _Jehan Lambert_); Emeric (_Du Redouer_); Alberico or
Americo (_Gomara_); Morigo (_Hojeda_); Amerrigo (_Muñoz_); Americus
(_Peter Martyr_); Almerigo Florentino (_Vianello_); De Espuche,
Vespuche, Despuche, Vespuccio (_Ramusio_); Vespuchy (_Christ.
Columbus_).” Varnhagen uniformly calls him Amerigo Vespucci; and that
is the signature to the letter written from Spain in 1492 given in the
_Vita_ by Bandini.
[449] The facts relative to the birth, parentage, and early life of
Vespucci are given by the Abbé Bandini in his _Vita e lettere di
Amerigo Vespucci_, 1745, and are generally accepted by those whose
own researches have been most thorough,—as Humboldt in his _Examen
Critique_; Varnhagen in his _Amerigo Vespucci, son caractère, ses
écrits, sa vie, et ses navigations_, and in his _Nouvelles recherches_,
p. 41, where he reprints Bandini’s account; and Santarem in his
_Researches respecting Americus Vespucius and his Voyages_, as the
English translation is called. In relation to representatives of the
family in our day, see Lester’s _Vespucius_, p. 405. The newspapers
within a year have said that two female descendants were living in
Rome, the last male representative dying seven years ago.
[450] Humboldt says that it cannot be true of either voyage, and relies
for proof upon the documentary evidence of Vespucci’s presence in Spain
during the absence of Columbus upon those expeditions. But he makes
a curious mistake in regard to the first, which, we think, has never
been noticed. Columbus sailed on his first voyage in August, 1492,
and returned in March, 1493. Humboldt asserts that Vespucci could not
have been with him, because the letter written from Cadiz and jointly
signed by him and Donato Nicolini was dated Jan. 30, 1493. But Humboldt
has unaccountably mistaken the date of that letter; it was not 1493,
but 1492, seven months before Columbus sailed on his first voyage. The
_alibi_, therefore, is not proved. There is indeed no positive proof
that Vespucci was not on that voyage; but, on the other hand, there
is nothing known of that period of his life to suggest that he was;
and, moreover, the strong negative evidence is—unusually strong in his
case—that he never claimed to have sailed with Columbus.
[451] _The history of the Life and Actions of Admiral Christopher
Colon._ By his son, Don Ferdinand Colon. [For the story of this book,
see the previous chapter.—ED.]
[452] _Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, with other Original
Documents relating to his Four Voyages to the New World._ Translated
and edited by R. H. Major, Esq., of the British Museum, London. Printed
for the Hakluyt Society, 1847.
[453] The very name he bore had a divine significance, according to the
fanciful interpretation of his son, Don Ferdinand Colon. For as the
name Christopher, or Christophorus,—the Christ-bearer,—was bestowed
upon the Saint who carried the Christ over deep waters at his own
great peril, so had it fallen upon him, who was destined to discover
a new world, “that those Indian nations might become citizens and
inhabitants of the Church triumphant in heaven.” Nor less appropriate
was the family name of Columbus, or Colomba,—a dove,—for him who showed
“those people, who knew him not, which was God’s beloved Son, as the
Holy Ghost did in the figure of a dove at Saint John’s baptism; and
because he also carried the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the
waters of the ocean like Noah’s dove, to denote the peace and union of
these people with the Church, after they had been shut up in the ark of
darkness and confusion.” Saint Christopher carrying Christ, appears as
a vignette on Cosa’s chart.