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NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA

Aboriginal America

NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA

Edited by

JUSTIN WINSOR

Librarian of Harvard University

Corresponding Secretary Massachusetts Historical Society

VOL. I

Boston and New York

Houghton, Mifflin and Company

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Copyright, 1889,

by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

[Illustration]

To

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D.

PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

_DEAR ELIOT:_

_Forty years ago, you and I, having made preparation together, entered

college on the same day. We later found different spheres in the world;

and you came back to Cambridge in due time to assume your high office.

Twelve years ago, sought by you, I likewise came, to discharge a duty

under you._

_You took me away from many cares, and transferred me to the more

congenial service of the University. The change has conduced to the

progress of those studies in which I hardly remember to have had a lack

of interest._

_So I owe much to you; and it is not, I trust, surprising that I desire

to connect, in this work, your name with that of your_

_Obliged friend_,

[Illustration]

CAMBRIDGE, 1889.

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

[_The cut on the title represents a mask, which forms the centre of

the Mexican Calendar Stone, as engraved in D. Wilson’s Prehistoric

Man, i. 333, from a cast now in the Collection of the Society of

Antiquaries of Scotland._]

INTRODUCTION.

PART I. AMERICANA IN LIBRARIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES. _The Editor_ i

ILLUSTRATIONS: Portrait of Professor Ebeling, iii; of

James Carson Brevoort, x; of Charles Deane, xi.

PART II. EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICA, AND COLLECTIVE ACCOUNTS

OF THE EARLY VOYAGES THERETO. _The Editor_ xix

ILLUSTRATIONS: Title of the _Newe Unbekanthe Landte_, xxi; of

Peter Martyr’s _De Nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis_

(1521), xxii; Portrait of Grynæus, xxiv; of Sebastian

Münster, xxvi, xxvii; of Monardes, xxix; of De Bry, xxx;

of Feyerabend, xxxi.

CHAPTER I.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS CONSIDERED IN

RELATION TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. _William H.

Tillinghast_ 1

ILLUSTRATIONS: Maps by Macrobius, 10, 11, 12; Carli’s _Traces of

Atlantis_, 17; Sanson’s _Atlantis Insula_, 18; Bory de St.

Vincent’s _Carte Conjecturale de l’Atlantide_, 19; Contour

Chart of the Bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, 20; The

Rectangular Earth, 30.

CRITICAL ESSAY 33

NOTES 38

A. The Form of the Earth, 38; B. Homer’s Geography, 39; C.

Supposed References to America, 40; D. Atlantis, 41; E.

Fabulous Islands of the Atlantic in the Middle Ages, 46;

F. Toscanelli’s Atlantic Ocean, 51. G. (_By the Editor._)

Early Maps of the Atlantic Ocean, 53.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Map of the Fifteenth Century, 53; Map of Fr.

Pizigani (A.D. 1367), and of Andreas Bianco (1436), 54;

Catalan Map (1375), 55; Map of Andreas Benincasa (1476), 56;

Laon Globe, 56; Maps of Bordone (1547), 57, 58; Map made at

the End of the Fifteenth Century, 57; Ortelius’s Atlantic

Ocean (1587), 58.

CHAPTER II.

PRE-COLUMBIAN EXPLORATIONS. _Justin Winsor_ 59

ILLUSTRATIONS: Norse Ship, 62; Plan of a Viking Ship 63, and her

Rowlock, 63; Norse Boat used as a Habitation, 64; Norman Ship

from the Bayeux Tapestry, 64; Scandinavian Flags, 64;

Scandinavian Weapons, 65; Runes, 66, 67; Fac-simile of the

Title of the Zeno Narrative, 70; Its Section on Frisland, 71;

Ship of the Fifteenth Century, 73; The Sea of Darkness, 74.

CRITICAL NOTES 76

A. Early Connection of Asiatic Peoples with the Western Coast

of America, 76; B. Ireland the Great, or White Man’s

Land, 82; C. The Norse in Iceland, 83; D. Greenland and

its Ruins, 85; E. The Vinland Voyages, 87; F. The Lost

Greenland Colonies, 107; G. Madoc and the Welsh, 109; H.

The Zeni and their Map, 111; I. Alleged Jewish Migration,

115; J. Possible Early African Migrations, 116.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Behring’s Sea and Adjacent Waters, 77; Buache’s

Map of the North Pacific and Fusang, 79; Ruins of the Church

at Kakortok, 86; Fac-simile of a Saga Manuscript and

Autograph of C. C. Rafn, 87; Ruin at Kakortok, 88; Map of

Julianehaab, 89; Portrait of Rafn, 90; Title-page of

_Historia Vinlandiæ Antiguæ per Thormodum Torfæum_, 91;

Rafn’s Map of Norse America, 95; Rafn’s Map of Vinland (New

England), 100; View of Dighton Rock, 101; Copies of its

Inscription, 103; Henrik Rink, 106; Fac-simile of the

Title-page of Hans Egede’s _Det gamle Gronlands nye

Perlustration_, 108; A British Ship of the Time of Edward I,

110; Richard H. Major, 112; Baron Nordenskjöld, 113.

THE CARTOGRAPHY OF GREENLAND. _The Editor_ 117

ILLUSTRATIONS: The Maps of Claudius Clavus (1427), 118, 119; of

Fra Mauro (1459), 120; Tabula Regionum Septentrionalium

(1467), 121; Map of Donis (1482), 122; of Henricus Martellus

(1489-90), 122; of Olaus Magnus (1539), 123; (1555), 124;

(1567), 125; of Bordone (1547), 126; The Zeno Map, 127; as

altered in the Ptolemy of 1561, 128; The Map of Phillipus

Gallæus (1585), 129; of Sigurd Stephanus (1570), 130; The

Greenland of Paul Egede, 131; of Isaac de la Peyrère (1647),

132.

CHAPTER III.

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA. _Justin Winsor_ 133

ILLUSTRATIONS: Clavigero’s Plan of Mexico, 143; his Map of

Anahuac, 144; Environs du Lac de Méxique, 145; Brasseur de

Bourbourg’s Map of Central America, 151.

CRITICAL ESSAY 153

ILLUSTRATIONS: Manuscript of Bernal Diaz, 154; Sahagún, 156;

Clavigero, 159; Lorenzo Boturini, 160; Frontispiece of his

_Idea_, with his Portrait, 161; Icazbalceta, 163; Daniel G.

Brinton, 165; Brasseur de Bourbourg, 170.

NOTES 173

I. The Authorities on the so-called Civilization of Ancient

Mexico and Adjacent Lands, and the Interpretation of such

Authorities, 173; II. Bibliographical Notes upon the

Ruins and Archæological Remains of Mexico and Central

America, 176; III. Bibliographical Notes on the

Picture-Writing of the Nahuas and Mayas, 197.

ILLUSTRATIONS: The Pyramid of Cholula, 177; The Great Mound of

Cholula, 178; Mexican Calendar Stone, 179; Court of the

Mexico Museum, 181; Old Mexican Bridge near Tezcuco, 182; The

Indio Triste, 183; General Plan of Mitla, 184; Sacrificial

Stone, 185; Waldeck, 186; Désiré Charnay, 187; Charnay’s Map

of Yucatan, 188; Ruined Temple at Uxmal, 189; Ring and Head

from Chichen-Itza, 190; Viollet-le-Duc’s Restoration of a

Palenqué Building, 192; Sculptures from the Temple of the

Cross at Palenqué, 193; Plan of Copan, 194; Yucatan Types of

Heads, 195; Plan of Quirigua, 196; Fac-simile of Landa’s

Manuscript, 198; A Sculptured Column, 199; Palenqué

Hieroglyphics, 201; Léon de Rosny, 202; The Dresden Codex,

204; Codex Cortesianus, 206; Codex Perezianus, 207, 208.

CHAPTER IV.

THE INCA CIVILIZATION IN PERU. _Clements R. Markham_ 209

ILLUSTRATIONS: Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Map of Northwestern South

America, 210; Early Spanish Map of Peru, 211; Llamas, 213;

Architectural Details at Tiahuanaca, 214; Bas-Reliefs, 215;

Doorway and other Parts, 216; Image, 217; Broken Doorway,

218; Tiahuanaca Restored, 219; Ruins of Sacsahuaman, 220;

Inca Manco Ccapac, 228; Inca Yupanqui, 228; Cuzco, 229;

Warriors of the Inca Period, 230; Plan of the Temple of the

Sun, 234; Zodiac of Gold, 235; Quipus, 243; Inca Skull, 244;

Ruins at Chucuito, 245; Lake Titicaca, 246, 247; Map of the

Lake, 248; Primeval Tomb, Acora, 249; Ruins at Quellenata,

249; Ruins at Escoma, 250; Sillustani, 250; Ruins of an

Incarial Village, 251; Map of the Inca Road, 254; Peruvian

Metal-Workers, 256; Peruvian Pottery, 256, 257; Unfinished

Peruvian Cloth, 258.

CRITICAL ESSAY 259

ILLUSTRATIONS: House in Cuzco in which Garcilasso was born, 265;

Portraits of the Incas in the Title-page of Herrera, 267;

William Robertson, 269; Clements R. Markham, 272; Márcos

Jiménez de la Espada, 274.

NOTES 275

I. Ancient People of the Peruvian Coast, 275; II. The

Quichua Language and Literature, 278.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Mummy from Ancon, 276; Mummy from a Huaca at

Pisco, 277; Tapestry from the Graves of Ancon, 278; Idol from

Timaná, 281.

CHAPTER V.

THE RED INDIAN OF NORTH AMERICA IN CONTACT WITH THE FRENCH AND

ENGLISH. _George E. Ellis_ 283

CRITICAL ESSAY. _George E. Ellis and the Editor_ 316

CHAPTER VI.

THE PREHISTORIC ARCHÆOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA. _Henry W. Haynes_ 329

ILLUSTRATIONS: Palæolithic Implement from the Trenton Gravels,

331; The Trenton Gravel Bluff, 335; Section of Bluff near

Trenton, 338; Obsidian Spear Point from the Lahontan Lake,

349.

THE PROGRESS OF OPINION RESPECTING THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF

MAN IN AMERICA. _Justin Winsor_ 369

ILLUSTRATIONS: Benjamin Smith Barton, 371; Louis Agassiz, 373;

Samuel Foster Haven, 374; Sir Daniel Wilson, 375; Professor

Edward B. Tylor, 376; Hochelagan and Cro-magnon Skulls, 377;

Theodor Waitz, 378; Sir John Lubbock, 379; Sir John William

Dawson, 380; Map of Aboriginal Migrations, 381; Calaveras

Skull, 385; Ancient Footprint from Nicaragua, 386;

Cro-magnon, Enghis, Neanderthal, and Hochelagan Skulls, 389;

Oscar Peschel, 391; Jeffries Wyman, 392; Map of Cape Cod,

showing Shell Heaps, 393; Maps of the Pueblo Region, 394,

397; Col. Charles Whittlesey, 399; Increase A. Lapham, 400;

Plan of the Great Serpent Mound, 401; Cincinnati Tablet, 404;

Old View of the Mounds on the Muskingum (Marietta), 405; Map

of the Scioto Valley, showing Sites of Mounds, 406; Works at

Newark, Ohio, 407; Major J. W. Powell, 411.

APPENDIX.

_Justin Winsor._

I. Bibliography of Aboriginal America 413

II. The Comprehensive Treatises on American Antiquities 415

III. Bibliographical Notes on the Industries and Trade of the

American Aborigines 416

IV. Bibliographical Notes on American Linguistics 421

V. Bibliographical Notes on the Myths and Religions of America 429

VI. Archæological Museums and Periodicals 437

ILLUSTRATIONS: Mexican Clay Mask, 419; Quetzalcoatl, 432; The

Mexican Temple, 433; The Temple of Mexico, 434; Teoyaomiqui,

435; Ancient Teocalli, Oaxaca, Mexico, 436.

INDEX 445

INTRODUCTION.

_By the Editor._

PART I. AMERICANA IN LIBRARIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

HARRISSE, in the Introduction of his _Bibliotheca Americana

Vetustissima_, enumerates and characterizes many of the bibliographies

of Americana, beginning with the chapter, “De Scriptoribus rerum

Americanarum,” in the _Bibliotheca Classica_ of Draudius, in 1622.[1]

De Laet, in his _Nieuwe Wereldt_ (1625), gives a list of about

thirty-seven authorities, which he increased somewhat in later

editions.[2] The earliest American catalogue of any moment, however,

came from a native Peruvian, Léon y Pinelo, who is usually cited by the

latter name only. He had prepared an extensive list; but he published

at Madrid, in 1629, a selection of titles only, under the designation

of _Epitome de la biblioteca oriental i occidental_,[3] which included

manuscripts as well as books. He had exceptional advantages as

chronicler of the Indies.

In 1671, in Montanus’s _Nieuwe weereld_, and in Ogilby’s _America_,

about 167 authorities are enumerated.

Sabin[4] refers to Cornelius van Beughem’s _Bibliographia Historica_,

1685, published at Amsterdam, as having the titles of books on America.

The earliest exclusively American catalogue is the _Bibliothecæ

Americanæ Primordia_ of White Kennett,[5] Bishop of Peterborough,

published in London in 1713. The arrangement of its sixteen hundred

entries is chronological; and it enters under their respective dates

the sections of such collections as Hakluyt and Ramusio.[6] It

particularly pertains to the English colonies, and more especially to

New England, where, in the eighteenth century, three distinctively

valuable American libraries are known to have existed,—that of the

Mather family, which was in large part destroyed during the battle

of Bunker Hill, in 1775; that of Thomas Prince, still in large part

existing in the Boston Public Library; and that of Governor Hutchinson,

scattered by the mob which attacked his house in Boston in 1765.[7]

In 1716 Lenglet du Fresnoy inserted a brief list (sixty titles) in his

_Méthode pour étudier la géographie_. Garcia’s _Origen de los Indias de

el nuevo mundo_, Madrid, 1729, shows a list of about seventeen hundred

authors.[8]

In 1737-1738 Barcia enlarged Pinelo’s work, translating all his titles

into Spanish, and added numerous other entries which Rich[9] says were

“clumsily thrown together.”

Charlevoix prefixed to his _Nouvelle France_, in 1744, a list with

useful comments, which the English reader can readily approach in

Dr. Shea’s translation. A price-list which has been preserved of the

sale in Paris in 1764, _Catalogue des livres des ci-devant soi-disans

Jésuites du Collége de Clermont_, indicates the lack of competition at

that time for those choicer Americana, now so costly.[10] The _Regio

patronatu Indiarum_ of Frassus (1775) gives about 1505 authorities.

There is a chronological catalogue of books issued in the American

colonies previous to 1775, prepared by S. F. Haven, Jr., and appended

to the edition of Thomas’s _History of Printing_, published by the

American Antiquarian Society. Though by no means perfect, it is a

convenient key to most publications illustrative of American history

during the colonial period of the English possessions, and printed in

America. Dr. Robertson’s _America_ (1777) shows only 250 works, and it

indicates how far short he was of the present advantages in the study

of this subject. Clavigero surpassed all his predecessors in the lists

accompanying his _Storia del Messico_, published in 1780,—but the

special bibliography of Mexico is examined elsewhere. Equally special,

and confined to the English colonies, is the documentary register

which Jefferson inserted in his _Notes on Virginia_; but it serves to

show how scanty the records were a hundred years ago compared with the

calendars of such material now. Meuzel, in 1782, had published enough

of his _Bibliotheca Historica_ to cover the American field, though he

never completed the work as planned.

In 1789 an anonymous _Bibliotheca Americana_ of nearly sixteen hundred

entries was published in London. It is not of much value. Harrisse

and others attribute it to Reid; but by some the author’s name is

differently given as Homer, Dalrymple, and Long.[11]

An enumeration of the documentary sources (about 152 entries) used by

Muñoz in his _Historia del nuevo mundo_ (1793) is given in Fustér’s

_Biblioteca Valenciana_ (ii. 202-234) published at Valencia in

1827-1830.[12]

There is in the Library of Congress (Force Collection) a copy of an

_Indice de la Coleccion de manuscritos pertinecientes a la historia de

las Indias_, by Fraggia, Abella, and others, dated at Madrid, 1799.[13]

In the Sparks collection at Cornell are two other manuscript

bibliographies worthy of notice. One is a _Biblioteca Americana_, by

Antonio de Alcedo, dated in 1807. Sparks says his copy was made in 1843

from an original which Obadiah Rich had found in Madrid.[14]

Harrisse says that another copy is in the Carter-Brown Library; and

he asserts that, excepting some additions of modern American authors,

it is not much improved over Barcia’s edition of Pinelo. H. H.

Bancroft[15] mentions having a third copy, which had formerly belonged

to Prescott.

The other manuscript at Cornell is a _Bibliotheca Americana_, prepared

in twelve volumes by Arthur Homer, who had intended, but never

accomplished, the publication of it. Sparks found it in Sir Thomas

Phillipps’s library at Middlehill, and caused the copy of it to be

made, which is now at Ithaca.[16]

In 1808 Boucher de la Richarderie published at Paris his _Bibliothèque

universelle des voyages_,[17] which has in the fifth part a critical

list of all voyages to American waters. Harrisse disagrees with Peignot

in his favorable estimate of Richarderie, and traces to him the errors

of Faribault and later bibliographers.

The _Bibliotheca Hispano-Americana_ of Dr. José Mariano Beristain de

Souza was published in Mexico in 1816-1821, in three volumes. Quaritch,

pricing it at £96 in 1880, calls it the rarest and most valuable of

all American bibliographical works. It is a notice of writers who were

born, educated, or flourished in Spanish America, and naturally covers

much of interest to the historical student. The author did not live to

complete it, and his nephew finished it.

