History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0116/01162.txt

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$Title{Discovery Of America
Part IX}
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$Author{Fiske, John}
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$Date{1892}
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Title:       Discovery Of America
Book:        Chapter VII: Mundus Novus
Author:      Fiske, John
Date:        1892

Part IX

     Now Vespucius wrote his second epistle, the one to Soderini giving a
brief account of his four voyages, at Lisbon, September 4, 1504, and Soderini
had a certified MS. copy of it made February 10, 1505. ^2 From that
magistrate's hands it afterward passed into those of the publisher Pacini, for
whom it was printed at Florence before July 9, 1506.  From this Italian
original, of which I have mentioned five copies as still existing, somebody
made a French version of which no copy is now to be found.  Walter Lud tells
us that a copy of this French version was obtained directly from Portugal for
the little group of scholars at Saint-Die.  This copy could not have come
from Vespucius himself, who before February 10, 1505, had left Portugal
forever, and on the 5th of that month was making a friendly visit to Columbus
at Seville.  There is nothing to indicate the existence of any personal
relations or acquaintanceship between Vespucius and any of the people at
Saint-Die.

[Footnote 2: Varnhagen, Amerigo Vespucci, p. 30.]

     The French version of the letter to Soderini arrived at Saint-Die just as
Lud and Ringmann and Waldseemuller had matured their plans for a new edition
of Ptolemy, revised and amended so as to include the results of recent
discovery.  The strong interest felt in geographical studies during the latter
half of the fifteenth century was shown in the publication of six Latin
editions of Ptolemy between 1472 and 1490. ^1 Before 1506 the rapid progress
of discovery had made all these editions antiquated, and our friends at
Saint-Die proposed to issue one that should quite throw into the shade all
that had gone before. ^2 Walter Lud, who was blessed with a long purse,
undertook to defray the expenses; Waldseemuller superintended the scientific
part of the work and Ringmann the philological part, for the sake of which he
made a journey to Italy and obtained from a nephew of the great Pico della
Mirandola an important manuscript of the Greek text.  Duke Rene, who was much
interested in the scheme, gathered rare data from various quarters and seems
to have paid for the engraving of Waldseemuller's map entitled Tabula Terre
Nove, which was to accompany the new edition.  Early in 1507 Waldseemuller had
finished a small treatise intended as an introduction to the more elaborate
work which he was embodying in the edition of Ptolemy, and it was decided to
print this treatise at once on the college press.  Just in the nick of time
Duke Rene handed over to the professors the letter of Vespucius in its French
version, which he had lately obtained from Portugal.  It was forthwith turned
into Latin by the worthy canon Jean Basin de Sendacour, who improved the
situation by addressing his version to his enlightened sovereign Rene instead
of Soderini, thus bemuddling the minds of posterity for ever so long by making
Vespucius appear to address the Duke of Lorraine as his old schoolmate! ^1

[Footnote 1: At Bologna, 1472; Vicenza, 1475; Rome, 1478 and 1490; Ulm, 1482
and 1486; all except that of Vicenza provided with engraved maps. Avesac,
Martin Waltzemuller, p. 23.]

[Footnote 2: Just at the same time another littlle group of scholars at Vienna
were similarly at work on a new edition of Pomponius Mela.]

[Footnote 1: The error has been furthered by the abbreviation vostra Mag. i.e.
"your Magnificence," the proper form of address for the chief magistrate of
Florence.  It has been misread "your Majesty," a proper form of address for
Rene, who was titular King of Sicily and Jerusalem.  Now that we know how it
happened, it is curious to see Humboldt struggle with the subject in his
Examen critique, tom. iv. pp. 108, 113, 166.]

     This Latin version, containing that innocent but baneful blunder of
Parias instead of Lariab, the source of so much misunderstanding and so much
unjust aspersion, was appended to Waldseemuller's little treatise, along with
some verses by Ringmann in praise of the great Florentine navigator.  The
book, entitled "Cosmographie Introductio," was first published at Saint-Die on
the 25th of April, 1507.  The only copy of this edition known to exist at
present was picked up for a franc on one of the Paris quays by the geographer
Jean Baptiste Eyries; upon his death in 1846, it was bought at auction for 160
francs by Nicolas Yemeniz, of Lyons; upon the death of Yemeniz in 1867, it was
bought for 2,000 francs; and it may now be seen in the Lenox Library at New
York. ^1 Three other editions were published in 1507, concerning which there
is no need of entering into particulars. ^2 The copy in the library of Harvard
University, which I have now before me, was published August 29, 1507, - a
little quarto of fifty-two leaves. ^3 Mr. Winsor mentions eighteen or twenty
copies of it as still in existence, but in 1867 a copy was sold for 2,000
francs, the same price paid that year for the first edition; in 1884 a copy in
Munich was held at 3,000 marks, equivalent to 750 dollars.

[Footnote 1: Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii. 166.]

