"FLORIDA" ON CANTIXO MAP 137 



hagen thinks the names on the Cantino continental 

 coast are derived from Vespucius. But, if these 

 names were derived in large part from Columbus and 

 Corte-Real, then the coast was not Florida but Cuba 

 and some part of the northeastern coast of North 

 America. It follows that if Vespucius in 1497 visited 

 the regions mentioned, he sailed along the southern 

 coast of Cuba and not the Gulf coast of the United 

 States. The name "Farias" west of the Gulf on 

 the Waldseemiiller map of 1507 seems to be derived 

 from Vespucius. ^^ Then in the ''Navigatio Frima"" 

 Vespucius says "the country was in the torrid zone 

 under the parallel which is called the Tropic of 

 Cancer, where the Fole had an elevation of 23 de- 

 grees." This would describe the southern coast of 

 Cuba fairly accurately as shown on the Wald- 

 seemiiller map of 1507, where the tropic crosses the 

 island of Isabella. Furthermore, the Cantino map 

 has two names, C. lurcar and G. do liircor (Fig. 14) 

 which Canerio changes to "Cauo luicar" and "Gorffo 

 do lineor" (Fig. 15). These names may well be "C. 

 linea" and "G. do linea" — "the line" being the tropic. 

 If this be the case, the cartographer of the Cantino 

 map preser\^ed nothing of the voyage of Vespucius ex- 

 cept a couple of mutilated names. Even his island of 



66 Shea, in Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, Vol. 2, p. 231, 



67 C. G. Herbermann, edit.: The Cosmographiae Introductio of 

 Martin Waldseemiiller in Facsimile, Followed by the Four Voyages of 

 Amerigo Vespucci With Their Translation into English. With an Intro- 

 duction by Prof. Joseph Fischer, S. J., and Prof. Franz von Wieser, 

 United States Catholic Hist. Soc. Monogr. 4, New York, 1907, p. Ixvii, 

 translation on p. 122. 