In 1818 Colonel Israel Thorndike, of Boston, bought for $6,500 the

American library of Professor Ebeling, of Germany, estimated to contain

over thirty-two hundred volumes, besides an extraordinary collection

of ten thousand maps.[18] The library was given by the purchaser to

Harvard College, and its possession at once put the library of that

institution at the head of all libraries in the United States for the

illustration of American history. No catalogue of it was ever printed,

except as a part of the General Catalogue of the College Library issued

in 1830-1834, in five volumes.

Another useful collection of Americana added to the same library was

that formed by David B. Warden, for forty years United States Consul at

Paris, who printed a catalogue of its twelve hundred volumes at Paris,

in 1820, called _Bibliotheca Americo-Septentrionalis_. The collection

in 1823 found a purchaser at $5,000, in Mr. Samuel A. Eliot, who gave

it to the College.[19]

[Illustration: EBELING.[20]]

The Harvard library, however, as well as several of the best

collections of Americana in the United States, owes more, perhaps, to

Obadiah Rich than to any other. This gentleman, a native of Boston,

was born in 1783. He went as consul of the United States to Valencia

in 1815, and there began his study of early Spanish-American history,

and undertook the gathering of a remarkable collection of books,[21]

which he threw open generously, with his own kindly assistance, to

every investigator who visited Spain for purposes of study. Here he

won the respect of Alexander H. Everett, then American minister to

the court of Spain. He captivated Irving by his helpful nature, who

says of him: “Rich was one of the most indefatigable, intelligent, and

successful bibliographers in Europe. His house at Madrid was a literary

wilderness, abounding with curious works and rare editions. ... He was

withal a man of great truthfulness and simplicity of character, of an

amiable and obliging disposition and strict integrity.” Similar was the

estimation in which he was held by Ticknor, Prescott, George Bancroft,

and many others, as Allibone has recorded.[22] In 1828 he removed

to London, where he established himself as a bookseller. From this

period, as Harrisse[23] fitly says, it was under his influence, acting

upon the lovers of books among his compatriots, that the passion for

forming collections of books exclusively American grew up.[24] In those

days the cost of books now esteemed rare was trifling compared with

the prices demanded at present. Rich had a prescience in his calling,

and the beginnings of the great libraries of Colonel Aspinwall, Peter

Force, James Lenox, and John Carter Brown were made under his fostering

eye; which was just as kindly vigilant for Grenville, who was then

forming out of the income of his sinecure office the great collection

which he gave to the British nation in recompense for his support.[25]

In London, watching the book-markets and making his catalogue, Rich

continued to live for the rest of his life (he died in February, 1850),

except for a period when he was the United States consul at Port

Mahon in the Balearic Islands. His bibliographies are still valuable,

his annotations in them are trustworthy, and their records are the

starting-points of the growth of prices. His issues and reissues of

them are somewhat complicated by supplements and combinations, but

collectors and bibliographers place them on their shelves in the

following order:

1. _A Catalogue of books relating principally to America, arranged

under the years in which they were printed_ (1500-1700), London, 1832.

This included four hundred and eighty-six numbers, those designated

by a star without price being understood to be in Colonel Aspinwall’s

collection. Two small supplements were added to this.

2. _Bibliotheca Americana Nova, printed since 1700 (to 1800)_, London,

1835. Two hundred and fifty copies were printed. A supplement appeared

in 1841, and this became again a part of his.

3. _Bibliotheca Americana Nova_, vol. i. (1701-1800); vol. ii.

(1801-1844), which was printed (250 copies) in London in 1846.[26]

It was in 1833 that Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, of Boston, who was for

thirty-eight years the American consul at London, printed at Paris

a catalogue of his collection of Americana, where seven hundred and

seventy-one lots included, beside much that was ordinarily useful, a

great number of the rarest of books on American history. Harrisse has

called Colonel Aspinwall, not without justice, “a bibliophile of great

tact and activity.” All but the rarest part of his collection was

subsequently burned in 1863, when it had passed into the hands of Mr.

Samuel L. M. Barlow,[27] of New York.

M. Ternaux-Compans, who had collected—as Mr. Brevoort thinks[28]—the

most extensive library of books on America ever brought together,

printed his _Bibliothèque Américaine_[29] in 1837 at Paris. It

embraced 1,154 works, arranged chronologically, and all of them of a

date before 1700. The titles were abridged, and accompanied by French

translations. His annotations were scant; and other students besides

Rich have regretted that so learned a man had not more benefited his

fellow-students by ampler notes.[30]

Also in 1837 appeared the _Catalogue d’ouvrages sur l’histoire de

l’Amérique_, of G. B. Faribault, which was published at Quebec, and was

more specially devoted to books on New France.[31]

With the works of Rich and Ternaux the bibliography of Americana

may be considered to have acquired a distinct recognition; and the

succeeding survey of this field may be more conveniently made if we

group the contributors by some broad discriminations of the motives

influencing them, though such distinctions sometimes become confluent.

First, as regards what may be termed professional bibliography. One of

the earliest workers in the new spirit was a Dresden jurist, Hermann E.

Ludewig, who came to the United States in 1844, and prepared an account

of the _Literature of American local history_, which was published in

1846. This was followed by a supplement, pertaining wholly to New York

State, which appeared in _The Literary World_, February 19, 1848. He

had previously published in the _Serapeum_ at Leipsic (1845, pp. 209)

accounts of American libraries and bibliography, which were the first

contributions to this subject.[32] Some years later, in 1858, there

was published in London a monograph on _The Literature of the American

Aboriginal Linguistics_,[33] which had been undertaken by Mr. Ludewig

but had not been carried through the press, when he died, Dec. 12,

1856.[34]

We owe to a Franco-American citizen the most important bibliography

which we have respecting the first half century of American history;

for the _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_ only comes down to 1551

in its chronological arrangement. Mr. Brevoort[35] very properly

characterizes it as “a work which lightens the labors of such as have

to investigate early American history.”[36]

It was under the hospitable roof of Mr. Barlow’s library in New York

that, “having gloated for years over second-hand compilations,”

Harrisse says that he found himself “for the first time within reach

of the fountain-heads of history.” Here he gathered the materials for

his _Notes on Columbus_, which were, as he says, like “pencil marks

varnished over.” These first appeared less perfectly than later, in

the _New York Commercial Advertiser_, under the title of “Columbus

in a Nut-shell.” Mr. Harrisse had also prepared (four copies only

printed) for Mr. Barlow in 1864 the _Bibliotheca Barlowiana_, which is

a descriptive catalogue of the rarest books in the Barlow-Aspinwall

Collection, touching especially the books on Virginian and New England

history between 1602 and 1680.

Mr. Barlow now (1864) sumptuously printed the _Notes on Columbus_

in a volume (ninety-nine copies) for private distribution. For some

reason not apparent, there were expressions in this admirable treatise

which offended some; as when, for instance (p. vii), he spoke of being

debarred the privileges of a much-vaunted public library, referring

to the Astor Library. Similar inadvertences again brought him hostile

criticism, when two years later (1866) he printed with considerable

typographical luxury his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, which

was published in New York. It embraces something over three hundred

entries.[37] The work is not without errors; and Mr. Henry Stevens,

who claims that he was wrongly accused in the book, gave it a bad

name in the _London Athenæum_ of Oct. 6, 1866, where an unfortunate

slip, in making “Ander Schiffahrt”[38] a personage, is unmercifully

ridiculed. A committee of the Société de Géographie in Paris, of which

M. Ernest Desjardins was spokesman, came to the rescue, and printed a

_Rapport sur les deux ouvrages de bibliographie Américaine de M. Henri

Harrisse_, Paris, 1867. In this document the claim is unguardedly

made that Harrisse’s book was the earliest piece of solid erudition

which America had produced,—a phrase qualified later as applying to

works of American bibliography only. It was pointed out that while

for the period of 1492-1551 Rich had given twenty titles, and Ternaux

fifty-eight, Harrisse had enumerated three hundred and eight.[39]

Harrisse prepared, while shut up in Paris during the siege of 1870,

his _Notes sur la Nouvelle France_, a valuable bibliographical essay

referred to elsewhere.[40] He later put in shape the material which he

had gathered for a supplemental volume to his _Bibliotheca Americana

Vetustissima_, which he called _Additions_,[41] and published it in

Paris in 1872. In his introduction to this latter volume he shows how

thoroughly he has searched the libraries of Europe for new evidences of

interest in America during the first half century after its discovery.

He notes the depredations upon the older libraries which have been

made in recent years, since the prices for rare Americana have ruled

so high. He finds[42] that the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, as

compared with a catalogue of it made by Ferdinand Columbus himself, has

suffered immense losses. “It is curious to notice,” he finally says,

“how few of the original books relating to the early history of the New

World can be found in the public libraries of Europe. There is not a

literary institution, however rich and ancient, which in this respect

could compare with three or four private libraries in America. The

Marciana at Venice is probably the richest. The Trivulgiana at Milan

can boast of several great rarities.”

For the third contributor to the recent bibliography of Americana, we

must still turn to an adopted citizen, Joseph Sabin, an Englishman by

birth. Various publishing enterprises of interest to the historical

student are associated with Mr. Sabin’s name. He published a quarto

series of reprints of early American tracts, eleven in number, and an

octavo series, seven in number.[43] He published for several years,

beginning in 1869, the _American Bibliopolist_, a record of new books,

with literary miscellanies, largely upon Americana. In 1867 he began

the publication (five hundred copies) of the most extensive American

bibliography yet made, _A Dictionary of books relating to America, from

its discovery to the present time_. The author’s death, in 1881,[44]

left the work somewhat more than half done, and it has been continued

since his death by his sons.[45]

In the _Notas Para una bibliografia de obras anonimas i seudonimas_

of Diego Barros Arana, published at Santiago de Chile in 1882, five

hundred and seven books on America (1493-1876), without authors, are

traced to their writers.

* * * * *

As a second class of contributors to the bibliographical records of

America, we must reckon the students who have gathered libraries for

use in pursuing their historical studies. Foremost among such, and

entitled to be esteemed a pioneer in the modern spirit of research, is

Alexander von Humboldt. He published his _Examen critique de l’histoire

de la géographie du nouveau continent_,[46] in five volumes, between

1836 and 1839.[47] “It is,” says Brevoort,[48] “a guide which all

must consult. With a master hand the author combines and collates all

attainable materials, and draws light from sources which _he_ first

brings to bear in his exhaustive investigations.” Harrisse calls it

“the greatest monument ever erected to the early history of this

continent.”

Humboldt’s library was bought by Henry Stevens, who printed in 1863,

in London, a catalogue of it, showing 11,164 entries; but this was not

published till 1870. It included a set of the _Examen critique_, with

corrections, and the notes for a new sixth volume.[49] Harrisse, who

it is believed contemplated at one time a new edition of this book,

alleges that through the remissness of the purchaser of the library

the world has lost sight of these precious memorials of Humboldt’s

unperfected labors. Stevens, in the _London Athenæum_, October, 1866,

rebuts the charge.[50]

Of the collection of books and manuscripts formed by Col. Peter Force

we have no separate record, apart from their making a portion of the

general catalogue of the Library of Congress, the Government having

bought the collection in 1867.[51]

The library which Jared Sparks formed during the progress of his

historical labors was sold about 1872 to Cornell University, and is now

at Ithaca. Mr. Sparks left behind him “imperfect but not unfaithful

lists of his books,” which, after some supervision by Dr. Cogswell and

others, were put in shape for the press by Mr. Charles A. Cutter of

the Boston Athenæum, and were printed, in 1871, as _Catalogue of the

Library of Jared Sparks_. In the appendix was a list of the historical

manuscripts, originals and copies, which are now on deposit in Harvard

College Library.[52]

In 1849 Mr. H. R. Schoolcraft[53] printed, at the expense of the United

States Government, a _Bibliographical Catalogue of books, etc., in

the Indian tongues of the United States_,—a list later reprinted with

additions in his _Indian Tribes_ (in 1851), vol. iv.[54]

In 1861 Mr. Ephraim George Squier published at New York a monograph

on authors who had written in the languages of Central America,

enumerating one hundred and ten, with a list of the books and

manuscripts on the history, the aborigines, and the antiquities of

Central America, borrowed from other sources in part. At the sale of

Mr. Squier’s library in 1876, the catalogue[55] of which was made by

Mr. Sabin, the entire collection of his manuscripts fell, as mentioned

elsewhere,[56] into the hands of Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft of San

Francisco.

Probably the largest collection of books and manuscripts[57] which

any American has formed for use in writing is that which belongs to

Mr. Bancroft. He is the organizer of an extensive series of books on

the antiquities and history of the Pacific coast. To accomplish an

examination of the aboriginal and civilized history of so large a

field[58] as thoroughly as he has unquestionably made it, within a

lifetime, was a bold undertaking, to be carried out in a centre of

material rather than of literary enterprise. The task involved the

gathering of a library of printed books, at a distance from the purely

intellectual activity of the country, and where no other collection of

moment existed to supplement it. It required the seeking and making

of manuscripts, from the labor of which one might well shrink. It was

fortunate that during the gathering of this collection some notable

collections—like those of Maximilian,[59] Ramirez, and Squier, not to

name others—were opportunely brought to the hammer, a chance by which

Mr. Bancroft naturally profited.

Mr. Bancroft had been trained in the business habits of the book

trade, in which he had established himself in San Francisco as early

as 1856.[60] He was at this time twenty-four years old, having been

born of New England stock in Ohio in 1832, and having had already four

years residence—since 1852—in San Francisco as the agent of an eastern

bookseller. It was not till 1869 that he set seriously to work on his

history, and organized a staff of assistants.[61] They indexed his

library, which was now large (12,000 volumes) and was kept on an upper

floor of his business quarters, and they classified the references

in paper bags.[62] His first idea was to make an encyclopædia of

the antiquities and history of the Pacific Coast; and it is on the

whole unfortunate that he abandoned the scheme, for his methods were

admirably adapted to that end, but of questionable application to a

sustained plan of historical treatment. It is the encyclopedic quality

of his work, as the user eliminates what he wishes, which makes and

will continue to make the books that pass under his name of the first

importance to historical students.

In 1875 the first five volumes of the series, denominated by

themselves _The Native Races of the Pacific States_, made their

appearance. It was clear that a new force had been brought to bear upon

historical research,—the force of organized labor from many hands;

and this implied competent administrative direction and ungrudged

expenditure of money. The work showed the faults of such a method, in

a want of uniform discrimination, and in that promiscuous avidity of

search, which marks rather an eagerness to amass than a judgment to

select, and give literary perspective. The book, however, was accepted

as extremely useful and promising to the future inquirer. Despite

a certain callowness of manner, the _Native Races_ was extremely

creditable, with comparatively little of the patronizing and flippant

air which its flattering reception has since begotten in its author or

his staff. An unfamiliarity with the amenities of literary life seems

unexpectedly to have been more apparent also in his later work.

In April, 1876, Mr. Lewis H. Morgan printed in the _North American

Review_, under the title of “Montezuma’s Dinner,” a paper in which he

controverted the views expressed in the _Native Races_ regarding the

kind of aboriginal civilization belonging to the Mexican and Central

American table-lands. A writer of Mr. Morgan’s reputation commanded

respect in all but Mr. Bancroft, who has been unwise enough to charge

him with seeking “to gain notoriety by attacking” his (Mr. B.’s) views

or supposed views. He dares also to characterize so well-known an

authority as “a person going about from one reviewer to another begging

condemnation for my _Native Races_.” It was this ungracious tone which

produced a divided reception for his new venture. This, after an

interval of seven years, began to make its appearance in vol. vi. of

the “Works,” or vol. i. of the _History of Central America_, appearing

in the autumn of 1882.

The changed tone of the new series, its rhetoric, ambitious in parts,

but mixed with passages which are often forceful and exact, suggestive

of an ill-assorted conjoint production; the interlarding of classic

allusions by some retained reviser who served this purpose for one

volume at least; a certain cheap reasoning and ranting philosophy,

which gives place at times to conceptions of grasp; flippancy

and egotism, which induce a patronizing air under the guise of a

constrained adulation of others; a want of knowledge on points where

the system of indexing employed by his staff had been deficient,—these

traits served to separate the criticism of students from the ordinary

laudation of such as were dazed by the magnitude of the scheme.

Two reviews challenging his merits on these grounds[63] induced

Mr. Bancroft to reply in a tract[64] called _The Early American

Chroniclers_. The manner of this rejoinder is more offensive than

that of the volumes which it defends; and with bitter language he

charges the reviewers with being “men of Morgan,” working in concert to

prejudice his success.

But the controversy of which record is here made is unworthy of the

principal party to it. His important work needs no such adventitious

support; and the occasion for it might have been avoided by ordinary

prudence. The extent of the library upon which the work[65] is based,

and the full citation of the authorities followed in his notes, and the

more general enumeration of them in his preliminary lists, make the

work pre-eminent for its bibliographical extent, however insufficient,

and at times careless, is the bibliographical record.[66]

The library formed by the late Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn to assist

him in his projected history of maritime discovery in America, of which

only the chapter on Verrazano[67] has been printed, was the creation

of diligent search for many years, part of which was spent in Holland

as minister of the United States. The earliest record of it is a

_Catalogue of an American library chronologically arranged_, which was

privately printed in a few copies, about 1850, and showed five hundred

and eighty-nine entries between the years 1480 and 1800.[68]

[Illustration: JAMES CARSON BREVOORT.]

