839 



tion in the journals of these perilous expedi- 

 tions. 



The maritime charts, which the Florentine 

 traveller, Amerigo Vespucci*, constructed in the 

 early years of the 16th century, as Piloto mayor 

 of the Casa de Contratacion of Seville, and in 

 which he placed, perhaps artfully, the words 

 Tierra de Amerigo, have not reached our times. 

 The most ancient monument we possess of the 

 geography of the New Continent-f is the Map 

 of the World by John Ruysch, annexed to a 

 Roman edition of Ptolemy in 1508. We there 

 find Yucatan and Honduras (the most southern 

 part of Mexico];) figured as an island, by the 

 name of Culicar. There is no isthmus of Panama, 

 but a passage, which permits of a direct naviga- 

 tion from Europe to India. The great southern 

 island (South America) bears the name of Terra 

 de P areas, bounded by two rivers, the Rio La- 

 reno, and the Rio Formoso. These Pareas are, 



* He died in 1512, as Mr. Munoz has proved by the docu- 

 ments of the archives of Simancas. (Hist, del Nuevo Mundo, 

 vol. i, p. 17.) Tiraboschi, Storia della Litter atura, vol. vi, 

 PI. 1, p. 179, 190. 



t See the learned researches of Mr. Walckenaer, in the 

 Bibliographie univ., vol. vi, p. 209, art. Buckinck. On the 

 maps added to Ptolemy in 1506 we find no trace of the dis- 

 coveries of Columbus. 



X No doubt the lands between Yucatan, Cape Gracias a 

 Dios, and Veragua, discovered by Columbus (1502 and 1503), 

 by Solis, and by Pinion (1503). 



