Recetit Literature. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Dr. Ph. J. J. Valentine on the Portuguese Discovery of 
Yucatan. — In view of the coming Centennial, memoirs and treatises 
referring to the achievements of the immortal Genoese will be eagerly 
sought for, and be thankfully accepted by the learned public at large. 
We wish that all the publications belonging to this branch of history 
might be conceived in so interesting a way as is the memoir of Dr. 
Valentine, which was printed in the " Bulletin of the American Geog- 
raphical Society of New York," containing St^ pages, with several maps. 
The title is " The Portuguese in the Track of Columbus," (1493)- It 
was issued hi four sections, running from December, 1888, to Septem- 
ber, 1889. The author brings to light the hitherto unknown fact, that 
immediately after the return of Columbus from his first voyage, Joam 
II., King of Portugal, secretly dispatched a fleet of four vessels to the 
islands seen and occupied by the discoverer, enjoining the commander, 
Almeida, to push on in the direction of Columbus' " boasted water- 
way ' ' to India. Following up the given orders, the coast of Yucatan 
was struck, and a map of it was drawn, embodying pretty correctly all , 
the peculiarities of this three-coasted peninsula. So well was this dis- 
covery kept secret by the Crown of Portugal, that the Spaniards, when 
striking the coast of Yucatan in 15 18, really believed they had found 
a land never trod upon previously by any European individual. 
The documentary evidence for the above statement is derived by 
the author from a correspondence between King Ferdinand and Col- 
umbus, and is of but recent publication. As to the cartographic evi- 
dence, it is drawn from a large Portuguese Carta Mundi, the entries ot 
which do not reach farther than to the year 1501. This chart was 
discovered in the archives of the Duke of Modena, by Mr. Henry 
Harrisse, in the year 1884, and without the least doubt it is the same 
chart that served the editors of the atlases of 1508, 15 13 and 1520 as a 
prototype for the first sketches ever made of the American Continent. 
In Section I. the author shows that although intending to do so, Col- 
umbus never actually drew a chart that exhibited a summary of his 
discoveries. In Section II. the story of the expedition of the four Por- 
tuguese caravels is given, with additional extracts giving King Ferdi- 
nand's correspondence with Columbus on this particular subject. In 
Section III. the author gives a general survey of the great oceanic chart, 
the Portuguese Imago Mundi. Under the head of Stellce. Maris, he dis- 