[Footnote 2: They are described in Avezac, Martin Waltzemuller, pp. 28-59;
Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vestust., pp. 89-96; Additions, pp. 29-34; and more
briefly mentioned in Winsor, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 3: It is No. 46 in Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vetust.]

     In this rare book occurs the first suggestion of the name America. After
having treated of the division of the earth's inhabited surface into three
parts - Europe, Asia, and Africa - Waldseemuller speaks of the discovery of a
Fourth Part, and the passage is of so much historic interest that instead of a
mere transcription the reader will doubtless prefer to see a photograph of
that part of the page in our Harvard copy. ^1 It is as follows: -

     Nuc vero & hee partes funt latius luftratae/ etc.
     alia quarta pars per Americu Velputium (vt infequentibus
     audietur) inuenta eft: quanon video cur quis iure vetet ab
     Amerigen quafi Americi terram/fiue Americam dicendam: cum &
     Europa & Afia a mulieribus fua fortita fint nomina. Eius fitu
     & gentis mores exbis binis Americi nauigationibus que fequutur
     liquide intelligidatur.

[Footnote 1: It is somewhat reduced to fit my narrower crown octavo page. The
book contains another passage in which America is mentioned as part of Mela's
antipodal world.]

     Or, in English: - "But now these parts have been more extxensively
explored and another fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vespucius (as
will appear in what follows): wherefore I do not see what is rightly to hinder
us from calling it Amerige or America, i.e. the land of Americus, after its
discoverer Americus, a man of sagacious mind, since both Europe and Asia have
got their names from women. ^2 Its situation and the manners and customs of
this its people will be clearly understood from the twice two voyages of
Americus which follow."

[Footnote 2: I suppose Waldseemuller was thinking of the passage where
Herodotus (iv. 45) speaks of Europe, Asia, and Libya (i.e. the little known to
him) as all one land, and cannot imagine why three names, and women's names
especially, should have been bestowed upon it.  In this connection Herodotus
calls Asia the wife of Prometheus.  Hesiod (Theog., 359) makes her a daughter
of Oceanus and Tethys.  Geographically the name seems to have had an especial
reference to a small district about the Cayster in Lydia (AEschylus,
Prometheus, 411; Pindar, Olymp., vii. 33). In its most common Greek usage it
meant Asia minor, but by the time of Herodotus it had already begun to be
extended into the dim vastness of continent behind that peninsula.

     Much better known than the mythic personality of the female Asia is that
of Europa, daughter of Agenor (Hegesippus, Fragm., 6), or of Tityos (Pindar,
Pyth.,vi.) or of Phoroneus (see Preller, Griechische Mythologie, ii. 37).
this greater celebrity is due to her escapade with Zeus, about which so many
verses have been written.  Every reader remembers the exquisite picture in
Tennyson's Palace of Art.  Less generally known are the charming lines of
Reynolds: -

     "We gathered wood flowers, - some blue as the vein
     O'er Hero's eyelid stealing, and some as white,
     In the clustering grass, as rich Europa's hand
     Nested amid the curls on Jupiter's forehead,
     What time he snatched her through the startled waves."

     Garden of Florence, London, 1821.

As for this Europa, Herodotus is sure that she never set foot in Europe; and
as for Libya he knows nothing except that she was a "native" woman. "However,"
he wisely concludes, "let us quit these matters.  We shall ourselves continue
to use the names which custom sanctions" (Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. p.
33).  There was really nothing like uniformity of tradition in the mythical
interpretations of these geographical names. Nor were they always feminine,
for in Eustathius (Comm. in Dionys. Perieg., 170) we read of Europus, Asius,
and Libyus.  Of course all these explanations got the cart before the horse;
the continents were not named after the persons, but the persons were
eponymous myths invented to explain the names of the continents.  Professor
Rawlinson's opinion is highly probable, that both Europe and Asia are Semitic
words which passed to the Greeks from the Phoenicians.  Europe seems to be the
Hebrew, Assyrian ereb, Arabic gharb (whence Arab), meaning "the setting" and
"the west" (cf. Latin occidens, Italian ponente); while Asia seems to be a
participial form of Hebrew, Assyrian Azu, meaning "the rising" and "the east"
(cf. Latin oriens, Italian levante).  In the days when Phoenicia ruled the
wave, the sailors of Tyre and Sidon probably called the opposite coasts of the
AEgean sea Europe and Asia = west and east, and the Greeks acquired the habit
of using these names, just as they acquired so many other words and ideas from
the Phoenicians.  This seems to me downright common sense. - As for the name
Libya, it strongly suggests (lips) or (liba), the southwest wind (Aristotle,
Meteorol., ii. 6, 7; cf. Theocritus, ix. 11), which the Romans called Africus
(Seneca, Quoest. Nat., v. 16; Horat, Epod., xvi. 22), and which Italian
sailors still call Affrico.  The Greeks called it because it brought showers.
According to this view Libya was simply "the southwest country." The meaning
of the name Africa is very obscure.  A conjecture, as plausible as any,
connects it with Hebrew word and supposes it to have been applied by the
settlers of Carthage to the nomadic or barbarous tribes in the neighbourhood
(Movers, Die Phonizier, ii. 402).  Originally confined to the region about
Carthage, the name Africa gradually superseded Libya as a name for that
continent.]