There has been no catalogue printed of the library of Mr. James Carson

Brevoort, so well known as a historical student and bibliographer, to

whom Mr. Sabin dedicated the first volume of his _Dictionary_. Some of

the choicer portions of his collection are understood to have become a

part of the Astor Library, of which Mr. Brevoort was for a few years

the superintendent, as well as a trustee.[69]

The useful and choice collection of Mr. Charles Deane, of Cambridge,

Mass., to which, as the reader will discover, the Editor has often had

recourse, has never been catalogued. Mr. Deane has made excellent use

of it, as his tracts and papers abundantly show.[70]

* * * * *

A distinct class of helpers in the field of American bibliography

has been those gatherers of libraries who are included under the

somewhat indefinite term of collectors,—owners of books, but who

make no considerable dependence upon them for studies which lead to

publication. From such, however, in some instances, bibliography has

notably gained,—as in the careful knowledge which Mr. James Lenox

sometimes dispensed to scholars either in privately printed issues or

in the pages of periodicals.

[Illustration: CHARLES DEANE.]

Harrisse in 1866 pointed to five Americana libraries in the United

States as surpassing all of their kind in Europe,—the Carter-Brown,

Barlow, Force, Murphy, and Lenox collections. Of the Barlow, Force (now

in the Library of Congress), and Murphy collections mention has already

been made.

The Lenox Library is no longer private, having been given to a board

of trustees by Mr. Lenox previous to his death,[71] and handsomely

housed, by whom it is held for a restricted public use, when fully

catalogued and arranged. Its character, as containing only rare or

unusual books, will necessarily withdraw it from the use of all but

scholars engaged in recondite studies. It is very rich in other

directions than American history; but in this department the partial

access which Harrisse had to it while in Mr. Lenox’s house led him to

infer that it would hold the first rank. The wealth of its alcoves,

with their twenty-eight thousand volumes, is becoming known gradually

in a series of bibliographical monographs, printed as contributions

to its catalogue, of which six have thus far appeared, some of them

clearly and mainly the work of Mr. Lenox himself.

Of these only three have illustrated American history in any

degree,—those devoted to the voyages of Hulsius and Thévenot, and to

the Jesuit Relations (Canada).[72]

The only rival of the Lenox is the library of the late John Carter

Brown, of Providence, gathered largely under the supervision of

John Russell Bartlett; and since Mr. Brown’s death it has been more

particularly under the same oversight.[73] It differs from the Lenox

Library in that it is exclusively American, or nearly so,[74] and

still more in that we have access to a thorough catalogue of its

resources, made by Mr. Bartlett himself, and sumptuously printed.[75]

It was originally issued as _Bibliotheca Americana: A Catalogue of

books relating to North and South America in the Library of John

Carter Brown of Providence, with notes by John Russell Bartlett_, in

three volumes,—vol. i., 1493-1600, in 1865 (302 entries); vol. ii.,

1601-1700, in 1866 (1,160 entries); vol. iii., 1701-1800, in two parts,

in 1870-1871 (4,173 entries).

In 1875 vol. i. was reprinted with fuller titles, covering the

years 1482[76]-1601, with 600 entries, doubling the extent of that

portion.[77] Numerous facsimiles of titles and maps add much to its

value. A second and similarly extended edition of vol. ii. (1600-1700)

was printed in 1882, showing 1,642 entries. The _Carter-Brown

Catalogue_, as it is ordinarily cited, is the most extensive printed

list of all Americana previous to 1800, more especially anterior to

1700, which now exists.[78]

Of the other important American catalogues, the first place is to be

assigned to that of the collection formed at Hartford by Mr. George

Brinley, the sale of which since his death[79] has been undertaken

under the direction of Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull,[80] who has prepared

the catalogue, and who claims—not without warrant—that it embraces

“a greater number of volumes remarkable for their rarity, value, and

interest to special collectors and to book-lovers in general, than were

ever before brought together in an American sale-room.”[81]

The library of William Menzies, of New York, was sold in 1875,

from a catalogue made by Joseph Sabin.[82] The library of Edward

A. Crowninshield, of Boston, was catalogued in Boston in 1859, but

withdrawn from public sale, and sold to Henry Stevens, who took a

portion of it to London. It was not large,—the catalogue shows less

than 1,200 titles,—and was not exclusively American; but it was rich in

some of the rarest of such books, particularly in regard to the English

Colonies.[83]

The sale of John Allan’s collection in New York, in 1864, was a

noteworthy one. Americana, however, were but a portion of the

collection.[84] An English-American flavor of far less fineness, but

represented in a catalogue showing a very large collection of books and

pamphlets,[85] was sold in New York in May, 1870, as the property of

Mr. E. P. Boon.

Mr. Thomas W. Field issued in 1873 _An Essay towards an Indian

Bibliography, being a Catalogue of books relating to the American

Indians_, in his own library, with a few others which he did

not possess, distinguished by an asterisk. Mr. Field added many

bibliographical and historical notes, and gave synopses, so that

the catalogue is generally useful to the student of Americana, as

he did not confine his survey to works dealing exclusively with the

aborigines. The library upon which this bibliography was based was

sold at public auction in New York, in two parts, in May, 1875 (3,324

titles), according to a catalogue which is a distinct publication from

the _Essay_.[86]

The collection of Mr. Almon W. Griswold was dispersed by printed

catalogues in 1876 and 1880, the former containing the American

portion, rich in many of the rarer books.

Of the various private collections elsewhere than in the United

States, more or less rich in Americana, mention may be made of the

_Bibliotheca Mejicana_[87] of Augustin Fischer, London, 1869; of the

Spanish-American libraries of Gregorio Beéche, whose catalogue was

printed at Valparaiso in 1879; and that of Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna,

printed at the same place in 1861.[88]

In Leipsic, the catalogue of Serge Sobolewski (1873)[89] was

particularly helpful in the bibliography of Ptolemy, and in the voyages

of De Bry and others. Some of the rarest of Americana were sold in

the Sunderland sale[90] in London in 1881-1883; and remarkably rich

collections were those of Pinart and Bourbourg,[91] sold in Paris in

1883, and that of Dr. J. Court,[92] the first part of which was sold in

Paris in May, 1884. The second part had little of interest.

* * * * *

Still another distinctive kind of bibliographies is found in the

catalogues of the better class of dealers; and among the best of such

is to be placed the various lists printed by Henry Stevens, a native of

Vermont, who has spent most of his manhood in London. In the dedication

to John Carter Brown of his _Schedule of Nuggets_ (1870), he gives

some account of his early bibliographical quests.[93] Two years after

graduating at Yale, he says, he had passed “at Cambridge, reading

passively with legal Story, and actively with historical Sparks, all

the while sifting and digesting the treasures of the Harvard Library.

For five years previously he had scouted through several States during

his vacations, prospecting in out-of-the-way places for historical

nuggets, mousing through town libraries and country garrets in search

of anything old that was historically new for Peter Force and his

American Archives.... From Vermont to Delaware many an antiquated

churn, sequestered hen-coop, and dilapidated flour-barrel had yielded

to him rich harvests of old papers, musty books, and golden pamphlets.

Finally, in 1845, an irrefragable desire impelled him to visit the

Old World, its libraries and book-stalls. Mr. Brown’s enlightened

liberality in those primitive years of his bibliographical pupilage

contributed largely towards the boiling of his kettle.... In acquiring

_con amore_ these American Historiadores Primitivos, he ... travelled

far and near. In this labor of love, this journey of life, his tracks

often become your tracks, his labors your works, his _libri_ your

_liberi_,” he adds, in addressing Mr. Brown.

In 1848 Mr. Stevens proposed the publication, through the Smithsonian

Institution, of a general _Bibliographia Americana_, illustrating the

sources of early American history;[94] but the project failed, and

one or more attempts later made to begin the work also stopped short

of a beginning. While working as a literary agent of the Smithsonian

Institution and other libraries, in these years, and beginning that

systematic selection of American books, for the British Museum and

Bodleian, which has made these libraries so nearly, if not quite, the

equal of any collection of Americana in the United States, he also

made the transcriptions and indexes of the documents in the State

Paper Office which respectively concern the States of New Jersey,

Rhode Island, Maryland, and Virginia. These labors are now preserved

in the archives of those States.[95] Perhaps the earliest of his sale

catalogues was that of a pseudo “Count Mondidier,” embracing Americana,

which were sold in London in December, 1851.[96] His _English Library_

in 1853 was without any distinctive American flavor; but in 1854 he

began, but suspended after two numbers, the _American Bibliographer_

(100 copies).[97] In 1856 he prepared a _Catalogue of American Books

and Maps in the British Museum_ (20,000 titles), which, however,

was never regularly published, but copies bear date 1859, 1862, and

1866.[98] In 1858—though most copies are dated 1862[99]—appeared his

_Historical Nuggets; Bibliotheca Americana, or a descriptive Account

of my Collection of rare books relating to America_. The two little

volumes show about three thousand titles, and Harrisse says they

are printed “with remarkable accuracy.” There was begun in 1885, in

connection with his son Mr. Henry Newton Stevens, a continuation

of these _Nuggets_. In 1861 a sale catalogue of his _Bibliotheca

Americana_ (2,415 lots), issued by Puttick and Simpson, and in part

an abridgment of the _Nuggets_ with similarly careful collations, was

accepted by Maisonneuve as the model of his _Bibliothèque Américaine_

later to be mentioned.[100]

In 1869-1870 Mr. Stevens visited America, and printed at New Haven

his _Historical and Geographical Notes on the earliest discoveries in

America_, 1453-1530, with photo-lithographic facsimiles of some of

the earliest maps. It is a valuable essay, much referred to, in which

the author endeavored to indicate the entanglement of the Asiatic and

American coast lines in the early cartography.[101]

In 1870 he sold at Boston a collection of five thousand volumes,

catalogued as _Bibliotheca Historica_[102] (2,545 entries), being

mostly Americana, from the library of the elder Henry Stevens of

Vermont. It has a characteristic introduction, with an array of

readable notes.[103] His catalogues have often such annotations,

inserted on a principle which he explains in the introduction to

this one: “In the course of many years of bibliographical study and

research, having picked up various isolated grains of knowledge

respecting the early history, geography, and bibliography of this

western hemisphere, the writer has thought it well to pigeon-hole the

facts in notes long and short.”

In October, 1870, he printed at London a _Schedule of Two Thousand

American Historical Nuggets taken from the Stevens Diggings in

September, 1870, and set down in Chronological Order of Printing from

1490 to 1800 [1776], described and recommended as a Supplement to my

printed Bibliotheca Americana_. It included 1,350 titles.

In 1872 he sold another collection, largely Americana, according

to a catalogue entitled _Bibliotheca Geographica & Historica; or,

a Catalogue of [3,109 lots], illustrative of historical geography

and geographical history. Collected, used, and described, with an

Introductory Essay on Catalogues, and how to make them upon the Stevens

system of photo-bibliography_. The title calls it a first part; but

no second part ever appeared. Ten copies were issued, with about four

hundred photographic copies of titles inserted. Some copies are found

without the essay.[104]

The next year (1873) he issued a privately printed list of two thousand

titles of American “Continuations,” as they are called by librarians,

or serial publications in progress as taken at the British Museum,

quaintly terming the list _American books with tails to ’em_.[105]

Finally, in 1881, he printed Part I. of _Stevens’s Historical

Collections_, a sale catalogue showing 1,625 titles of books, chiefly

Americana, and including his Franklin Collection of manuscripts, which

he later privately sold to the United States Government, an agent of

the Boston Public Library yielding to the nation.[106]

One of the earliest to establish an antiquarian bookshop in the United

States was the late Samuel G. Drake, who opened one in Boston in

1830.[107] His special field was that of the North American Indians;

and the history and antiquities of the aborigines, together with the

history of the English Colonies, give a character to his numerous

catalogues.[108] Mr. Drake died in 1875, from a cold taken at a sale of

the library of Daniel Webster; and his final collections of books were

scattered in two sales in the following year.[109]

William Gowans, of New York, was another of the early dealers in

Americana.[110] The catalogues of Bartlett and Welford have already

been mentioned. In 1854, while Garrigue and Christern were acting

as agents of Mr. Lenox, they printed _Livres Curieux_, a list of

desiderata sought for by Mr. Lenox, pertaining to such rarities as the

letters of Columbus, Cartier, parts of De Bry and Hulsius, and the

Jesuit Relations. This list was circulated widely through Europe, but

not twenty out of the 216 titles were ever offered.[111]

About 1856, Charles B. Norton, of New York, began to issue American

catalogues; and in 1857 he established _Norton’s Literary Letter_,

intended to foster interest in the collection of Americana.[112] A

little later, Joel Munsell, of Albany, began to issue catalogues;[113]

and J. W. Randolph, of Richmond, Virginia, more particularly

illustrated the history of the southern parts of the United

States.[114] The most important Americana lists at present issued by

American dealers are those of Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, which

are admirable specimens of such lists.[115]

In England, the catalogues of Henry Stevens and E. G. Allen have

been already mentioned. The leading English dealer at present in the

choicer books of Americana, as of all other subjects—and it is not too

much to say, the leading one of the world—is Mr. Bernard Quaritch,

a Prussian by birth, who was born in 1819, and after some service

in the book-trade in his native country came to London in 1842, and

entered the service of Henry G. Bohn, under whose instruction, and as

a fellow-employé of Lowndes the bibliographer, he laid the foundations

of a remarkable bibliographical acquaintance. A short service in

Paris brought him the friendship of Brunet. Again (1845) he returned

to Mr. Bohn’s shop; but in April, 1847, he began business in London

for himself. He issued his catalogues at once on a small scale; but

they took their well-known distinctive form in 1848, which they have

retained, except during the interval December, 1854,-May, 1864, when,

to secure favorable consideration in the post-office rates, the

serial was called _The Museum_. It has been his habit, at intervals,

to collect his occasional catalogues into volumes, and provide them

with an index. The first of these (7,000 entries) was issued in 1860.

Others have been issued in 1864, 1868, 1870, 1874, 1877 (this with

the preceding constituting one work, showing nearly 45,000 entries

or 200,000 volumes), and 1880 (describing 28,009 books).[116] In the

preface to this last catalogue he says: “The prices of useful and

learned books are in all cases moderate; the prices of palæographical

and bibliographical curiosities are no doubt in most cases high, that

indeed being a natural result of the great rivalry between English,

French, and American collectors.... A fine copy of any edition of a

book is, and ought to be, more than twice as costly as any other.”[117]

While the Quaritch catalogues have been general, they have included a

large share of the rarest Americana, whose titles have been illustrated

with bibliographical notes characterized by intimate acquaintance with

the secrets of the more curious lore.

The catalogues of John Russell Smith (1849, 1853, 1865, 1867), and of

his successor Alfred Russell Smith (1871, 1874), are useful aids in

this department.[118] The _Bibliotheca Hispano-Americana_ of Trübner,

printed in 1870, offered about thirteen hundred items.[119] Occasional

reference can be usefully made to the lists of George Bumstead, Ellis

and White, John Camden Hotten, all of London, and to those of William

George of Bristol. The latest extensive Americana catalogue is _A

catalogue of rare and curious books, all of which relate more or less

to America_, on sale by F. S. Ellis, London, 1884. It shows three

hundred and forty-two titles, including many of the rarer books, which

are held at prices startling even to one accustomed to the rapid rise

in the cost of books of this description. Many of them were sold by

auction in 1885.

In France, since Ternaux, the most important contribution has come from

the house of Maisonneuve et Cie., by whom the _Bibliotheca Americana_

of Charles Leclerc has been successively issued to represent their

extraordinary stock. The first edition was printed in 1867 (1,647

entries), the second in 1878[120] (2,638 entries, with an admirable

index), besides a first supplement in 1881 (nos. 2,639-3,029).

Mr. Quaritch characterizes it as edited “with admirable skill and

knowledge.”

Less important but useful lists, issued in France, have been those of

Hector Bossange, Edwin Tross,[121] and the current _Americana_ series

of Dufossé, which was begun in 1876.[122]

In Holland, most admirable work has been done by Frederik Muller, of

Amsterdam, and by Mr. Asher, Mr. Tiele, and Mr. Otto Harrassowitz under

his patronage, of which ample accounts are given in another place.[123]

Muller’s catalogues were begun in 1850, but did not reach distinctive

merit till 1872.[124] Martin Nijhoff, at the Hague, has also issued

some American catalogues.

In 1858 Muller sold one of his collections of Americana to Brockhaus,

of Leipsic, and the _Bibliothèque Américaine_ issued by that publisher

in 1861, as representing this collection, was compiled by one of the

editors of the _Serapeum_, Paul Trömel, whom Harrisse characterizes as

an “expert bibliographer and trustworthy scholar.” The list shows 435

entries by a chronological arrangement (1507-1700). Brockhaus again, in

1866, issued another American list, showing books since 1508, arranged

topically (nos. 7,261-8,611). Mr. Otto Harrassowitz, of Leipsic, a

pupil of Muller, of Amsterdam, has also entered the field as a purveyor

of choice Americana. T. O. Weigel, of Leipsic, issued a catalogue,

largely American, in 1877.

* * * * *

So well known are the general bibliographies of Watt, Lowndes, Brunet,

Graesse, and others, that it is not necessary to point out their

distinctive merits.[125] Students in this field are familiar with the

catalogues of the chief American libraries. The library of Harvard

College has not issued a catalogue since 1834, though it now prints

bulletins of its current accessions. An admirable catalogue of the

Boston Athenæum brings the record of that collection down to 1871.

The numerous catalogues of the Boston Public Library are of much use,

especially the distinct volume given to the Prince Collection. The

Massachusetts Historical Society’s library has a catalogue printed

in 1859-60. There has been no catalogue of the American Antiquarian

Society since 1837, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society

has never printed any; nor has the Congregational Library. The State

Library at Boston issued a catalogue in 1880. These libraries, with

the Carter-Brown Library at Providence, which is courteously opened to

students properly introduced, probably make Boston within easy distance

of a larger proportion of the books illustrating American history, than

can be reached with equal convenience from any other literary centre.

