70 BALCH— EVOLUTION AND MYSTERY 



does this seem, when one remembers that for some years after 

 parts of the continent had been visited and portions of its coast 

 had been charted, the explorers themselves still believed that they 

 had merely revealed the existence of some big islands belonging to 

 the land mass of Asia. 



Mysteries thicken rather than lessen after Colmnbus had gone 

 around the turning point in American discovery. The explorer who 

 first announced that there were lands, continental in size, in the 

 west, apparently was Amerigo Vespucci. He did so in several little 

 tracts which are tangled up and hard to unravel, but whose publica- 

 tion in his lifetime tended to make him better known than other 

 more silent explorers. It was in his letter to Lorenzo di Pier- 

 francesco di Medici especially that he spoke of the new world he 

 had visited on the caravels of the King of Portugal. He also said 

 that the land which they — that is the expedition of which he was a 

 member — had discovered, seemed to them, not an island, but a 

 continent. Furthermore he mentioned that they had sighted land 

 90 degrees of latitude distant from Lisbon — referring almost cer- 

 tainly to South Georgia in 52° south latitude whilst Lisbon is in. 

 38° north latitude — and thus had measured the fourth part of the 

 globe. 



Martin Waldseemiiller, an armchair geographer residing at 

 Saint Die in the Vosges mountains, became impressed with these 

 statements of Amerigo. In 1507 he published a booklet in which 

 he suggested that since Amerigo had discovered a Novus Mundus 

 or fourth part of the world, therefore it should be called after 

 him. With the book, he brought out a world map, on which he 

 placed the name America on the lands south of the Equator visited 

 by Amerigo.'^ Undoubtedly he took an exaggerated view of 

 Amerigo's reports. He passed over Columbus and Amerigo's even 

 now unknown commander and looked on Amerigo as the discoverer 

 of this New World. But barring this error he located the name 

 America correctly on his map on what is now Brazil. 



There is no evidence that Amerigo ever heard of the name 

 America. Nevertheless because of it he has been abused like a pick- 



^ Basil H. Soulsby, " The First Map Containing the Name America," 

 The Geographical Journal, Vol. XIX., Feb., 1902. 



