212 THE OCEAN RIVER 



Undismayed by the opposition of men at court and a certain 

 lack of mineral wealth, Columbus at the turn of the century, 

 sailed a third time and discovered Trinidad, Paria, and the 

 Pearl Coast, but without great take of pearls. Immediately on 

 his trail came Ojeda, La Cosa, and Vespucius again, opening 

 the northern coasts of Brazil and exploring from Paria to 

 Maracaibo. But others now made greater headway. 



At the opening of the new century a Portuguese captain 

 named Cabral, sailing for the Cape of Good Hope, made 

 too much westing in the South Atlantic and hit the coast 

 of Brazil between 12° and 16° S. Had Columbus never found 

 the West Indies and opened the adjacent coasts, this would 

 have been the discovery of the future Americas. In fact the 

 exploration by Vespucius a year later, in 1 502, southerly along 

 the hitherto unknown coasts of Brazil from about 5° to 34° 

 S. and thence to South Georgia Island 54° S., actually was the 

 first voyage to bring a New World into public recognition. 

 Columbus always insisted he was rediscovering the Indies, 

 but with the publication of Vespucius' letter to his friend and 

 patron, Lorenzo de Medici, the course of events that gave 

 the name of America to the western continents came into 

 being. Amerigo wrote: 'T have formerly written to you at 

 sufficient length about my return from these new countries. . . . 

 it is proper to call them a New World." 



The expression Novus Mundus caught on. A Latin version 

 of the letter to Lorenzo was published in 1 504. Eleven editions 

 followed in Italy, and by 1506 eight German editions. In 1508 

 Johann Ruysch published a map of the world, fantastic in 

 many respects, but for the first time replacing the conjectures 

 of lands below the equator with an outline of the Brazilian 

 coast called Terra Sancte Crucis or Mundus Novus. The earli- 

 est possible reference on a map to America as a name is 

 attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in 1514, who gave the ''wet" 

 or oceanic interpretation of the western discoveries, making 