A book on the private libraries of Boston was compiled by Luther

Farnham in 1855; but many of the private collections then existing have

since been scattered.[126] General Horatio Rogers has made a similar

record of those in Providence. After the Carter-Brown Collection, the

most valuable of these private libraries in New England is probably

that of Mr. Charles Deane in Cambridge, of which mention has already

been made. The collection of the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, D.D., of New

Bedford, is probably unexampled in this country for the history of the

Congregational movement, which so largely affected the early history of

the English Colonies.[127]

Two other centres in the United States are of the first importance in

this respect. In Washington, with the Library of Congress (of which

a general consolidated catalogue is now printing), embracing as it

does the collection formed by Col. Peter Force, and supplementing

the archives of the Government, an investigator of American history

is situated extremely favorably.[128] In New York the Astor and

Lenox libraries, with those of the New York Historical Society and

American Geographical Society, give the student great opportunities.

The catalogue of the Astor Library was printed in 1857-66, and that

of the Historical Society in 1859. No general catalogue of the Lenox

Library has yet been printed. An account of the private libraries of

New York was published by Dr. Wynne in 1860. The libraries of the

chief importance at the present time, in respect to American history,

are those of Mr. S. L. M. Barlow in New York, and of Mr. James Carson

Brevoort in Brooklyn. Mr. Charles H. Kalbfleisch of New York has a

small collection, but it embraces some of the rarest books. The New

York State Library at Albany is the chief of the libraries of its

class, and its principal characteristic pertains to American history.

The other chief American cities are of much less importance as centres

for historical research. The Philadelphia Library and the collection of

the Historical Society of Pennsylvania are hardly of distinctive value,

except in regard to the history of that State. In Baltimore the library

of the Peabody Institute, of which the first volume of an excellent

catalogue has been printed, and that of the Maryland Historical Society

are scarcely sufficient for exhaustive research. The private library

of Mr. H. H. Bancroft constitutes the only important resource of the

Pacific States;[129] and the most important collection in Canada is

that represented by the catalogue of the Library of Parliament, which

was printed in 1858.

This enumeration is intended only to indicate the chief places for

ease of general investigation in American history. Other localities are

rich in local helps, and accounts of such will be found elsewhere in

the present History.[130]

INTRODUCTION.

_By the Editor._

PART II. THE EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICA AND COLLECTIVE ACCOUNTS OF

THE EARLY VOYAGES THERETO.

OF the earliest collection of voyages of which we have any mention we

possess only a defective copy, which is in the Biblioteca Marciana,

and is called _Libretto de tutta la navigazione del Rè di Spagna delle

isole e terreni nuovamente scoperti stampato per Vercellese_. It was

published at Venice in 1504,[131] and is said to contain the first

three voyages of Columbus. This account, together with the narrative of

Cabral’s voyage printed at Rome and Milan, and an original—at present

unknown—of Vespucius’ third voyage, were embodied, with other matter,

in the _Paesi novamente retrovati et novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio

Florentino intitulato_, published at Vicentia in 1507,[132] and again

possibly at Vicentia in 1508,—though the evidence is wanting to support

the statement,—but certainly at Milan in that year (1508).[133] There

were later editions in 1512,[134] 1517,[135] 1519[136] (published at

Milan), and 1521.[137] There are also German,[138] Low German,[139]

Latin,[140] and French[141] translations.

While this Zorzi-Montalboddo compilation was flourishing, an Italian

scholar, domiciled in Spain, was recording, largely at first hand, the

varied reports of the voyages which were then opening a new existence

to the world. This was Peter Martyr, of whom Harrisse[142] cites an

early and quaint sketch from Hernando Alonso de Herrera’s _Disputatio

adversus Aristotelez_ (1517).[143] The general historians have always

made due acknowledgment of his service to them.[144]

Harrisse could find no evidence of Martyr’s First Decade having

been printed at Seville as early as 1500, as is sometimes stated;

but it has been held that a translation of it,—though no copy is now

known,—made by Angelo Trigviano into Italian was the _Libretto de tutta

la navigazione del Rè di Spagna_, already mentioned.[145] The earliest

unquestioned edition was that of 1511, which was printed at Seville

with the title _Legatio Babylonica_; it contained nine books and a part

of the tenth book of the First Decade.[146] In 1516 a new edition,

without map, was printed at Alcalá in Roman letter. The part of the

tenth book of the First Decade in the 1511 edition is here annexed to

the ninth, and a new tenth book is added, besides two other decades,

making three in all.[147]

There exists what has been called a German version (_Die Schiffung

mitt dem lanndt der Gulden Insel_) of the First Decade, in which the

supposed author is called Johan von Angliara; and its date is 1520,

or thereabout; but Mr. Deane, who has the book, says that it is not

Martyr’s.[148] Some _Poemata_, which had originally been included

in the publication of the First Decade, were separately printed in

1520.[149]

[Illustration: TITLE OF THE NEWE UNBEKANTHE LANDTE (REDUCED).]

At Basle in 1521 appeared his _De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis

insulis_, the title of which is annexed in fac-simile. Harrisse[150]

has called it an extract from the Fourth Decade; and a similar

statement is made in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ (vol. i. no. 67). But

Stevens and other authorities define it as a substitute for the lost

First Letter of Cortes, touching the expedition of Grijalva and the

invasion of Mexico; and it supplements, rather than overlaps, Martyr’s

other narratives.[151] Mr. Deane contends that if the Fourth Decade had

then been written, this might well be considered an abridgment of it.

The first complete edition (_De orbe novo_) of all the eight decades

was published in 1530 at Complutum; and with it is usually found the

map (“Tipus orbis universalis”) of Apianus, which originally appeared

in Camer’s _Solinus_ in 1520. In this new issue the map has its date

changed to 1530.[152]

In 1532, at Paris, appeared an abridgment in French of the first three

decades, together with an abstract of Martyr’s _De insulis_ (Basle,

1521), followed by abridgments of the printed second and third letters

of Cortes,—the whole bearing the title, _Extraict ov Recveil des Isles

nouuellemēt trouuees en la grand mer Oceane en temps du roy Despaigne

Fernād & Elizabeth sa femme, faict premierement en latin par Pierre

Martyr de Millan, & depuis translate en languaige francoys_.[153]

[Illustration: DE NVPER

SVB D. CAROLO REPERtis Insulis, simulqæ incolarum moribus, R. Petri

Martyris, Enchiridion, Dominæ Margaritæ, Diui Max. Cæs. filiæ dicatum.

BASILEAE, ANNO M. D. XXI.]

In 1533, at Basle, in folio, we find the first three decades and the

tract of 1521 (_De insulis_) united in _De rebus oceanicis et orbe

novo_.[154]

At Venice, in 1534, the _Summario de la generale historia de l’Indie

occidentali_ was a joint issue of Martyr and Oviedo, under the editing

of Ramusio.[155] An edition of Martyr, published at Paris in 1536,

sometimes mentioned,[156] does not apparently exist;[157] but an

edition of 1537 is noted by Sabin.[158] In 1555 Richard Eden’s _Decades

of the Newe Worlde, or West India_, appeared in black-letter at London.

It is made up in large part from Martyr,[159] and was the basis of

Richard Willes’ edition of Eden in 1577, which included the first four

decades, and an abridgment of the last four, with additions from Oviedo

and others,—all under the new name, _The History of Trauayle_.[160]

There was an edition again at Cologne in 1574,—the one which Robertson

used.[161] Three decades and the _De insulis_ are also included in a

composite folio published at Basle in 1582, containing also Benzoni

and Levinus, all in German.[162] The entire eight decades, in Latin,

which had not been printed together since the Basle edition of 1530,

were published in Paris in 1587 under the editing of Richard Hakluyt,

with the title: _De orbe novo Petri Martyris Anglerii Mediolanensis,

protonotarij, et Caroli quinti senatoris Decades octo, diligenti

temporum obseruatione, et vtilissimis annotationibus illustratæ, suôque

nitori restitutæ, labore et industria Richardi Haklvyti Oxoniensis

Angli. Additus est in vsum lectoris accuratus totius operis index_.

Parisiis, apud Gvillelmvm Avvray, 1587. With its “F. G.” map, it is

exceedingly rare.[163]

[Illustration: GRYNÆUS.

Fac-simile of cut in Reusner’s _Icones_ (Strasburg, 1590), p. 107.]

As illustrating in some sort his more labored work, the _Opus

epistolarum Petri Martyris_ was first printed at Complutum in

1530.[164] The letters were again published at Amsterdam, in 1670,[165]

in an edition which had the care of Ch. Patin, to which was appended

other letters by Fernando del Pulgar.[166]

The most extensive of the early collections was the _Novus orbis_,

which was issued in separate editions at Basle and Paris in 1532.

Simon Grynæus, a learned professor at Basle, signed the preface; and

it usually passes under his name. Grynæus was born in Swabia, was

a friend of Luther, visited England in 1531, and died in Basle, in

1541. The compilation, however, is the work of a canon of Strasburg,

John Huttich (born about 1480; died, 1544), but the labor of revision

fell on Grynæus.[167] It has the first three voyages of Columbus, and

those of Pinzon and Vespucius; the rest of the book is taken up with

the travels of Marco Polo and his successors to the East.[168] It

next appeared in a German translation at Strasburg in 1534, which was

made by Michal Herr, _Die New Welt_. It has no map, gives more from

Martyr than the other edition, and substitutes a preface by Herr for

that of Grynæus.[169] The original Latin was reproduced at Basle again

in 1537, with 1536 in the colophon.[170] In 1555 another edition was

printed at Basle, enlarged upon the 1537 edition by the insertion of

the second and third of the Cortes letters and some accounts of efforts

in converting the Indians.[171] Those portions relating to America

exclusively were reprinted in the Latin at Rotterdam in 1616.[172]

Sebastian Münster, who was born in 1489, was forty-three years old

when his map of the world—which is preserved in the Paris (1532)

edition of the _Novus orbis_—appeared. This is the first time that

Münster significantly comes before us as a describer of the geography

of the New World. Again in 1540 and 1542 he was associated with the

editions of Ptolemy issued at Basle in those years.[173] It is,

however, upon his _Cosmographia_, among his forty books, that Münster’s

fame chiefly rests. The earliest editions are extremely rare, and seem

not to be clearly defined by the bibliographers. It appears to have

been originally issued in German, probably in 1544 at Basle,[174]

under the mixed title: _Cosmographia. Beschreibūg aller lender Durch

Sebastianum Munsterum. Getruckt zü Basel durch Henrichum Petri, Anno

MDxliiij._[175] He says that he had been engaged upon it for eighteen

years, keeping Strabo before him as a model. To the section devoted to

Asia he adds a few pages “Von den neüwen inseln” (folios dcxxxv-dcxlij).

[Illustration: MÜNSTER.

Fac-simile of the cut in the _Ptolemy_ of 1552.]

This account was scant; and though it was a little enlarged in the

second edition in 1545,[176] it remained of small extent through

subsequent editions, and was confined to ten pages in that of 1614.

The last of the German editions appeared in 1628.[177] The earliest

undoubted Latin text[178] appeared at Basle in 1550, with the same

series of new views, etc., by Manuel Deutsch, which were given in the

German edition of that date.[179] With nothing but a change of title

apparently, there were reissues of this edition in 1551, 1552, and

1554,[180] and again in 1559.[181] The edition of 1572 has the same

map, “Novæ insulæ,” used in the 1554 editions; but new names are added,

and new plates of Cusco and Cuba are also furnished.[182]

[Illustration: MÜNSTER.

Fac-simile of a cut in Reusner’s _Icones_ (Strasburg, 1590), p. 171.]

The earliest French edition, according to Brunet,[183] appeared in

1552; and other editions followed in that language.[184] Eden gave the

fifth book an English dress in 1553, which was again issued in 1572 and

1574.[185] A Bohemian edition, made by Jan z Puchowa, _Kozmograffia

Czieská_, was issued in 1554.[186] The first Italian edition was

printed at Basle in 1558, using the engraved plates of the other

Basle issues; and finally, in 1575, an Italian edition, according to

Brunet,[187] appeared at Colonia.

[Illustration: MONARDES.]

The best-known collection of voyages of the sixteenth century is that

of Ramusio, whose third volume—compiled probably in 1553, and printed

in 1556—is given exclusively to American voyages.[188] It contains,

however, little regarding Columbus not given by Peter Martyr and

Oviedo, except the letter to Fracastoro.[189] In Ramusio the narratives

of these early voyages first got a careful and considerate editor, who

at this time was ripe in knowledge and experience, for he was well

beyond sixty,[190] and he had given his maturer years to historical

and geographical study. He had at one time maintained a school for

topographical studies in his own house. Oviedo tells us of the

assistance Ramusio was to him in his work. Locke has praised his labors

without stint.[191]

Monardes, one of the distinguished Spanish physicians of this time, was

busy seeking for the simples and curatives of the New World plants,

as the adventurers to New Spain brought them back. The original issue

of his work was the _Dos Libros_, published at Seville in 1565,

treating “of all things brought from our West Indies which are used in

medicine, and of the Bezaar Stone, and the herb Escuerçonera.” This

book is become rare, and is priced as high as 200 francs and £9.[192]

The “segunda parte” is sometimes found separately with the date 1571;

but in 1574 a third part was printed with the other two,—making the

complete work, _Historia medicinal de nuestras Indias_,—and these were

again issued in 1580.[193] An Italian version, by Annibale Briganti,

appeared at Venice in 1575 and 1589,[194] and a French, with Du Jardin,

in 1602.[195] There were three English editions printed under the title

of _Joyfull Newes out of the newe founde world, wherein is declared the

rare and singular virtues of diverse and sundry Herbes, Trees, Oyles,

Plantes, and Stones, by Doctor Monardus of Sevill, Englished by John

Frampton_, which first appeared in 1577, and was reprinted in 1580,

with additions from Monardes’ other tracts, and again in 1596.[196]

The Spanish historians of affairs in Mexico, Peru, and Florida are

grouped in the _Hispanicarum rerum scriptores_, published at Frankfort

in 1579-1581, in three volumes.[197] Of Richard Hakluyt and his several

collections,—the _Divers Voyages_ of 1582, the _Principall Navigations_

of 1589, and his enlarged edition, of which the third volume (1600)

relates to America,—there is an account in Vol. III. of the present

work.[198]

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DE BRY.

This follows a print given in fac-simile in the _Carter-Brown

Catalogue_, i. 316.]

The great undertaking of De Bry was also begun towards the close

of the same century. De Bry was an engraver at Frankfort, and his

professional labors had made him acquainted with works of travel. The

influence of Hakluyt and a visit to the English editor stimulated him

to undertake a task similar to that of the English compiler.

[Illustration: FEYERABEND.

Sigmund Feyerabend was a prominent bookseller of his day in Frankfort,

and was born about 1527 or 1528. He was an engraver himself, and was

associated with De Bry in the publications of his _Voyages_.]

He resolved to include both the Old and New World; and he finally

produced his volumes simultaneously in Latin and German. As he gave

a larger size to the American parts than to the others, the commonly

used title, referring to this difference, was soon established as

_Grands et petits voyages_.[199] Theodore De Bry himself died in March,

1598; but the work was carried forward by his widow, by his sons John

Theodore and John Israel, and by his sons-in-law Matthew Merian and

William Fitzer. The task was not finished till 1634, when twenty-five

parts had been printed in the Latin, of which thirteen pertain to

America; but the German has one more part in the American series.

His first part—which was Hariot’s _Virginia_—was printed not only in

Latin and German, but also in the original English[200] and in French;

but there seeming to be no adequate demand in these languages, the

subsequent issues were confined to Latin and German. There was a gap in

the dates of publication between 1600 (when the ninth part is called

“postrema pars”) and 1619-1620, when the tenth and eleventh parts

appeared at Oppenheim, and a twelfth at Frankfort in 1624. A thirteenth

and fourteenth part appeared in German in 1628 and 1630; and these,

translated together into Latin, completed the Latin series in 1634.

Without attempting any bibliographical description,[201] the succession

and editions of the American parts will be briefly enumerated:—

=I.= _Hariot’s Virginia._ In Latin, English, German, and French, in

1590; four or more impressions of the Latin the same year. Other

editions of the German in 1600 and 1620.

=II=. _Le Moyne’s Florida._ In Latin, 1591 and 1609; in German, 1591,

1603.

=III.= _Von Staden’s Brazil._ In Latin, 1592, 1605, 1630; in German,

1593 (twice).

=IV.= _Benzoni’s New World._ In Latin, 1594 (twice), 1644; in German,

1594, 1613.

=V.= _Continuation of Benzoni._ In Latin, 1595 (twice); in German, two

editions without date, probably 1595 and 1613.

=VI.= _Continuation of Benzoni (Peru)._ In Latin, 1596, 1597, 1617; in

German, 1597, 1619.

=VII.= _Schmidel’s Brazil._ In Latin, 1599, 1625; in German, 1597,

1600, 1617.

=VIII.= _Drake, Candish, and Ralegh._ In Latin, 1599 (twice), 1625; in

German, 1599, 1624.

=IX.= _Acosta_, etc. In Latin, 1602, 1633; in German, probably 1601;

“additamentum,” 1602; and again entire after 1620.

=X.= _Vespucius, Hamor, and John Smith._ In Latin, 1619 (twice); in

German, 1618.

=XI.= _Schouten and Spilbergen._ In Latin, 1619,—appendix, 1620; in

German, 1619,—appendix, 1620.

=XII.= _Herrera._ In Latin, 1624; in German, 1623.

=XIII.= _Miscellaneous_,—_Cabot_, etc. In Latin, 1634; in German, the

first seven sections in 1627 (sometimes 1628); and sections 8-15 in

1630.

_Elenchus: Historia Americæ sive Novus orbis_, 1634 (three issues).

