310 Henry Stevens's Historical and Geographical 
pecially Roger Bacon, Marco Polo, and Gerson, and gave to the 
world his well-known Imago Mundi. This celebrated work, fin- 
ished in 1410, was afterward the guide, companion and friend 
of Columbus, The learned author was for three years Provost 
of the ancient Eeclesiastical College of St. Dié in Lorraine, away 
up in the Vosges Mountains, in the remotest corner of France. 
his was on the very spot where, nearly a century later, in the 
Gymnasium within the same precincts, a confraternity of some 
half dozen earnest students, lovers of geography, of whom the 
poet Mathias Ringman was the soul, in a little work called (s- 
mographie Introductio, printed there in the kalends of May, 1507, 
suggested that the Mundus Novus of Vespucci should be nam 
merica, after a man, inasmuch as Europe and Asia had been 
named after women. Thus a little mountain town of France 
first gave aid and comfort to Columbus and afterwards a name 
to the New World. © 
As early as 1474, Paul Toscanelli, a learned physician of Flor- 
ence, sent to Columbus a Chart made after the narrative of Mar- 
to some 800 miles beyond Sierra Leone. In 1463 Gibraltar ; 
was captured by pain from the Moors gs Alphonso an 
John continued the African discoveries with so much ene 
that, after Diogo Cam’s passin i 
enty years. Bartholomew Columbus was in this last expeditt 
* ee 
ee Ae 
ee “ Wee ee ee 
