ANTIPODAL SOUTHERN CONTINENT. 449 



posing that that distance was to l)e taken in a direct Hne ; 

 wliich, adding 600 leagues to 8" — the latitude of C. St. 

 Augustine — would have brought tlie ships to about 42° S. 

 Further, Enciso or his informant seems to have supposed 

 that at this point was the land which was sighted from the 

 ships. Desbrosses somewhat more accurately says : " The 

 Austral coast discovered by Amerigo Vespucci is to be found 

 marked on the maps nearly at the intersection of the 52nd 

 parallel with the first meridian." ( Histoire, i., p. 100.) The 

 map of Vaugondy, however, pubhsiied in the work of 

 Desbrosses, adheres to the older indication of Enciso, and 

 places the Cap des Terres Ausirales in 42° S. The error 

 of Enciso is of interest as the earliest transference of an 

 actual discovery from its proper position to the coast of the 

 legendary Terra Australis. 



The next instance of a similar kind occurs in the Novas 

 Orbis, pubhshed in Basle in the year 1532. That work 

 contains a Latin translation of a letter from Lorenzo Cretico, 

 Ambassador of the Venetian Re])ublic at the Court of 

 Portugal, beginning with the words " Serenissime Princeps," 

 and addressed probably to the Doge. It is dated June 27, 

 1601, but seems not to have been published until 1507, when 

 it appears in the Paesi nouamente retrouati. The letter gives 

 an account of the expedition of Cabral to Calicut, in which 

 Brazil was discovered on the 22nd of April 1500, and a 

 passage in it is to the efiect that the ships discovered a new 

 country on their way, and lying to the south-west, before reach- 

 ing the Cape of Good Hope, — " di sopra dal capo d Boa- 

 speraza uerso garbi liano scopto una terra noua la chiamao d 

 li Papaga." Further, that they called it the Land of 

 Parrots, because these bii"ds there exceeded a cul)it and a 

 half in length, and were of various colours ; that the writer 

 had seen two of them ; the sailors believed that this coast 

 was that of a continent, because they sailed along it for two 

 thousand miles without reaching the end of it ; it was 

 inhabited by naked and well-made men. The translator of 

 this letter for the Noinis Orbis has rendered " uerso garbi" 

 by " lebegio vecti vento," making it to appear that Cabral 

 was driven on this new coast by a south-west wind; and 

 Oronce Fine, whose map of the world of 1531 accompanies 

 the Basle edition of the Novas Orbis, 1532, ])lacesa Brasielie 

 Regio as part of the Terra Australis, reaching nearly to the 

 tropic of Capricorn, whilst more to the east is a Regio 

 Patalis, a word supposed by Santarem to be derived from the 