This is a table of the Contents to the edition which Merian was selling

in 1634 under a collective title.

The foregoing enumeration makes no recognition of the almost

innumerable varieties caused by combination, which sometimes pass for

new editions. Some of the editions of the same date are usually called

“counterfeits;” and there are doubts, even, if some of those here named

really deserve recognition as distinct editions.[202]

While there is distinctive merit in De Bry’s collection, which caused

it to have a due effect in its day on the progress of geographical

knowledge,[203] it must be confessed that a certain meretricious

reputation has become attached to the work as the test of a collector’s

assiduity, and of his supply of money, quite disproportioned to

the relative use of the collection in these days to a student.

This artificial appreciation has no doubt been largely due to the

engravings, which form so attractive a feature in the series, and

which, while they in many cases are the honest rendering of genuine

sketches, are certainly in not a few the merest fancy of some

designer.[204]

There are several publications of the De Brys sometimes found grouped

with the _Voyages_ as a part, though not properly so, of the series.

Such are Las Casas’ _Narratio regionum Indicarum_; the voyages of the

“Silberne Welt,” by Arthus von Dantzig, and of Olivier van Noort;[205]

the _Rerum et urbis Amstelodamensium historia_ of Pontanus, with its

Dutch voyages to the north; and the _Navigations aux Indes par les

Hollandois_.[206]

Another of De Bry’s editors, Gasper Ens, published in 1680 his

_West-unnd-Ost Indischer Lustgart_, which is a summary of the sources

of American history.[207]

There are various abridgments of De Bry. The earliest is Ziegler’s

_America_, Frankfort, 1614,[208] which is made up from the first nine

parts of the German _Grands Voyages_. The _Historia antipodum, oder

Newe Welt_ (1631), is the first twelve parts condensed by Johann Ludwig

Gottfried, otherwise known as Johann Phillippe Abelin, who was, in

Merian’s day, a co-laborer on the _Voyages_. He uses a large number of

the plates from the larger work.[209] The chief rival collection of De

Bry is that of Hulsius, which is described elsewhere.[210]

Collections now became numerous. Conrad Löw’s _Meer oder Seehanen Buch_

was published at Cologne in 1598.[211] The Dutch Collection of Voyages,

issued by Cornelius Claesz, appeared in uniform style between 1598 and

1603, but it never had a collective title. It gives the voyages of

Cavendish and Drake.[212]

It was well into the next century (1613) when Purchas began his

publications, of which there is an account elsewhere.[213] Hieronymus

Megiser’s _Septentrio novantiquus_ was published at Leipsic in 1613.

In a single volume it gave the Zeni and later accounts of the North,

besides narratives pertaining to New France and Virginia.[214] The

_Journalen van de Reysen op Oostindie_ of Michael Colijn, published

at Amsterdam in 1619, is called by Muller[215] the first series of

voyages published in Dutch with a collective title. It includes,

notwithstanding the title, Cavendish, Drake, and Raleigh. Another Dutch

folio, Herckmans’ _Der Zeevaert lof_, etc. (Amsterdam, 1634), does not

include any American voyages.[216] The celebrated Dutch collection,

edited by Isaac Commelin, at Amsterdam, and known as the _Begin en

Voortgangh van de Oost-Indische Compagnie_, would seem originally to

have included, among its voyages to the East and North,[217] those of

Raleigh and Cavendish; but they were later omitted.[218]

The collection of Thevenot was issued in 1663; but this has been

described elsewhere.[219] The collection usually cited as Dapper’s was

printed at Amsterdam, 1669-1729, in folio (thirteen volumes). It has no

collective title, but among the volumes are two touching America,—the

_Beschrijvinge_ of Montanus,[220] and Nienhof’s _Brasiliaansche Zee-en

Lantreize_.[221] A small collection, _Recueil de divers voyages faits

en Africa et en l’Amérique_,[222] was published in Paris by Billaine

in 1674. It includes Blome’s Jamaica, Laborde on the Caribs, etc. Some

of the later American voyages were also printed in the second edition

of a Swedish _Reesa-book_, printed at Wysingzborg in 1674, 1675.[223]

The Italian collection, _Il genio vagante_, was printed at Parma in

1691-1693, in four volumes.

_An Account of Several Voyages_ (London, 1694) gives Narborough’s to

Magellan’s Straits, and Marten’s to Greenland.

The important English _Collection of Voyages and Travels_ which passes

under the name of its publisher, Churchill, took its earliest form

in 1704, appearing in four volumes; but was afterwards increased by

two additional volumes in 1733, and by two more in 1744,—these last,

sometimes called the _Oxford Voyages_, being made up from material in

the library of the Earl of Oxford. It was reissued complete in 1752. It

has an introductory discourse by Caleb Locke; and this, and some other

of its contents, constitutes the _Histoire de la navigation_, Paris,

1722.[224]

John Harris, an English divine, had compiled a _Collection of Voyages_

in 1702 which was a rival of Churchill’s, differing from it in being

an historical summary of all voyages, instead of a collection of some.

Harris wrote the Introduction; but it is questionable how much else he

had to do with it.[225] It was revised and reissued in 1744-1748 by Dr.

John Campbell, and in this form it is often regarded as a supplement

to Churchill.[226] It was reprinted in two volumes, folio, with

continuations to date, in 1764.[227]

The well-known Dutch collection (_Voyagien_) of Vander Aa was printed

at Leyden in 1706, 1707. It gives voyages to all parts of the world

made between 1246 and 1693. He borrows from Herrera, Acosta, Purchas,

De Bry, and all available sources, and illuminates the whole with

about five hundred maps and plates. In its original form it made

twenty-eight, sometimes thirty, volumes of small size, in black-letter,

and eight volumes in folio, both editions being issued at the same time

and from the same type. In this larger form the voyages are arranged

by nations; and it was the unsold copies of this edition which, with

a new general title, constitutes the edition of 1727. In the smaller

form the arrangement is chronological. In the folio edition the voyages

to Spanish America previous to 1540 constitute volumes three and four;

while the English voyages, to 1696, are in volumes five and six.[228]

In 1707 Du Perier’s _Histoire universelle des voyages_ had not so

wide a scope as its title indicated, being confined to the early

Spanish voyages to America;[229] the proposed subsequent volumes

not having been printed. An English translation, under Du Perier’s

name, was issued in London in 1708;[230] but when reissued in 1711,

with a different title, it credited the authorship to the Abbé

Bellegarde.[231] In 1711, also, Captain John Stevens published in

London his _New Collection of Voyages_; but Lawson’s Carolina and

Cieza’s Peru were the only American sections.[232] In 1715 the French

collection known as Bernard’s _Recueil de voiages au Nord_, was begun

at Amsterdam. A pretty wide interpretation is given to the restricted

designation of the title, and voyages to California, Louisiana, the

Upper Mississippi (Hennepin), Virginia, and Georgia are included.[233]

Daniel Coxe, in 1741, united in one volume _A Collection of Voyages_,

three of which he had already printed separately, including Captain

James’s to the Northwest. A single volume of a collection called _The

American Traveller_ appeared in London in 1743.[234]

The collection known as _Astley’s Voyages_ was published in London in

four volumes in 1745-1747; the editor was John Green, whose name is

sometimes attached to the work. It gives the travels of Marco Polo,

but has nothing of the early voyages to America,[235]—these being

intended for later volumes, were never printed. These four volumes were

translated, with some errors and omissions, into French, and constitute

the first nine volumes of the Abbé Prevost’s _Histoire générale des

voyages_, begun in Paris in 1746, and completed, in twenty quarto

volumes, in 1789.[236] An octavo edition was printed (1749-1770) in

seventy-five volumes.[237] It was again reprinted at the Hague in

twenty-five volumes quarto (1747-1780), with considerable revision,

following the original English, and with Green’s assistance; besides

showing some additions. The Dutch editor was P. de Hondt, who also

issued an edition in Dutch in twenty-one volumes quarto,—including,

however, only the first seventeen volumes of his French edition, thus

omitting those chiefly concerning America.[238] A small collection

of little moment, _A New Universal Collection of Voyages_, appeared

in London in 1755.[239] De Brosses’ Histoire des navigations aux

terres australes depuis 1501 (Paris, 1756), two volumes quarto, covers

Vespucius, Magellan, Drake, and Cavendish.[240]

Several English collections appeared in the next few years; among which

are _The World Displayed_ (London, 1759-1761), twenty vols. 16mo,—of

which seven volumes are on American voyages, compiled from the larger

collections,[241]—and _A Curious Collection of Travels_ (London, 1761)

is in eight volumes, three of which are devoted to America.[242]

The Abbé de la Porte’s _Voyageur François_, in forty-two volumes,

1765-1795 (there are other dates), may be mentioned to warn the

student of its historical warp with a fictitious woof.[243] John

Barrows’ _Collection of Voyages_ (London, 1765), in three small

volumes, was translated into French by Targe under the title of _Abrégé

chronologique_. John Callender’s _Voyages to the Terra australis_

(London, 1766-1788), three volumes, translated for the first time a

number of the narratives in De Bry, Hulsius, and Thevenot. It gives

the voyages of Vespucius, Magellan, Drake, Galle, Cavendish, Hawkins,

and others.[244] Dodsley’s _Compendium of Voyages_ was published

in the same year (1766) in seven volumes.[245] The _New Collection

of Voyages_, generally referred to as Knox’s, from the publisher’s

name, appeared in seven volumes in 1767, the first three volumes

covering American explorations.[246] In 1770 Edward Cavendish Drake’s

_New Universal Collection of Voyages_ was published at London. The

narratives are concise, and of a very popular character.[247] David

Henry, a magazinist of the day, published in 1773-1774 _An Historical

Account of all the Voyages Round the World by English Navigators_,

beginning with Drake and Cavendish.[248]

La Harpe issued in Paris, 1780-1801, in thirty-two volumes,—Comeyras

editing the last eleven,—his _Abrégé de l’histoire générale des

voyages_, which proved a more readable and popular book than Prévost’s

collection. There have been later editions and continuations.[249]

Johann Reinhold Forster made a positive contribution to this field

of compilation when he printed his _Geschichte der Entdeckungen und

Schifffahrten im Norden_ at Frankfort in 1785.[250] He goes back to

the earliest explorations, and considers the credibility of the Zeno

narrative. He starts with Gomez for the Spanish section. A French

collection by Berenger, _Voyages faits autour du monde_ (Paris,

1788-1789), is very scant on Magellan, Drake, and Cavendish. A

collection was published in London (1789) by Richardson on the voyages

of the Portuguese and Spaniards during the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries. Mavor’s _Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries_ (London,

1796-1802), twenty-five volumes, is a condensed treatment, which passed

to other editions in 1810 and 1813-1815.

A standard compilation appeared in John Pinkerton’s _General Collection

of Voyages_ (London, 1808-1814), in seventeen volumes,[251] with over

two hundred maps and plates, repeating the essential English narratives

of earlier collections, and translating those from foreign languages

afresh, preserving largely the language of the explorers. Pinkerton, as

an editor, was learned, but somewhat pedantic and over-confident; and

a certain agglutinizing habit indicates a process of amassment rather

than of selection and assimilation. Volumes xii., xiii., and xiv. are

given to America; but the operations of the Spaniards on the main, and

particularly on the Pacific coast of North America, are rather scantily

chronicled.[252]

In 1808 was begun, under the supervision of Malte-Brun and others, the

well-known _Annales des voyages_, which was continued to 1815, making

twenty-five volumes. A new series, _Nouvelles annales des voyages_, was

begun in 1819. The whole work is an important gathering of original

sources and learned comment, and is in considerable part devoted to

America. A French _Collection abrégée des voyages_, by Bancarel,

appeared in Paris in 1808-1809, in twelve volumes.

_The Collection of the best Voyages and Travels_, compiled by Robert

Kerr, and published in Edinburgh in 1811-1824, in eighteen octavo

volumes, is a useful one, though the scheme was not wholly carried

out. It includes an historical essay on the progress of navigation

and discovery by W. Stevenson. It also includes among others the

Northmen and Zeni voyages, the travels of Marco Polo and Galvano, the

African discoveries of the Portuguese. The voyages of Columbus and his

successors begin in vol. iii.; and the narratives of these voyages are

continued through vol. vi., though those of Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins,

Davis, Magellan, and others come later in the series.

The _Histoire générale des voyages_, undertaken by C. A. Walkenaer in

1826, was stopped in 1831, after twenty-one octavos had been printed,

without exhausting the African portion.

The early Dutch voyages are commemorated in Bennet and Wijk’s

_Nederlandsche Ontdekkingen in America_, etc., which was issued at

Utrecht in 1827,[253] and in their _Nederlandsche Zeereizen_, printed

at Dordrecht in 1828-1830, in five volumes octavo. It contains

Linschoten, Hudson, etc.

Albert Montémont’s _Bibliothèque universelle des voyages_ was published

in Paris, 1833-1836, in forty-six volumes.

G. A. Wimmer’s _Die Enthüllung des Erdkreises_ (Vienna, 1834), five

volumes octavo, is a general summary, which gives in the last two

volumes the voyages to America and to the South Seas.[254]

In 1837 Henri Ternaux-Compans began the publication of his _Voyages,

relations, et mémoires originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la

découverte de l’Amérique_, of which an account is given on another page

(see p. vi).

The collection of F. C. Marmocchi, _Raccolta di viaggi dalla scoperta

del Nuevo Continente_, was published at Prato in 1840-1843, in five

volumes; it includes the Navarrete collection on Columbus, Xeres on

Pizarro, and other of the Spanish narratives.[255] The last volume of a

collection in twelve volumes published in Paris, _Nouvelle bibliothèque

des voyages_, is also given to America.

The Hakluyt Society in London began its valuable series of publications

in 1847, and has admirably kept up its work to the present time,

having issued its volumes generally under satisfactory editing. Its

publications are not sold outside of its membership, except at second

hand.[256]

Under the editing of José Ferrer de Couto and José March y Labores,

and with the royal patronage, a _Historia de la marina real Española_

was published in Madrid, in two volumes, 1849 and 1854. It relates the

early voyages.[257] Édouard Charton’s _Voyageurs anciens et modernes_

was published in four volumes in Paris, 1855-1857; and it passed

subsequently to a new edition.[258]

A summarized account of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, from

Prince Henry to Pizarro, was published in German by Theodor Vogel, and

also in English in 1877.

A _Nouvelle histoire des voyages_, by Richard Cortambert, is the

latest and most popular presentation of the subject, opening with the

explorations of Columbus and his successors; and Édouard Cat’s _Les

grandes découvertes maritimes du treizième au seizième siècle_ (Paris,

1882) is another popular book.

NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL

HISTORY OF AMERICA

CHAPTER I.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

BY WILLIAM H. TILLINGHAST,

_Assistant Librarian of Harvard University._

AS Columbus, in August, 1498, ran into the mouth of the Orinoco,

he little thought that before him lay, silent but irrefutable, the

proof of the futility of his long-cherished hopes. His gratification

at the completeness of his success, in that God had permitted the

accomplishment of all his predictions, to the confusion of those who

had opposed and derided him, never left him; even in the fever which

overtook him on the last voyage his strong faith cried to him, “Why

dost thou falter in thy trust in God? He gave thee India!” In this

belief he died. The conviction that Hayti was Cipangu, that Cuba was

Cathay, did not long outlive its author; the discovery of the Pacific

soon made it clear that a new world and another sea lay between the

landfall of Columbus and the goal of his endeavors.

The truth, when revealed and accepted, was a surprise more profound

to the learned than even the error it displaced. The possibility of

a short passage westward to Cathay was important to merchants and

adventurers, startling to courtiers and ecclesiastics, but to men of

classical learning it was only a corroboration of the teaching of the

ancients. That a barrier to such passage should be detected in the very

spot where the outskirts of Asia had been imagined, was unexpected

and unwelcome. The treasures of Mexico and Peru could not satisfy

the demand for the products of the East; Cortes gave himself, in his

later years, to the search for a strait which might yet make good the

anticipations of the earlier discoverers. The new interpretation, if

economically disappointing, had yet an interest of its own. Whence came

the human population of the unveiled continent? How had its existence

escaped the wisdom of Greece and Rome? Had it done so? Clearly, since

the whole human race had been renewed through Noah, the red men of

America must have descended from the patriarch; in some way, at some

time, the New World had been discovered and populated from the Old.

Had knowledge of this event lapsed from the minds of men before their

memories were committed to writing, or did reminiscences exist in

ancient literatures, overlooked, or misunderstood by modern ignorance?

Scholars were not wanting, nor has their line since wholly failed, who

freely devoted their ingenuity to the solution of these questions, but

with a success so diverse in its results, that the inquiry is still

pertinent, especially since the pursuit, even though on the main point

it end in reservation of judgment, enables us to understand from what

source and by what channels the inspiration came which held Columbus so

steadily to his westward course.

Although the elder civilizations of Assyria and Egypt boasted a

cultivation of astronomy long anterior to the heroic age of Greece,

their cosmographical ideas appear to have been rude and undeveloped,

so that whatever the Greeks borrowed thence was of small importance

compared with what they themselves ascertained. While it may be doubted

if decisive testimony can be extorted from the earliest Grecian

literature, represented chiefly by the Homeric and Hesiodic poems, it

is probable that the people among whom that literature grew up had not

gone, in their conception of the universe, beyond simple acceptance

of the direct evidence of their senses. The earth they looked upon

as a plane, stretching away from the Ægean Sea, the focus of their

knowledge, and ever less distinctly known, until it ended in an horizon

of pure ignorance, girdled by the deep-flowing current of the river

Oceanus. Beyond Oceanus even fancy began to fail: there was the realm

of dust and darkness, the home of the powerless spirits of the dead;

there, too, the hemisphere of heaven joined its brother hemisphere of

Tartarus.[259] This conception of the earth was not confined to Homeric

times, but remained the common belief throughout the course of Grecian

history, underlying and outlasting many of the speculations of the

philosophers.

