OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 677 



new world continuously brought nearer to Europe duiing 

 the last half century, by means of commercial intercourse 



Philosophica, were intimate friends. In the last-named work we find a 

 treatise written in 1509 by Hylacomylus on architecture and perspective. 

 (Examen crit. t. iv. p. 112.) Laurentius Phrisius of Metz, a friend of 

 Hylacomylus, and like him patronised by Duke Rene", of Lorraine, 

 who maintained a correspondence with Vespucci, in the Strasburg 

 edition of Ptolemy, 1522, speaks of Hylacomylus as deceased. In the 

 map of the new continent contained in this edition, and drawn by 

 Hylacomylus, the name of America occurs for the first time in the. 

 editions of Ptolemy's Geography. According to my investigations, a 

 map of the world by Petrus Apianus, which was once included in Cra- 

 mer's edition of Solinus, and a second time in the Vadian edition of 

 Mela, and represented, like more modern Chinese maps, the Isthmus of 

 Panama broken through, had appeared two years earlier. (Examen crit. 

 t. iv. pp. 99-124; t. v. pp. 168-176,) It is a great error to regard the 

 map of 1527, obtained from the Ebner library at Nuremberg now in 

 Weimar, and the map of 1529 of Diego Ribero, which differs from the 

 former and is engraved by Gussefeld, as the oldest maps of the new 

 continent, (Op. cit. t. ii. p. 184; t. iii. p. 191). Vespucci had visited the 

 coasts of South America in the expedition of Alonso de Hojeda, a year 

 after the third voyage of Columbus, in 1499, in company with Juan de la 

 Cosa, whose map, drawn at Puerto de Santa Maria in 1500, fully six 

 years before Columbus' death, was first made known by myself. 

 Vespucci could not have had any motive for feigning a voyage in the 

 year 1497, for he, as well as Columbus, was firmly persuaded, until hia 

 death, that only parts of Eastern Asia had been reached. (Compare the 

 letter of Columbus, February, 1502, to Pope Alexander VI., and another, 

 July, 1503, to Queen Isabella, in Navarrete, t. i. p. 304, t. ii. p. 280; and 

 Vespucci's letter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, in Bandini's Vita e Lettere 

 di Amerigo Vespucci, pp. 66 and 83.) Pedro de Ledesma, the pilot 

 of Columbus on his third voyage, says even in 1513, in the lawsuit 

 against the heirs, " that Paria is regarded as a part of Asia, la tierra 

 firme que dicese que es de Asia," Navarrete, t. iii. p. 539. The 

 frequent periphrases, Jfondo nouvo, alter Orbis, Colonus novit Orbis 

 repertor, are not at variance with this, as they only denote regions 

 not before seen, and are so used by Strabo, Mela, Tertullian, Isidore of 

 Seville, and Cadamosto. (Examen crit. t. i. p. 118; t. v. pp. 182-184.) 

 For more than twenty years after the death of Vespucci, which occurred 

 in 1512, and until the calumnious charges of Schoner, in the Opusculum 

 geographicum, 1533, and of Servet, in the Lyons' edition of Ptolemy's 

 Geography of 1535, we find no complaint against the Florentine navi- 

 gator. Christopher Columbus, a year before his death, calls him 

 mucJio hombre de bien, a man of worth, " worthy of all confidence," 

 aud " always inclined to render him service." (Carta a mi muy caro 

 fjo D. Diego, in Navarrete, t L p. 351.) Fernando Colon expresses tbc 

 game good will to wards Vespucci; he wrote the life of his father in 1535, 



