692 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 487. 



if it was only current among sailors, having 

 originated with some other expedition 

 (presumably Portuguese) of which no his- 

 torical notice has been preserved. The 

 almost constant practice of the old map- 

 makers of employing the name with the 

 article, or without any qualifying term 

 (0 Maranham, or simply Maranham or 

 Maranon) is very suggestive of a topo- 

 graphical term, such as, for example, '0 

 Porto,' 'Bl Farallan,' etc. The Portu- 

 guese marine terminology has '0 Mara- 

 chao,' which would be very applicable to 

 this part of the coast full of shoals and bars, 

 and, as already noted, this name might 

 easily be transformed into 'Maranhao' 

 amongst people of slight literary culture. 



The above-mentioned hypothesis of an- 

 other expedition seems the most plausible 

 one. The letter of Estevao Froes* written 

 from San Domingoes on the 30th of July 

 of 1514 after a year's imprisonment sub- 

 sequent to a voyage along this coast, men- 

 tions Joao Coelho, 'he of the gate of the 

 cross, residente of the city of Lisbon,' and 

 Diego Ribeiro as his predecessors in this 

 navigation. The name 'Joao de Lisboa' 

 which appears in the second group of maps 

 above analyzed seems to commemorate the 

 first of these navigators, and in this case it 

 may be presumed that it was furnished by 

 some member of the expedition that had 

 remained in the vicinity of Maranhao, and 

 that another member of the same, passing 

 to Italy, may have furnished the informa- 

 tion on which the relatively detailed and 

 accurate representation of this vicinity in 

 the Freducci map of 1514 (?) was based. 



In the suit of 1513 the pilot Andreas de 



* Cited by Varnhagen and given in full by 

 Capistrano de Abreu in the pamphlet entitled 

 ' Descobrimento do Brazil e o seu desenvolviraento 

 no seculo XVI.' published in Eio de Janeiro in 

 1883. The name ' Fernao ' given in this pam- 

 phlet was corrected to ' Estevao ' in the recent 

 work by the same author published in the volume 

 of the fourteenth centennial of Brazil. 



Morales declared that he had made a map 

 of this coast based on the information of 

 Pinzon and Lepe. It is probable that this 

 map (or another organized in the same 

 condition and preserved in the Casa de la 

 Contratacion of Seville) served as a proto- 

 type for the Diego Ribeiro map of 1529, 

 notwithstanding that this does not show 

 evident signs of having proceeded directly 

 from either of these first expeditions. 



In the same suit Pinzon identified his 

 Cabo Santa Maria de la Consolacion with 

 the Cape Santo Agostinho of the Portu- 

 guese navigators, but it is evident that 

 here he either deceived himself, or sought 

 to deceive others. It is possible that 

 through another error of identification on 

 the part of other witnesses of the same suit, 

 the name 'Maranon' was applied to the Mar 

 de Agua Dulee (or Amazonas) of Pinzon, 

 since, judging from the Freducci and 

 MaioUo maps, this name seems to have an 

 origin independent of the expeditions of 

 Pinzon and Lepe. 



According to the terms of the above men- 

 tioned letter of Estevao Froes, his voyage 

 was made in the year 1513 and in company 

 with Francisco and Pero Corso, and at 

 some point of the coast there was a hostile 

 encounter with the Indians with whom was 

 a certain Pero Galego (Pedro de Galicia). 

 The name 'Corso' given to a cape in the 

 Maiollo map seems to indicate information 

 obtained from some member of this expedi- 

 tion, and, this being the case, it may be 

 presumed that the name 'Rio Pero' in the 

 same map refers to the Pero Galego of the 

 letter. On this hypothesis this person must 

 have been located in the vicinity of the gulf 

 of ]\Iaranhao, having probably been left 

 there by some of the preceding expeditions. 



Another Portuguese navigator skirting 

 the coast some time before 1523 applied to 

 it a great many new names which in some 

 way came to the knowledge of an Italian 

 cartographer, author of the so-called Turin 