That growing intellectual activity which was signalized by a notable

development of trade and colonization in the eighth century, in the

seventh awoke to consciousness in a series of attempts to formulate

the conditions of existence. The philosophy of nature thus originated,

wherein the testimony of nature in her own behalf was little sought

or understood, began with the assumption of a flat earth, variously

shaped, and as variously supported. To whom belongs the honor of first

propounding the theory of the spherical form of the earth cannot be

known. It was taught by the Italian Pythagoreans of the sixth century,

and was probably one of the doctrines of Pythagoras himself, as it was,

a little later, of Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatics.[260]

In neither case can there be a claim for scientific discovery. The

earth was a sphere because the sphere was the most perfect form; it was

at the centre of the universe because that was the place of honor; it

was motionless because motion was less dignified than rest.

Plato, who was familiar with the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, adopted

their view of the form of the earth, and did much to popularize it

among his countrymen.[261] To the generation that succeeded him, the

sphericity of the earth was a fact as capable of logical demonstration

as a geometrical theorem. Aristotle, in his treatise “On the Heaven,”

after detailing the views of those philosophers who regarded the

earth as flat, drum-shaped, or cylindrical, gives a formal summary

of the grounds which necessitate the assumption of its sphericity,

specifying the tendency of all things to seek the centre, the unvarying

circularity of the earth’s shadow at eclipses of the moon, and the

proportionate change in the altitude of stars resulting from changes

in the observer’s latitude. Aristotle made the doctrine orthodox; his

successors, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy, constituted it an

inalienable possession of the race. Greece transmitted it to Rome, Rome

impressed it upon barbaric Europe; taught by Pliny, Hyginus, Manilius,

expressed in the works of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, it passed into the

school-books of the Middle Ages, whence, reinforced by Arabian lore, it

has come down to us.[262]

That the belief ever became in antiquity or in the Middle Ages widely

spread among the people is improbable; it did not indeed escape

opposition among the educated; writers even of the Augustan age

sometimes appear in doubt.[263]

The sphericity of the earth once comprehended, there follow certain

corollaries which the Greeks were not slow to perceive. Plato, indeed,

who likened the earth to a ball covered with party-colored strips

of leather, gives no estimate of its size, although the description

of the world in the _Phaedo_ seems to imply immense magnitude;[264]

but Aristotle states that mathematicians of his day estimated the

circumference at 400,000 stadia,[265] and Archimedes puts the common

reckoning at somewhat less than 300,000 stadia.[266] How these figures

were obtained we are not informed. The first measurement of the earth

which rests on a known method was that made about the middle of the

third century B.C., by Eratosthenes, the librarian at Alexandria, who,

by comparing the estimated linear distance between Syene, under the

tropic, and Alexandria with their angular distance, as deduced from

observations on the shadow of the gnomon at Alexandria, concluded that

the circumference of the earth was 250,000 or 252,000 stadia.[267] This

result, owing to an uncertainty as to the exact length of the stade

used in the computation, cannot be interpreted with confidence, but

if we assume that it was in truth about twelve per cent. too large,

we shall probably not be far out of the way.[268] Hipparchus, in many

matters the opponent of Eratosthenes, adopted his conclusion on this

point, and was followed by Strabo,[269] by Pliny, who regarded the

attempt as somewhat over-bold, but so cleverly argued that it could not

be disregarded,[270] and by many others.

Fortunately, as it resulted, this overestimate was not allowed to stand

uncontested. Posidonius of Rhodes (B.C. 135-51), by an independent

calculation based upon the difference in altitude of Canopus at Rhodes

and at Alexandria, reached a result which is reported by Cleomedes

as 240,000, and by Strabo as 180,000 stadia.[271] The final judgment

of Posidonius apparently approved the smaller number; it hit, at all

events, the fancy of the time, and was adopted by Marinus of Tyre and

by Ptolemy,[272] whose authority imposed it upon the Middle Ages.

Accepting it as an independent estimate, it follows that Posidonius

allowed but 500 stadia to a degree, instead of 700, thus representing

the earth as about 28 per cent. smaller than did Eratosthenes.[273]

To the earliest writers the known lands constituted the earth; they

were girdled, indeed, by the river Oceanus, but that was a narrow

stream whose further bank lay in fable-land.[274] The promulgation

of the theory of the sphericity of the earth and the approximate

determination of its size drew attention afresh to the problem of

the distribution of land and water upon its surface, and materially

modified the earlier conception. The increase of geographical knowledge

along lines of trade, conquest, and colonization had greatly extended

the bounds of the known world since Homer’s day, but it was still

evident that by far the larger portion of the earth, taking the

smallest estimate of its size, was still undiscovered,—a fair field for

speculation and fantasy.[275]

We can trace two schools of thought in respect to the configuration

of this unknown region, both represented in the primitive conception

of the earth, and both conditioned by a more fundamental postulate. It

was a near thought, if the earth was a sphere, to transfer to it the

systems of circles which had already been applied to the heavens. The

suggestion is attributed to Thales, to Pythagoras, and to Parmenides;

and it is certain that the earth was very early conceived as divided

by the polar and solstitial circles into five zones, whereof two only,

the temperate in either sphere, so the Greeks believed, were capable

of supporting life; of the others, the polar were uninhabitable from

intense cold, as was the torrid from its parching heat. This theory,

which excluded from knowledge the whole southern hemisphere and a large

portion of the northern, was approved by Aristotle and the Homeric

school of geographers, and by the minor physicists. As knowledge grew,

its truth was doubted. Polybius wrote a monograph, maintaining that the

middle portion of the torrid zone had a temperate climate, and his view

was adopted by Posidonius and Geminus, if not by Eratosthenes. Marinus

and Ptolemy, who knew that commerce was carried on along the east coast

of Africa far below the equator, cannot have fallen into the ancient

error, but the error long persisted; it was always in favor with the

compilers, and thus perhaps obtained that currency in Rome which

enabled it to exert a restrictive and pernicious check upon maritime

endeavor deep into the Middle Ages.[276]

Upon the question of the distribution of land and water, unanimity

no longer prevailed. By some it was maintained that there was one

ocean, confluent over the whole globe, so that the body of known

lands, that so-called continent, was in truth an island, and whatever

other inhabitable regions might exist were in like manner surrounded

and so separated by vast expanses of untraversed waves. Such was the

view, scarcely more than a survival of the ocean-river of the poets

deprived of its further bank by the assumption of the sphericity of

the earth, held by Aristotle,[277] Crates of Mallus, Strabo, Pliny,

and many others. If this be called the oceanic theory, we may speak of

its opposite as the continental: according to this view, the existing

land so far exceeded the water in extent that it formed in truth the

continent, holding the seas quite separate within its hollows. The

origin of the theory is obscure, even though we recall that Homer’s

ocean was itself contained. It was strikingly presented by Plato in the

_Phaedo_, and is implied in the Atlantis myth; it may be recalled, too,

that Herodotus, often depicted as a monster of credulity, had broken

the bondage of the ocean-river, because he could not satisfy himself of

the existence of the ocean in the east or north; and while reluctantly

admitting that Africa was surrounded by water, considered Gaul to

extend indefinitely westward.[278] Hipparchus revived the doctrine,

teaching that Africa divided the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic in the

south, so that these seas lay in separate basins. The existence of an

equatorial branch of the ocean, a favorite dogma of the other school,

was also denied by Polybius, Posidonius, and Geminus.[279]

The reports of traders and explorers led Marinus to a like conclusion;

both he and Ptolemy, misinterpreting their information, believed

that the eastern coast of Asia ran south instead of north, and they

united it with the eastern trend of Africa, supposing at the same time

that the two continents met also in the west.[280] The continental

theory, despite its famous disciples, made no headway at Rome, and was

consequently hardly known to the Middle Ages before its falsity was

proved by the circumnavigation of Africa.[281]

That portion of Europe, Asia, and Africa known to the ancients, whether

regarded as an island, or as separated from the rest of the world by

climatic conditions merely, or by ignorance, formed a distinct concept

and was known by a particular name, _ἡ οἰκουμένη_. Originally supposed

to be circular, it was later thought to be oblong and as having a

length more than double its width. Those who believed in its insularity

likened its shape to a sling, or to an outspread chlamys or military

cloak, and assumed that it lay wholly within the northern hemisphere.

In absolute figures, the length of the known world was placed by

Eratosthenes at 77,800 stadia, and by Strabo at 70,000. The latter

figure remained the common estimate until Marinus of Tyre, in the

second century a.d., receiving direct information from the silk-traders

of a caravan route to China, substituted the portentous exaggeration of

90,000 stadia on the parallel of Rhodes, or 225°. Ptolemy, who followed

Marinus in many things, shrank from the naïveté whereby the Tyrian had

interpreted a seven months’ caravan journey to represent seven months’

travelling in a direct line at the rate of twenty miles a day, and cut

down his figures to 180°, or 72,000 stadia.[282] It appears, therefore,

that Strabo considered the known world as occupying not much over one

third of the circuit of the temperate zone, while Marinus, who adopted

180,000 stadia as the measure of the earth, claimed a knowledge of

two thirds of that zone, and supposed that land extended indefinitely

eastward beyond the limit of knowledge.

What did the ancients picture to themselves of this unknown portion of

the globe? The more imaginative found there a home for ancient myth and

modern fable; the geographers, severely practical, excluded it from the

scope of their survey; philosophers and physicists could easily supply

from theory what they did not know as fact. Pythagoras, it is said, had

taught that the whole surface of the earth was inhabited. Aristotle

demonstrated that the southern hemisphere must have its temperate zone,

where winds similar to our own prevailed; his successors elaborated the

hint into a systematized nomenclature, whereby the inhabitants of the

earth were divided into four classes, according to their location upon

the surface of the earth with relation to one another.[283]

This system was furthest developed by the oceanic school. The rival of

Eratosthenes, Crates of Mallus (who achieved fame by the construction

of a large globe), assumed the existence of a southern continent,

separated from the known world by the equatorial ocean; it is possible

that he introduced the idea of providing a distinct residence for

each class of earth-dwellers, by postulating four island continents,

one in each quarter of the globe. Eratosthenes probably thought that

there were inhabitable regions in the southern hemisphere, and Strabo

added that there might be two, or even more, habitable earths in the

northern temperate zone, especially near the parallel of Rhodes.[284]

Crates introduced his views at Rome, and the oceanic theory remained

a favorite with the Roman physicists. It was avowed by Pliny, who

championed the existence of antipodes against the vulgar disbelief.

In the fine episode in the last book of Cicero’s _Republic_, the

younger Scipio relates a dream, wherein the elder hero of his name,

Scipio Africanus, conveying him to the lofty heights of the Milky Way,

emphasized the futility of fame by showing him upon the earth the

regions to which his name could never penetrate: “Thou seest in what

few places the earth is inhabited, and those how scant; great deserts

lie between them, and they who dwell upon the earth are not only so

scattered that naught can spread from one community to another, but so

that some live off in an oblique direction from you, some off toward

the side, and some even dwell directly opposite to you.”[285] Mela

confines himself to a mention of the _Antichthones_, who live in the

temperate zone in the south, and are cut off from us by the intervening

torrid zone.[286]

[Illustration: MACROBIUS

From _Macrobii Ambrosii Aurelii Theodosii in Somnium Scipionis, Lib.

II._ (Lugduni, 1560).]

Indeed, the southern continent, the other world, as it was

called,[287] made a more distinct impression than the possible other

continents in the northern hemisphere. Hipparchus thought that

Trapobene might be a part of this southern world, and the idea that

the Nile had its source there was widespread: some supposing that it

flowed beneath the equatorial ocean; others believing, with Ptolemy,

that Africa was connected with the southern continent. The latter

doctrine was shattered by the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; but

the continent was revived when Tierra del Fuego, Australia, and New

Zealand were discovered, and attained gigantic size on the maps of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries only within the last two centuries

has it shrunk to the present limits of the antarctic ice.

[Illustration: MACROBIUS

From _Avr. Theodosii Macrobii Opera_ (Lipsiæ, 1774).]

The oceanic theory, and the doctrine of the Four Worlds, as it has been

termed,[288]_ terra quadrifiga_, was set forth in the greatest detail

in a commentary on the Dream of Scipio, written by Macrobius, probably

in the fifth century a.d. In the concussion and repulsion of the ocean

streams he found a sufficient cause for the phenomena of the tides.[289]

Such were the theories of the men of science, purely speculative,

originating in logic, not discovery, and they give no hint of actual

knowledge regarding those distant regions with which they deal.

From them we turn to examine the literature of the imagination, for

geography, by right the handmaid of history, is easily perverted to the

service of myth.

[Illustration: MACROBIUS

After Santarem’s _Atlas_, as a “mappemonde tirée d’un manuscrit de

Macrobe du Xème siècle.”]

The expanding horizon of the Greeks was always hedged with fable: in

the north was the realm of the happy Hyperboreans, beyond the blasts

of Boreas; in the east, the wonderland of India; in the south, Panchæa

and the blameless Ethiopians; nor did the west lack lingering places

for romance. Here was the floating isle of Æolus, brazen-walled; here

the mysterious Ogygia, navel of the sea;[290] and on the earth’s

extremest verge were the Elysian Fields, the home of heroes exempt from

death, “where life is easiest to man. No snow is there, nor yet great

storm nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the

shrill west to blow cool on men.”[291] Across the ocean river, where

was the setting of the sun, all was changed. There was the home of the

Cimmerians, who dwelt in darkness; there the grove of Persephone and

the dreary house of the dead.[292]

In the Hesiodic poems the Elysian Fields are transformed into islands,

the home of the fourth race, the heroes, after death:—

“Them on earth’s utmost verge the god assign’d

A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:

Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,

In those blest isles where Saturn holds his reign,

Apart from heaven’s immortals calm they share

A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:

And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown’d

Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground.”[293]

“Those who have had the courage to remain stedfast thrice in each life,

and to keep their souls altogether from wrong,” sang Pindar, “pursue

the road of Zeus to the castle of Cronos, where o’er the isles of

the blest ocean breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from

the land on glistering trees, while others the water feeds; and with

bracelets of these they entwine their hands and make crowns for their

heads.”[294]

The Islands of the Blest, _μακάρων νῆσοι_, do not vanish henceforward

from the world’s literature, but continue to haunt the Atlantic through

the Roman period and deep into the Middle Ages. In the west, too, were

localized other and wilder myths; here were the scenes of the Perseus

fable, the island of the weird and communistic sisters, the Graeae,

and the Gorgonides, the homes of Medusa and her sister Gorgons, the

birthplace of the dread Chimaera.[295] The importance of the far west

in the myths connected with Hercules is well known. In the traditionary

twelve labors the Greek hero is confused with his prototype the Tyrian

Melkarth, and those labors which deal with the west were doubtless

borrowed from the cult which the Greeks had found established at Gades

when trade first led them thither. In the tenth labor it is the western

isle Erytheia, which Hercules visits in the golden cup wherein Helios

was wont to make his nocturnal ocean voyage, and from which he returns

with the oxen of the giant Geryon. Even more famous was the search for

the apples of the Hesperides, which constituted the eleventh labor.

This golden fruit, the wedding gift produced by Gaa for Hera, the

prudent goddess, doubtful of the security of Olympus, gave in charge

to the Hesperian maids, whose island garden lay at earth’s furthest

bounds, near where the mysterious Atlas, their father or their uncle,

wise in the secrets of the sea, watched over the pillars which propped

the sky, or himself bore the burden of the heavenly vault. The poets

delighted to depict these isles with their shrill-singing nymphs, in

the same glowing words which they applied to the Isles of the Blessed.

“Oh that I, like a bird, might fly from care over the Adriatic waves!”

cries the chorus in the Crowned Hippolytus,

“Or to the famed Hesperian plains, Whose rich trees bloom with gold, To

join the grief-attuned strains My winged progress hold: Beyond whose

shores no passage gave The ruler of the purple wave;

“But Atlas stands, his stately height

The awfull boundary of the skies:

There fountains of Ambrosia rise,

Wat’ring the seat of Jove: her stores

Luxuriant there the rich soil pours

All, which the sense of gods delights.”[296]

When these names first became attached to some of the Atlantic islands

is uncertain. Diodorus Siculus does not apply either term to the island

discovered by the Carthaginians, and described by him in phrases

applicable to both. The two islands described by sailors to Sertorius

about 80 B.C. were depicted in colors which reminded Plutarch of the

Isles of the Blessed, and it is certain that toward the close of the

republic the name _Insulae Fortunatae_ was given to certain of the

Atlantic islands, including the Canaries. In the time of Juba, king of

Numidia, we seem to distinguish at least three groups, the _Insulae

Fortunatae_, the _Purpurariae_, and the _Hesperides_, but beyond

the fact that the first name still designated some of the Canaries

identification is uncertain; some have thought that different groups

among the Canaries were known by separate names, while others hold that

one or both of the Madeira and Cape de Verde groups were known.[297]

The Canaries were soon lost out of knowledge again, but the Happy

or Fortunate Islands continued to be an enticing mirage throughout

the Middle Ages, and play a part in many legends, as in that of St.

Brandan, and in many poems.[298]

Beside these ancient, widespread, popular myths, embodying the

universal longing for a happier life, we find a group of stories of

more recent date, of known authorship and well-marked literary origin,

which treat of western islands and a western continent. The group

comprises, it is hardly necessary to say, the tale of Atlantis, related

by Plato; the fable of the land of the Meropes, by Theopompus; and the

description of the Saturnian continent attributed to Plutarch.

