43 



A PRELIMINAET CRITIQUE OF THE TEBBA 



AU8TBALI8 LEGEND. 



By Ja-Mes E. McCltmont, M.A. 



i. misconceptions due to the " novus oebis." 



In the Latin edition of the Novus Orhis, first published in 

 1532 in Basle and Paris, a letter from Lorenzo Cretico, 

 Ambassador of the Venetian Eepublic to the court of Emanuel 

 of Portugal, is translated from the Paesi nouamente retrouati, 

 Vicenza, 1507, cap. cxxv. The letter treats of the Portuguese 

 expedition to India, conducted by Cabral in 1500-1501, for 

 although Cabral in not mentioned by name, we know that at 

 the date of this letter (June 27, 1501,) his fleet had newly 

 arrived in Lisbon, and was that to which the words of 

 Cretico must apply when he spoke of the expedition " which 

 the king sent most recently to India." 



The letter begins with a brief itinerary of the voyage. 

 They sailed along the African coast as far as Cape Verde, 

 where they saw the Hesperides (Cape Verde Islands) and the 

 coast of Lower Ethiopia, beyond which the ancients rarely 

 travelled. From that point the coast trends eastwards until 

 it reaches the meridian of Sicily ; in latitude it is four or 

 five degrees north of the equator ; about the middle of it is 

 the gold mine of this monarch (El Mina). A cape, called 

 the Cape of Good Hope, rises further to the south, nine degrees 

 south of the tropic of Capricorn. Thence the distance to 

 our Barbaries is five thousand miles, coming towards our 

 own shores. When you have passed that cape, the coast 

 curves towards the promontory called Prasum, which the 

 ancients, and chiefly Ptolemy, held to be the limit of the 

 Southern Hemisphere; theland beyond he termed "Unknown." 

 Thence their route was to the Troglodites and the gold mine 

 called Sofala, where the ancients afiirm that there is a 

 greater quantity of gold than in any other place. Here they 

 enter the Barbaric Gulf (from Mozambique to Mogadoxa), 

 then the Indian Ocean, and finally reach the city of Calicut. 

 Such was their route, which you will find to be almost 

 fifteen thousand miles in length ; but if you sail direct, it is 

 less. Near the Cape of Good Hope they were driven by a 

 south-west wind and discovered a new country, which they 

 called the Land of Parrots — " Supra Caput bonse spei lebegio 

 vecti vento nacti sunt novam tellurem quam apellarunt 



