46 COSMOS. 



Hoces in 1525. It would appear from the journals still ex- 

 tant, and from the historical testimony of Anghiera, that the 

 southern stars were made the special objects of attention dur- 

 ing the voyage in which Amerigo Vespucci and Vicente Yanez 

 Pinzon discovered Cape San Augustin in 8° 20' south lati- 

 tude. Vespucci boasts on this occasion of having seen three 

 Canopi (one dark, Canopofosco; and two bright stars, Cano- 

 pi risplendenti). We find from an attempt made by Ideler, 

 the ingenious author of works on the " Names of the Stars" 

 and on " Chronology," to explain Vespucci's very confused 

 description of the southern heavens, in his letter to Lorenzo 

 Pierfrancesco de' Medici, of the party of the " Popolani," that 

 Vespucci used the name in nearly as indefinite a manner as 

 the Arabian astronomers had used the word Suhel. Ideler 

 shows that the '' canopo fosco nella via lattea'' must have 

 been the black spot, or large coal-sack in the Southern Cross ; 

 while the position of three stars, in which are supposed to be 

 recognized a, (i, and y of Hydrus, renders it very probable 

 that the " canopo risplendente di notabile grandezza" (of 

 considerable extent) is the Nubecula Major, and the second 

 risplende7ite the Nubecula Minor.^ It is very singular that 

 Vespucci should not have compared these recently-noticed 

 celestial objects to clouds, as « all other observers had done. 

 One would have thought the comparison irresistible. Peter 

 Martyr Anghiera, who was personally acquainted with all 

 the discoverers, and whose letters were written under the 

 vivid impression excited in his mind by their narratives, de- 

 scribes, with striking truthfulness, the mild but unequal efful- 

 gence of the nubecula3. He says, " Assecuti sunt Portugallen 

 ses alterius poli gradum quinquagesimum araplius, ubi punc- 

 tum (polum ?) circumeuntes quasdam nubeculas licet intueri, 

 veluti in lactea via sparsos fulgores per universi cobH globum 

 intra ejus spatii latitudinem."t The exceeding fame, and 



* Humboldt, Examen Crit. de la Giogr., torn, iv., p. 205, 295-316 

 torn, v., p. 225-229, 235. Ideler, Sternnamen, ^ 346. 



t Petrus Martyr Angh., Oceanica, dec. iii., lib. i., p. 217. I can 

 prove from the numerical data in dec. ii., lib. x., p. 204, and dec. iii., 

 lib X., p. 232, that the portion of the Oceanica, in which the Magellanic? 

 Clouds are referred to, was written between 1514 and 1516, and there 

 fore immediately after the expedition of Juan Diaz de Solis to the Rio 

 de la Plata (then known as the Rio de Solis, una mar dulce). The lati- 

 tudes are much exaggerated. 



f ** The Portuguese extended their discoveries to within less than 50 

 degrees of the South Pole, where they plainly observed certain nebulre 

 moving round the point (pole?), like the luminous spots scattered ia 