The story of Atlantis, by its own interest and the skill of its

author, has made by far the deepest impression. Plato, having given

in the _Republic_ a picture of the ideal political organization, the

state, sketched in the _Timaeus_ the history of creation, and the

origin and development of mankind; in the _Critias_ he apparently

intended to exhibit the action of two types of political bodies

involved in a life-and-death contest. The latter dialogue was

unfinished, but its purport had been sketched in the opening of the

_Timaeus_. Critias there relates “a strange tale, but certainly true,

as Solon declared,” which had come down in his family from his ancestor

Dropidas, a near relative of Solon. When Solon was in Egypt he fell

into talk with an aged priest of Saïs, who said to him: “Solon, Solon,

you Greeks are all children,—there is not an old man in Greece. You

have no old traditions, and know of but one deluge, whereas there have

been many destructions of mankind, both by flood and fire; Egypt alone

has escaped them, and in Egypt alone is ancient history recorded;

you are ignorant of your own past.” For long before Deucalion, nine

thousand years ago, there was an Athens founded, like Saïs, by Athena;

a city rich in power and wisdom, famed for mighty deeds, the greatest

of which was this. At that time there lay opposite the columns of

Hercules, in the Atlantic, which was then navigable, an island larger

than Libya and Asia together, from which sailors could pass to other

islands, and so to the continent. The sea in front of the straits is

indeed but a small harbor; that which lay beyond the island, however,

is worthy of the name, and the land which surrounds that greater sea

may be truly called the continent. In this island of Atlantis had grown

up a mighty power, whose kings were descended from Poseidon, and had

extended their sway over many islands and over a portion of the great

continent; even Libya up to the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as

Tyrrhenia, submitted to their sway. Ever harder they pressed upon the

other nations of the known world, seeking the subjugation of the whole.

“Then, O Solon, did the strength of your republic become clear to all

men, by reason of her courage and force. Foremost in the arts of war,

she met the invader at the head of Greece; abandoned by her allies,

she triumphed alone over the western foe, delivering from the yoke all

the nations within the columns. But afterwards came a day and night of

great floods and earthquakes; the earth engulfed all the Athenians who

were capable of bearing arms, and Atlantis disappeared, swallowed by

the waves: hence it is that this sea is no longer navigable, from the

vast mud-shoals formed by the vanished island.” This tale so impressed

Solon that he meditated an epic on the subject, but on his return,

stress of public business prevented his design. In the _Critias_ the

empire and chief city of Atlantis is described with wealth of detail,

and the descent of the royal family from Atlas, son of Poseidon, and

a nymph of the island, is set forth. In the midst of a council upon

Olympus, where Zeus, in true epic style, was revealing to the gods his

designs concerning the approaching war, the dialogue breaks off.

[Illustration: TRACES OF ATLANTIS.

Section of a map given in _Briefe über Amerika aus dem Italienischen

des Hn. Grafen Carlo Carli übersetzt, Dritter Theil_ (Gera, 1785),

where it is called an “Auszug aus denen Karten welche der Pariser

Akademie der Wissenschaften (1737, 1752) von dem Herrn von Buache

übergeben worden sind.”]

[Illustration: ATLANTIS INSULA

The annexed cut is an extract from Sanson’s map of America, showing

views respecting the new world as constituting the Island of Atlantis.

It is called: _Atlantis insula à Nicolao Sanson, antiquitati restituta;

nunc demum majori forma delineata, et in decem regna juxta decem

Neptuni filios distributa. Præterea insulæ, nostræq. continentis

regiones quibus imperavere Atlantici reges; aut quas armis tentavere,

ex conatibus geographicis Gulielmi Sanson, Nicolai filii_ (Amstelodami

apud Petrum Mortier). Uricoechea in the _Mapoteca Colombiana_ puts this

map under 1600, and speaks of a second edition in 1688, which must be

an error. Nicholas Sanson was born in 1600, his son William died in

1703. Beside the undated Amsterdam print quoted above, Harvard College

Library possesses a copy in which the words _Novus orbis potius Altera

continent sive_ are prefixed to the title, while the date MDCLXVIIII

is inserted after _filii_. This copy was published by Le S. Robert at

Paris in 1741.]

[Illustration: CARTE CONJECTURALE DE L’ATLANTIDE.

From a map in Bory de St. Vincent’s _Essais sur les isles Fortunées_,

Paris [1803]. A map in Anastasius Kircher’s _Mundus Subterraneus_

(Amsterdam, 1678), i. 82, shows Atlantis as a large island midway

between the pillars of Hercules and America.]

[Illustration: CONTOUR CHART OF THE BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC.

Sketched from the colored map of the United States Hydrographic

office, as given in Alexander Agassiz’s _Three Cruises of the Blake_

(Cambridge, 1888), vol. i. The outline of the continents is shown by an

unbroken line. The 500 fathom shore line is a broken one (—— —— —— ——).

The 2,000 fathom shore line is made by a dash and dot (——.——.——.——).

The large areas in mid-ocean enclosed by this line, have this or lesser

depths. Of the small areas marked by this line, the depth of 2,000

fathoms or less is within these areas in all cases except as respects

the small areas on the latitude of Newfoundland, where the larger areas

of 2,000 fathoms’ depth border on the small areas of greater depth.

Depths varying from 1,500 to 1,000 fathoms are shown by horizontal

lines; from 1,000 to 500 by perpendicular lines; and the crossed lines

show the shallowest spots in mid-ocean of 500 fathoms or less. The

areas of greatest depth (over 3,500 fathoms) are marked with crosses.]

Such is the tale of Atlantis. Read in Plato, the nature and meaning of

the narrative seem clear, but the commentators, ancient and modern,

have made wild work. The voyage of Odysseus has grown marvellously in

extent since he abandoned the sea; Io has found the pens of the learned

more potent goads than Hera’s gadfly; but the travels of Atlantis have

been even more extraordinary. No region has been so remote, no land

so opposed by location, extent, or history to the words of Plato, but

that some acute investigator has found in it the origin of the lost

island. It has been identified with Africa, with Spitzbergen, with

Palestine. The learned Latreille convinced himself that Persia best

fulfilled the conditions of the problem; the more than learned Rudbeck

ardently supported the claims of Sweden through three folios. In such

a search America could not be overlooked. Gomara, Guillaume de Postel,

Wytfliet, are among those who have believed that this continent was

Atlantis; Sanson in 1669, and Vaugondy in 1762, ventured to issue a

map, upon which the division of that island among the sons of Neptune

was applied to America, and the outskirts of the lost continent were

extended even to New Zealand. Such work, of course, needs no serious

consideration. Plato is our authority, and Plato declares that Atlantis

lay not far west from Spain, and that it disappeared some 8,000 years

before his day. An inquiry into the truth or meaning of the record as

it stands is quite justifiable, and has been several times undertaken,

with divergent results. Some, notably Paul Gaffarel[299] and Ignatius

Donnelly,[300] are convinced that Plato merely adapted to his purposes

a story which Solon had actually brought from Egypt, and which was in

all essentials true. Corroboration of the existence of such an island

in the Atlantic is found, according to these writers, in the physical

conformation of the Atlantic basin, and in marked resemblances between

the flora, fauna, civilization, and language of the old and new worlds,

which demand for their explanation the prehistoric existence of just

such a bridge as Atlantis would have supplied. The Atlantic islands are

the loftiest peaks and plateaus of the submerged island. In the widely

spread deluge myths Mr. Donnelly finds strong confirmation of the final

cataclysm; he places in Atlantis that primitive culture which M. Bailly

sought in the highlands of Asia, and President Warren refers to the

north pole. Space fails for a proper examination of the matter, but

these ingenious arguments remain somewhat top-heavy when all is said.

The argument from ethnological resemblances is of all arguments the

weakest in the hands of advocates. It is of value only when wielded by

men of judicial temperament, who can weigh difference against likeness,

and allow for the narrow range of nature’s moulds. The existence of

the ocean plateaus revealed by the soundings of the “Dolphin” and the

“Challenger” proves nothing as to their having been once raised above

the waves; the most of the Atlantic islands are sharply cut off from

them. Even granting the prehistoric migration of plants and animals

between America and Europe, as we grant it between America and Asia, it

does not follow that it took place across the mid-ocean, and it would

still be a long step from the botanic “bridge” and elevated “ridge” to

the island empire of Plato. In short, the conservative view advocated

by Longinus, that the story was designed by Plato as a literary

ornament and a philosophic illustration, is no less probable to-day

than when it was suggested in the schools of Alexandria. Atlantis is

a literary myth, belonging with _Utopia_, the _New Atlantis_, and the

_Orbis alter et idem_ of Bishop Hall.

* * * * *

Of the same type is a narrative which has come down indirectly, among

the flotsam and jetsam of classic literature: it is a fragment from a

lost work by Theopompus of Chios, a historian of the fourth century

B.C., found in the _Varia Historia_ of Aelian, a compiler of the third

century A.D.[301] The story is told by the satyr Silenus to Midas,

king of Phrygia, and is, as few commentators have refrained from

remarking, worthy the ears of its auditor.[302] “Selenus tolde Midas of

certaine Islands, named Europa, Asia, and Libia, which the Ocean Sea

circumscribeth and compasseth round about. And that without this worlde

there is a continent or percell of dry lande, which in greatnesse (as

hee reported) was infinite and unmeasurable, that it nourished and

maintained, by the benifite of the greene medowes and pasture plots,

sundrye bigge and mighty beastes; that the men which inhabite the same

climats, exceede the stature of us twise, and yet the length of there

life is not equale to ours.” Many other wonders he related of the two

cities, Machimus, the warlike, and Euseues, the city of peace, and how

the inhabitants of the former once made an attack upon Europe, and came

first upon the Hyperboreans; but learning that they were esteemed the

most holy of the dwellers in that island, they “had them in contempte,

detesting and abhorring them as naughty people, of preposterous

properties, and damnable behauiour, and for that cause interrupted

their progresse, supposing it an enterprise of little worthinesse or

rather none at al, to trauaile into such a countrey.” The concluding

passage relating to the strange country inhabited by the Meropes, from

whose name later writers have called the continent Meropian, bears only

indirectly upon the subject, as characterizing the whole narrative.[303]

Without admitting the harsh judgment of Aelian, who brands Theopompus

as a “coyner of lyes and a forger of fond fables,” it is clear that

we are dealing here with literature, not with history, and that the

identification of the land of the Meropes, or, as Strabo calls it,

Meropis, with Atlantis or with America is arbitrary and valueless.[304]

The same remark applies to the account of the great Saturnian continent

that closes the curious and interesting dialogue “On the Face appearing

in the Orb of the Moon,” attributed to Plutarch, and printed with his

_Morals_:

“‘An isle, Ogygia, lies in Ocean’s arms,’” says the narrator, “about

five days’ sail west from Britain; and before it are three others, of

equal distance from one another, and also from that, bearing northwest,

where the sun sets in summer. In one of these the barbarians feign

that Saturn is detained in prison by Zeus.” The adjacent sea is termed

the Saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly

environed is distant from Ogygia about five thousand stadia, but from

the other islands not so far. A bay of this continent, in the latitude

of the Caspian Sea, is inhabited by Greeks. These, who had been

visited by Heracles, and revived by his followers, esteemed themselves

inhabitants of the firm land, calling all others islanders, as dwelling

in land encompassed by the sea. Every thirty years these people send

forth certain of their number, who minister to the imprisoned Saturn

for thirty years. One of the men thus sent forth, at the end of his

service, paid a visit to the great island, as they called Europe. From

him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after

death, which he unfolds at length, the conclusion being that the souls

of men ultimately arrive at the moon, wherein lie the Elysian Fields of

Homer. “And you, O Lamprias,” he adds, “may take my relation in such

part as you please.” After which hint there is, I think, but little

doubt as to the way in which it should be taken by us.[305]

That Plato, Theopompus, and Plutarch, covering a range of nearly five

centuries, should each have made use of the conception of a continent

beyond the Atlantic, is noteworthy; but it is more naturally accounted

for by supposing that all three had in mind the continental hypothesis

of land distribution, than by assuming for them an acquaintance with

the great western island, America. From this point of view, the result

of our search into the geographical knowledge and mythical tales of the

ancients is purely negative. We find, indeed, well-developed theories

of physical geography, one of which accords remarkably well with the

truth; but we also find that these theories rest solely on logical

deductions from the mathematical doctrine of the sphere, and on an

aesthetic satisfaction with symmetry and analogy. This conclusion could

be invalidated were it shown that exploration had already revealed

the secrets of the west, and we must now consider this branch of the

subject.

The history of maritime discovery begins among the Phœnicians. The

civilization of Egypt, as self-centred as that of China, accepted

only the commerce that was brought to its gates; but the men of Sidon

and Tyre, with their keen devotion to material interests, their

almost modern ingenuity, had early appropriated the carrying trade

of the east and the west. As they looked adventurously seaward from

their narrow domain, the dim outline of Cyprus beckoned them down a

long lane of island stations to the rich shores of Spain. Even their

religion betrayed their bent: El and Cronos, their oldest deities,

were wanderers, and vanished in the west; on their traces Melkarth led

a motley swarm of colonists to the Atlantic. These legends, filtering

through Cyprus, Crete, or Rhodes, or borne by rash adventurers from

distant Gades, appeared anew in Grecian mythology, the deeds of

Melkarth mingling with the labors of Hercules. We do not know when the

Phœnicians first reached the Atlantic, nor what were the limits of

their ocean voyages. Gades, the present Cadiz, just outside the Straits

of Gibraltar, was founded a few years before 1100 B.C., but not, it is

probable, without previous knowledge of the commercial importance of

the location. There were numerous other settlements along the adjacent

coast, and the gold, silver, and tin of these distant regions grew

familiar in the markets of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. The trade

with Tartessus, the El Dorado of antiquity, gave the Phœnician merchant

vessels a name among the Jews, as well in the tenth century, when

Solomon shared the adventures of Hiram, as in the sixth, when Ezekiel

depicted the glories of Tyrian commerce. The Phœnician seamanship was

wide-famed; their vessels were unmatched in speed,[306] and their

furniture and discipline excited the outspoken admiration of Xenophon.

Beside the large Tarshish ships, they possessed light merchant vessels

and ships of war, provided with both sails and oars, and these,

somewhat akin to steamships in their independence of wind, were well

adapted for exploration. Thus urged and thus provided, it is improbable

that the Phœnicians shunned the great ocean. The evidence is still

strong in favor of their direct trade with Britain for tin, despite

what has been urged as to tin mines in Spain and the prehistoric

existence of the trade by land across Gaul.[307]

* * * * *

Whether the Tyrians discovered any of the Atlantic islands is unknown;

the adventures and discoveries attributed to Hercules, who in this

aspect is but Melkarth in Grecian raiment, points toward an early

knowledge of western islands, but these myths alone are not conclusive

proof. Diodorus Siculus attributes to the Phœnicians the discovery, by

accident, of a large island, with navigable rivers and a delightful

climate, many days’ sail westward from Africa. In the compilation _De

Mirabilibus Auscultationibus_, printed with the works of Aristotle,

the discovery is attributed to Carthaginians. Both versions descend

from one original, now lost, and it is impossible to give a date to the

event, or to identify the locality.[308] Those who find America in the

island of Diodorus make improbabilities supply the lack of evidence.

Stories seldom lose in the telling, and while it is not impossible that

a Phœnician ship might have reached America, and even made her way

back, it is not likely that the voyage would have been tamely described

as of many _days’_ duration.

When Carthage succeeded Tyre as mistress of the Mediterranean commerce,

interest in the West revived. In the middle of the fifth century B.C.,

two expeditions of importance were dispatched into these waters. A

large fleet under Hanno sailed to colonize, or re-colonize, the western

coast of Africa, and succeeded in reaching the latitude of Sierra

Leone. Himilko, voyaging in the opposite direction, spent several

months in exploring the ocean and tracing the western shores of Europe.

He appears to have run into the Sargasso Sea, but beyond this little is

known of his adventures.[309]

Ultimately the Carthaginians discovered and colonized the Canary

Islands, and perhaps the Madeira and Cape Verde groups; the evidence

of ethnology, the presence of Semitic inscriptions, and the occurrence

in the descriptions of Pliny, Mela, and Ptolemy of some of the modern

names of the separate islands, establishes this beyond a doubt for

the Canaries.[310] There is no evidence that the Phœnicians or

Carthaginians penetrated much beyond the coast islands, or that they

reached any part of America, or even the Azores.

