HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 17 



the coast diverges to the west and subsequently runs north. 

 Separated from this southern extremity by a narrow 

 strait lies a country designated as Brasilie regio, stretch- 

 ing far to the east and to the west, the coasts retiring in 

 higher southern latitudes. The outlines of this purely 

 hypothetical country were fantastic enough, and must 

 have seemed still more so after Magellan's remarkable 

 voyage had verified the existence of a passage to the 

 west, though it was found to be io° farther south than 

 was indicated by the Newen Zeytung. Tierra del Fuego, 

 on the south of the Straits of Magellan, was evidently 

 part of the Terra australis, and its coasts were therefore 

 prolonged by Schoner without any hesitation, so that 

 they encircled the globe on the south. His learned 

 successors improved on his drawings by adding greater 

 variety to the coast line of the imaginary country. In 

 many representations of the South Atlantic Ocean, a pen- 

 insula of the great Austral continent is indicated to the 

 south-east of the Brazilian continent, between 50 and 

 6o° S., with a coast running from west to east. This may 

 be a mere coincidence, but it does not exclude the possi- 

 bility of Vespucci's discovery on his third voyage having 

 provided data for part of the coast of the otherwise 

 imaginary country. 



From this time forward the names of places in or 

 near America were removed to a greater distance. On 

 Schoner's Globe, for example, of the year 1533, the 

 name Brasilie regio already embellishes the great 

 southern country to the south of Madagascar. A 

 later designer, Oronce Fine, had moreover the audacity 

 to give the country the inscription : Terra australis 

 nuper inventa sed non plene examinata (the lately dis- 

 covered, but not completely explored southern land). 

 A German geographer, one of the most celebrated of all, 

 Gerhard Mercator, in the beginning of the second half of 



the sixteenth century drew the coasts of this immense 



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