The easiest Points of Access to America. 225 
stones, Iceland and Greenland; (2) Central America, with the help of 
the steady northeast trade winds; (3) Brazil, in South America, which 
is not only the nearest point to the Old World, but has the additional 
advantage of winds and currents tending in its direction. There can be 
little doubt that America was visited by Norsemen about A. D. 1000, by 
the first route. Tradition and the records of some early maps, which 
show some large land masses as far west of the Azores as these are west 
of Europe, seem to indicate that the second route had been possibly 
utilized early in the fifteenth century, but the third and easiest was not 
available till the west African coast as far as cape Verd had been dis- 
covered. It wagin 1445 that cape Verd was for the first time rounded 
by one of the exploring expeditions despatched from Portugal by the in- 
defatigable Prince Henry. There is good reason to believe that only two 
years later Brazil was reached. There is at Milan a remarkable manu- 
script map, dated A. D. 1448, drawn by Andrea Bianco, of Venice. On 
this map are shown for the first time the result of the Portuguese discoy- 
eries as far as cape Verd, but in addition there is drawn at the edge of 
the map, southwest from that cape, in the direction of Brazil, a long 
stretch of coast line labeled ‘‘Authentic island,” with a further inscription 
to the effect that it stretches ‘£1,500 miles westward.’? Antonio Gal- 
vano, in ‘The Discoveries of the World,” published in the middle of the 
sixteenth century, says that in A. D. 1447 a Portuguese ship was carried 
by a great tempest far westward until an island was discovered, from 
which gold was brought back to Portugal. As Bianco’s map of A. D. 1448 
was made in London, it is likely that it represents information about this 
voyage obtained in Portugal, where Bianco probably called on a voyage 
_ from Venice to England. The conclusion to be drawn is that South 
America was first seen in the very year in which Columbus is believed to 
have been born, by one of the Portuguese explorers despatched by Prince 
Henry the Navigator. In the discussion of this paper the author’s con- 
clusions were challenged by several gentlemen on the ground that its ar- 
gument was purely conjectural, and that if such a discovery had been 
made it would have been known to Columbus and other geographers of 
the day. 
MONOGRAPHS OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 
The Board of Managers has the pleasure of announcing that 
it has made arrangements for the publication of a series of science 
manuals on the physical features of the United States. The 
principal object of the publication is to render accessible to 
every public school in the United States, at a nominal price, 
accurate and properly correlated information upon the geog- 
raphy of our country, and expressed in simple, untechnical 
language. Various members of the Society have agitated this 
question for some time past, and it resulted that in last June, 
