NOTES. 



Ixxxix 



Behaim house at Nuremberg), places the coast of China (or the throne of the 

 king of Mango, Cambalu, and Cathay) only 100 west of the Azores, i. e. as 

 Behaim lived four years at Fayal, and probably counted the distance from 

 that point, 119 40' west of Cape St. Vincent." Columbus was probably 

 acquainted with Behaim at Lisbon, where they both lived from 1480 to 1484 

 (see my Examen crit. de 1'Hist. de la Geographic, T. ii. p. 357369). The 

 many wholly erroneous numbers which are to be found in all the writings on 

 the discovery of America, and the then supposed extent of Eastern Asia, have 

 induced me to compare more closely the opinions of the middle ages with 

 those of classical antiquity. 



( 422 ) p. 270. The eastern part of the Pacific was first navigated by white 

 men in a boat, when Alonso Martin de Don Beiiito, (who had seen the sea 

 horizon with Vasco Nunez de Balboa on the 25th September, 1513, from the 

 little Sierra de Quarequa), descended a few days afterwards to the Golfo de 

 San Miguel, before Balboa went through the ceremony of talcing possession 

 of the ocean ! Seven mouths previously Balboa had announced to his court 

 that the South Sea, of which he had heard from the natives, was very easy to 

 navigate : " mar muy mansa y que nunca an da brava como la mar de nuestra 

 banda" (de las Antilles). The name Oceano Pacifico, however, was, as Piga- 

 fctta tells us, first given by Magellan to the Mar del Sur (Balboa's name). 

 In August 1519 (before Magellan's expedition), the Spanish government, 

 which was not wanting in watchfulness and activity, had given secret orders, 

 in November 1514, to Pedrarius Davila, Governor of the province of Castilla 

 del Oro (the northwesternmost of South America), and to the great navigator 

 Juan Diaz de Solis ; to the first to have four caravels built in the Golfo de 

 San Miguel " to make discoveries in the newly discovered South Sea" ; and 

 to the second, to seek for an opening (" abertura de la tierra") from the 

 eastern coast of America, with the view of arriving at the back (" a' espel- 

 das") of the new country, i. e. of the sea-surrounded western portion of 

 Castilla del Oro. The expedition of Solis (October 1515 to August 1516) 

 led him far to the south, and to the discovery of the Rio de la Plata, which 

 was long called the Rio de Solis. (Compare, respecting the little known first 

 discovery of the Pacific, Petrus Martyr, Epist. dxl. p. 296, with the docu- 

 ments of 1513 1515 in Navarrete, T. iii. p. 134 and 357 ; also my Examea 

 crit. T. i. p. 320 and 350.) 



f* 8 ) p. 270. Respecting the geographical position of the Desventuradas 

 (San Pablo, lat. 16i S. long., 135f west of Paris; Isla de Tiburones, lat. 

 10f S., long. 145 W.), see my Examen crit. T. i. p. 286; and Navarrete, 