The achievements of the Greeks and Romans were still more limited. A

certain Colaeus visited Gades towards the middle of the seventh century

B.C., and was, according to Herodotus, the first Greek who passed

outside of the columns of Hercules. His example could not have been

widely followed, for we find Pindar and his successors referring to the

Pillars as the limit of navigation. In 600 B.C., Massilia was founded,

and soon became a rival of Carthage in the western Mediterranean. In

the fourth century we have evidence of an attempt to search out the

secrets of the ocean after the manner of Hanno and Himilko. In that

century, Pytheas made his famous voyage to the lands of tin and amber,

discovering the still mysterious Thule; while at the same time his

countryman Euthymenes sailed southward to the Senegal. With these

exceptions we hear of no Grecian or Roman explorations in the Atlantic,

and meet with no indication that they were aware of any other lands

beyond the sea than the Fortunate Isles or the Hesperides of the early

poets.[311]

About 80 B.C., Sertorius, being for a time driven from Spain by the

forces of Sulla, fell in, when on an expedition to Baetica, with

certain sailors who had just returned from the “Atlantic islands,”

which they described as two in number, distant 10,000 stadia from

Africa, and enjoying a wonderful climate. The account in Plutarch is

quite consistent with a previous knowledge of the islands, even on

the part of Sertorius. Be this as it may, the glowing praises of the

eye-witnesses so impressed him that only the unwillingness of his

followers prevented his taking refuge there. Within the next few years,

the Canaries, at least, became well known as the _Fortunatae Insulae_;

but when Horace, in the dark days of civil war, urged his countrymen

to seek a new home across the waves, it was apparently the islands

of Sertorius that he had in mind, regarding them as unknown to other

peoples.[312]

As we trace the increasing volume and extent of commerce from the days

of Tyre and Carthage and Alexandria to its fullest development under

the empire, and remember that as the drafts of luxury-loving Rome upon

the products of the east, even of China and farther India, increased,

the true knowledge of the form of the earth, and the underestimate

of the breadth of the western ocean, became more widely known, the

question inevitably suggests itself, Why did not the enterprise which

had long since utilized the monsoons of the Indian Ocean for direct

passage to and from India essay the passage of the Atlantic? The

inquiry gains force as we recall that the possibility of such a route

to India had been long ago asserted. Aristotle suggested, if he did not

express it; Eratosthenes stated plainly that were it not for the extent

of the Atlantic it would be possible to sail from Spain to India along

the same parallel;[313] and Strabo could object nothing but the chance

of there being another island-continent or two in the way,—an objection

unknown to Columbus. Seneca, the philosopher, iterating insistence upon

the smallness of the earth and the pettiness of its affairs compared

with the higher interests of the soul, exclaims: “The earth, which you

so anxiously divide by fire and sword into kingdoms, is a point, a

mere point, in the universe.... How far is it from the utmost shores

of Spain to those of India? But very few days’ sail with a favoring

wind.”[314]

Holding these views of the possibility of the voyage, it is improbable

that the size of their ships and the lack of the compass could have

long prevented the ancients from putting them in practice had their

interest so demanded.[315] Their interest in the matter was, however,

purely speculative, since, under the unity and power of the Roman

empire, which succeeded to and absorbed the commercial supremacy of the

Phœnicians, international competition in trade did not exist, nor were

the routes of trade subject to effective hostile interruption. The two

causes, therefore, which worked powerfully to induce the voyages of Da

Gama and Columbus, after the rise of individual states had given scope

to national jealousy and pride, and after the fall of Constantinople

had placed the last natural gateway of the eastern trade in the hands

of Arab infidels, were non-existent under the older civilization. It

is certain, too, that the ancients had a vivid horror of the western

ocean. In the Odyssey, the western Mediterranean even is full of peril.

With knowledge of the ocean, the Greeks received tales of “Gorgons

and Chimeras dire,” and the very poets who sing the beauties of the

Elysian or Hesperian isles dwell on the danger of the surrounding sea.

Beyond Gades, declared Pindar, no man, however brave, could pass;

only a god might voyage those waters. The same idea recurs in the

reports of travellers and the writings of men of science, but here it

is the storms, or more often the lack of wind, the viscid water or

vast shoals, that check and appall the mariner. Aristotle thought that

beyond the columns the sea was shallow and becalmed. Plato utilized

the common idea of the mudbanks and shoal water of the Atlantic in

accounting for the disappearance of Atlantis. Scylax reported the ocean

not navigable beyond Cerne in the south, and Pytheas heard that beyond

Thule sea and air became confounded. Even Tacitus believed that there

was a peculiar resistance in the waters of the northern ocean.[316]

Whether the Greeks owed this dread to the Phœnicians, and whether

the latter shared the feeling, or simulated and encouraged it for the

purpose of concealing their profitable adventures beyond the Straits,

is doubtful. In two cases, at least, it is possible to trace statements

of this nature to Punic sources, and antiquity agreed in giving the

Phœnicians credit for discouraging rivalry by every art.[317]

To an age averse to investigation for its own sake, ignorant of

scientific curiosity, and unimpelled by economic pressure, tales like

these might seem decisive against an attempt to sail westward to India.

Rome could thoroughly appreciate the imaginative mingling of science

and legend which vivified the famous prophecy of the poet Seneca:

Venient annis saecula seris

Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum

Laxet, et ingens patebit tellus

Tethysque novos deteget orbes

Nec sit terris ultima Thule.[318]

But even were it overlooked that the prophecy suited better the

revelation of an unknown continent, such as the theory of Crates and

Cicero placed between Europe and Asia, than the discovery of the

eastern coast of India, mariners and merchants might be pardoned if

they set the deterrent opinions collected by the elder Seneca above the

livelier fancies of his son.[319]

The scanty records of navigation and discovery in the western waters

confirm the conclusions drawn from the visions of the poets and the

theories of the philosophers. No evidence from the classic writers

justifies the assumption that the ancients communicated with America.

If they guessed at the possibility of such a continent, it was only as

we to-day imagine an antarctic continent or an open polar sea. Evidence

from ethnological comparisons is of course admissible, but those who

are best fitted to handle such evidence best know its dangers; hitherto

its use has brought little but discredit to the cause in which it was

invoked.

* * * * *

The geographical doctrines which antiquity bequeathed to the

Middle Ages were briefly these: that the earth was a sphere with a

circumference of 252,000 or 180,000 stadia; that only the temperate

zones were inhabitable, and the northern alone known to be inhabited;

that of the southern, owing to the impassable heats of the torrid zone,

it could not be discovered whether it were inhabited, or whether,

indeed, land existed there; and that of the northern, it was unknown

whether the intervention of another continent, or only the shoals and

unknown horrors of the ocean, prevented a westward passage from Europe

to Asia. The legatee preserved, but did not improve his inheritance.

It has been supposed that the early Middle Ages, under the influence

of barbarism and Christianity, ignored the sphericity of the earth,

deliberately returning to the assumption of a plane surface, either

wheel-shaped or rectangular. That knowledge dwindled after the fall

of the empire, that the early church included the learning as well

as the religion of the pagans in its ban, is undeniable; but on this

point truth prevailed. It was preserved by many school-books, in many

popular compilations from classic authors, and was accepted by many

ecclesiastics. St. Augustine did not deny the sphericity of the earth.

It was assumed by Isidor of Seville, and taught by Bede.[320] The

schoolmen buttressed the doctrine by the authority of Aristotle and the

living science which the Arabs built upon the Almagest. Gerbert, Albert

the Great, Roger Bacon, Dante, were as familiar with the idea of the

earth-globe as were Hipparchus and Ptolemy. The knowledge of it came to

Columbus not as an inspiration or an invention, but by long, unbroken

descent from its unknown Grecian, or pre-Grecian, discoverer.

[Illustration: THE RECTANGULAR EARTH.

Sketched in the _Bollettino della Società geografica italiana_ (Roma,

1882), p. 540, from the original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

in Florence. The representation of this sketch of the earth by Cosmas

Indicopleustes more commonly met with is from the engraving in the

edition of Cosmas in Montfaucon’s _Collectio nova patrum_, Paris, 1706.

The article by Marinelli which contains the sketch given here has also

appeared separately in a German translation (_Die Erdkunde bei den

Kirchenvätern_, Leipzig, 1884). The continental land beyond the ocean

should be noticed.]

As to the distribution of land and water, the oceanic theory of

Crates, as expounded by Macrobius, prevailed in the west, although the

existence of antipodes fell a victim to the union, in the ecclesiastic

mind, of the heathen theory of an impassable torrid zone with the

Christian teaching of the descent of all men from Adam.[321] The

discoveries made by the ancients in the ocean, of the Canaries and

other islands known to them, were speedily forgotten, while their

geographic myths were superseded by a ranker growth. The Saturnian

continent, Meropis, Atlantis, the Fortunate Isles, the Hesperides, were

relegated to the dusty realm of classical learning; but the Atlantic

was not barren of their like. Mediæval maps swarmed with fabulous

islands, and wild stories of adventurous voyages divided the attention

with tales of love and war. Antillia was the largest, and perhaps the

most famous, of these islands; it was situated in longitude 330° east,

and near the latitude of Lisbon, so that Toscanelli regarded it as much

facilitating the plan of Columbus. Well known, too, was Braçir, or

Brazil, having its proper position west and north of Ireland, but often

met with elsewhere; both this island and Antillia afterward gave names

to portions of the new continent.[322]

Antillia, otherwise called the Island of Seven Cities, was discovered

and settled by an archbishop and six bishops of Spain, who fled into

the ocean after the victory of the Moors, in 714, over Roderick; it is

even reported to have been rediscovered in 1447.[323] Mayda, Danmar,

Man Satanaxio, Isla Verde, and others of these islands, of which but

little is known beside the names, appear for the first time upon the

maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but their origin is

quite unknown. It might be thought that they were derived from confused

traditions of their classical predecessors, with which they have been

identified, but modern folk-lore has shown that such fancies spring

up spontaneously in every community. To dream of a distant spot where

joy is untroubled and rest unbroken by grief or toil is a natural and

inalienable bent of the human mind. Those happy islands which abound in

the romances of the heathen Celts, Mag Mell, Field of Delight, Flath

Inis, Isle of the Heroes, the Avallon of the Arthur cycle, were but a

more exuberant forth-putting of the same soil that produced the Elysian

Fields of Homer or the terrestrial paradise of the Hebrews. The later

growth is not born of the seed of the earlier, though somewhat affected

by alien grafts, as in the case of the famous island of St. Brandan,

where there is a curious commingling of Celtic, Greek, and Christian

traditions. It is dangerous, indeed, to speak of earlier or later in

reference to such myths; one group was written before the others, but

it is quite possible that the earthly paradise of the Celt is as old as

those of the Mediterranean peoples. The idea of a phantom or vanishing

island, too, is very old,—as old, doubtless, as the fact of fog-banks

and mirage,—and it is well exemplified in those mysterious visions

which enticed the sailors of Bristol to many a fruitless quest before

the discovery of America, and for centuries tantalized the inhabitants

of the Canaries with hope of discovery. The Atlantic islands were

not all isles of the blessed; there were many Isles of Demons, such

as Ramusio places north of Newfoundland, a name of evil report which

afterward attached itself with more reason to Sable Island and even to

the Bermudas:

“Kept, as suppos’d by Hel’s infernal dogs; Our fleet found there most

honest courteous hogs.”[324]

Not until the revival of classical learning did the continental system

of Ptolemy reach the west; the way, however, had been prepared for it.

The measurement of a degree, executed under the Calif Mamun, seemed

to the Europeans to confirm the smallest estimate of the size of the

earth, which Ptolemy also had adopted,[325] while the travels of Marco

Polo, revealing the great island of Japan, exaggerated the popular idea

of the extent of the known world, until the 225° of Marinus seemed

more probable than the 180° of Ptolemy. If, however, time brought this

shrinkage in the breadth of the Atlantic, the temptation to navigators

was opposed by the belief in the dangers of the ocean, which shared

the persistent life of the dogma of the impassable torrid zone, and

was strongly reinforced by Arab lore. Their geographers never tire

of dilating on the calms and storms, mudbanks and fogs, and unknown

dangers of the “Sea of Darkness.” Nevertheless, as the turmoil of

mediæval life made gentler spirits sigh for peace in distant homes,

while the wild energy of others found the very dangers of the sea

delightful, there was opened a double source of adventures, both real

and imaginary. Those pillars cut with inscriptions forbidding further

advance westward, which we owe to Moorish fancy, confounding Hercules

and Atlas and Alexander, were transformed into a knightly hero pointing

oceanwards, or became guide-posts to the earthly paradise.

If there be a legendary flavor in the flight of the seven bishops, we

must set down the wanderings of the Magrurin[326] among the African

islands, the futile but bold attempts of the Visconti to circumnavigate

Africa, as real, though without the least footing in a list of

claimants for the discovery of America. The voyages of St. Brandan

and St. Malo, again, are distinctly fabulous, and but other forms of

the ancient myth of the soul-voyages; and the same may be said of the

strange tale of Maelduin.[327] But what of those other Irish voyages

to Irland-it-mikla and Huitramannaland, of the voyage of Madoc, of the

explorations of the Zeni? While these tales merit close investigation,

it is certain that whatever liftings of the veil there may have

been—that there were any is extremely doubtful—were unheralded at the

time and soon forgotten.[328]

It was reserved for the demands of commerce to reveal the secrets of

the west. But when the veil was finally removed it was easy for men to

see that it had never been quite opaque. The learned turned naturally

to their new-found classics, and were not slow to find the passages

which seemed prophetic of America. Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle,

and Theopompus, were soon pressed into the service, and the story of

Atlantis obtained at once a new importance. I have tried to show in

this chapter that these patrons of a revived learning put upon these

statements an interpretation which they will not bear.

The summing up of the whole matter cannot be better given than in

the words applied by a careful Grecian historian to another question

in ancient geography: “In some future time perhaps our pains may

lead us to a knowledge of those countries. But all that has hitherto

been written or reported of them must be considered as mere fable

and invention, and not the fruit of any real search, or genuine

information.”[329]

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE views of the ancient Mediterranean peoples upon geography are

preserved almost solely in the ancient classics. The poems attributed

to Homer and Hesiod, the so-called Orphic hymns, the odes of Pindar,

even the dramatic works of Æschylus and his successors, are sources for

the earlier time. The writings of the earlier philosophers are lost,

and their ideas are to be found in later writers, and in compilations

like the Biographies of Diogenes Laertius (3d cent. A.D.), the _De

placitis philosophorum_ attributed to Plutarch, and the like. Among

the works of Plato the _Phaedo_ and _Timaeus_ and the last book of the

_Republic_ bear on the form and arrangement of the earth; the Timaeus

and _Critias_ contain the fable of Atlantis. The first scientific

treatises preserved are the _De Caelo_ and _Meteorologica_ of

Aristotle.[330] It is needless to speak in detail of the geographical

writers, accounts of whom will be found in any history of Greek and

Roman literature. The minor pieces, such as the _Periplus_ of Hanno,

of Scylax of Caryanda, of Dionysius Periegetes, the Geography of

Agatharcides, and others, have been several times collected;[331] and

so have the minor historians, which may be consulted for Theopompus,

Hecataeus, and the mythologists.[332] The geographical works of

Pytheas (B.C. 350?), of Eratosthenes (B.C. 276-126), of Polybius (B.C.

204-122), of Hipparchus (flor. circ. B.C. 125), of Posidonius (1st

cent. B.C.), are preserved only in quotations made by later writers;

they have, however, been collected and edited in convenient form.[333]

The most important source of our knowledge of Greek geography and

Greek geographers is of course the great _Geography_ of Strabo, which

a happy fortune preserved to us. The long introduction upon the nature

of geography and the size of the earth and the dimensions of the known

world is of especial interest, both for his own views and for those he

criticises.[334] Strabo lived about B.C. 60 to A.D. 24.

The works of Marinus of Tyre having perished, the next important

geographical work in Greek is the world-renowned _Geography_ of

Ptolemaeus, who wrote in the second half of the second century A.D.

Despite the peculiar merits and history of this work, it is not so

important for our purpose as the work of Strabo, though it exercised

infinitely more influence on the Middle Ages and on early modern

geography.[335]

The astronomical writers are also of importance. Eudoxus of Cnidus,

said to have first adduced the change in the altitude of stars

accompanying a change of latitude as proof of the sphericity of

the earth, wrote works now known only in the poems of Aratus, who

flourished in the latter half of the third century B.C.[336] Geminus

(circ. B.C. 50),[337] and Cleomedes,[338] whose work is famous for

having preserved the method by which Eratosthenes measured the

circumference of the earth, were authors of brief popular compilations

of astronomical science. Of vast importance in the history of

learning was the astronomical work of Ptolemy, _ἡ μεγάλη σύνταξις τῆς

ἀστρονομίας_, which was so honored by the Arabs that it is best known

to us as the _Almagest_, from _Tabric al Magisthri_, the title of

the Arabic translation which was made in 827. It has been edited and

translated by Halma (Paris, 1813, 1816).

Much is to be learned from the _Scholia_ attached in early times to the

works of Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius Rhodius

(B.C. 276-193?), and to the works of Aristotle, Plato, etc. In some

cases these are printed with the works commented upon; in other cases,

the _Scholia_ have been printed separately. The commentary of Proclus

(A.D. 412-485) upon the _Timaeus_ of Plato is of great importance in

the Atlantis myth.[339]

Much interest attaches to the dialogue entitled _On the face appearing

in the orb of the moon_, which appears among the _Moralia_ of Plutarch.

Really a contribution to the question of life after death, this work

also throws light upon geographical and astronomical knowledge of its

time.

Among the Romans we find much the same succession of sources. The

poets, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, Lucretius, Lucan, Seneca, touch

on geographical or astronomical points and reflect the opinion of their

day.[340]

The first six books of the great encyclopaedia compiled by Pliny

the elder (A.D. 23-79)[341] contain an account of the universe and

the earth, which is of the greatest value, and was long exploited by

compilers of later times, among the earliest and best of whom was

Solinus.[342] Equally famous with Solinus was the author of a work of

more independent character, Pomponius Mela, who lived in the first

century A.D. His geography, commonly known as _De situ orbis_ from

the mediæval title, though the proper name is _De chorographia_, is

a work of importance and merit. In the Middle Ages it had wonderful

popularity.[343] Cicero, who contemplated writing a history of

geography, touches upon the arrangement of the earth’s surface several

times in his works, as in the _Tusculan Disputations_, and notably in

the sixth book of the _Republic_, in the episode known as the “Dream

of Scipio.” The importance of this piece is enhanced by the commentary

upon it written by Macrobius in the fifth century A.D.[344] A peculiar

interest attaches to the poems of Avienus, of the fourth century A.D.,

in that they give much information about the character attributed to

the Atlantic Ocean.[345] The astronomical poems of Manilius[346] and

Hyginus were favorites in early Middle Ages. The astrological character

of the work of Manilius made it popular, but it conveyed also the

true doctrine of the form of the earth. The curious work of Marcianus

Capella gave a résumé of science in the first half of the fifth century

A.D., and had a like popularity as a school-book and house-book which

also helped maintain the truth.[347]