     Such were the winged words but for which, as M. Harrisse reminds us, the
western hemisphere might have come to be known as Atlantis, or Hesperides, or
Santa Cruz, or New India, or perhaps Columbia.  There was not much likelihood,
however, of its getting named after Columbus, because long before the distinct
and separate existence of the western hemisphere was so much as suspected, the
names had taken root in its soil, and before that time it would not have
occurred to anybody to name it after Columbus, for the sufficient reason that
it had two good names already, viz.  "Asia" and "the Indies." Separate islands
and stretches of coast received their local names, as Hispaniola or Veragua,
but no one thought of proposing a new name for the whole western world.

     Why, then, it may be asked, did Waldseemuller propose America as a new
name for the whole?  The reply is, that he did nothing of the sort. We shall
never understand what he had in mind until we follow Mr. Freeman's advice and
free ourselves from the bondage of the modern map. Let us pursue for a moment
the further fortunes of the work in which our friends of Saint Die were
engaged.  Upon the death of Duke Rene in 1508 the little coterie was broken
up.  Lud seems in some way to have become dissociated from the enterprise;
Ringmann in that year became professor of cosmography at Basel, ^1 and his
untimely death occurred in 1511. Waldseemuller was thus left comparatively
alone.  The next edition of the Cosmographice Introductio was published at
Strasburg in 1509, the work upon the Ptolemy was kept up, or resumed, with the
aid of two jurists of that city, Jacob Aeszler and Georg Uebelin, and the book
was at last published there in 1513.  Among the twenty new maps in this folio
volume is one to which we have had frequent occasion to refer, the Tabula
Terre Nove, made for this edition of Ptolemy at the expense of Duke Rene and
under the supervision of Waldseemuller, if not by his own hands, and engraved
before 1508.  We must therefore regard this map and the text of the
Cosmographiae Introductio as expressions of opinion practically
contemporaneous and emanating from the same man (or men, i.e. Waldseemuller
and Ringmann).  Now what do we find on this map?  The Brazilian coast is
marked with local names derived from the third voyage of Vespucius, but
instead of the general name America, or even Mundus Novus, we have simply
Terra Incognita; and over to the left, apparently referring to the Pearl Coast
and perhaps also to Honduras, we read the inscription: - "This land with the
adjacent islands was discovered by Columbus of Genoa by order of the King of
Castile." ^1 The appearance of incompatibility between this statement and the
assertion that Vespucius discovered the Fourth Part has puzzled many learned
geographers. ^2 But I venture to think that this incompatibility is only
apparent, not real. Suppose we could resuscitate those bright young men,
Waldseemuller and Ringmann, and interrogate them!  I presume they would say: -
"Bless you, dear modern scholars, you know many things that we did not, but
you have clean forgotten some things that to us were quite obvious.  When we
let fall that little suggestion about naming the Fourth Part after Americus,
perhaps we were not so fiercely in earnest as you seem to think.  We were not
born of Hyrcanian tigers, but sometimes enlivened our dry disquisitions with a
wholesome laugh, and so neat a chance for quizzing Europa and the fair sex was
not lost upon us.  Seriously, however, what did we do that was inconsistent or
unfair?  Did we not give Columbus the credit for discovering exactly what he
did discover, the Pearl and Honduras coasts and the adjacent islands?  And did
we not say of Americus that he had found the Fourth Part, of Mundus Novus,
beyond the equator, concerning which the ancients had no knowledge, but the
existence of which was plainly indicated, in their different ways, by Ptolemy
and Mela?  But you go on to ask was it not Columbus that first showed the way
to the Indies?  To be sure it was; we never denied it!  Again you ask if the
Pearl Coast and the Mundus Novus were not alike parts of South America. Our
answer is that when we were living on the earth nobody had framed a conception
of the distinct and integral whole which you now call South America.  We knew
that long stretches of strange coast had been discovered here and there; and
some of them interested us for one reason and some for another.  It was
doubtless a thing more divine than human for the Admiral Columbus to sail by
the west to Asia along the circumference of the OEucmene, but he never
supposed that he had thus found a new part of the earth, nor did we.  To sail
across the torrid zone and explore a new antipodal world that formed no part
of the OEcumene was a very different thing, and it was this deed for which we
properly gave the credit to Americus; for did not the learned and accurate
Master Ruysch testify that voyagers upon this antarctic coast had beheld the
southern pole more than 50 Degrees above the horizon, and yet had seen no end
to that country?  We therefore acted according to our best lights,
emphasizing, as we admit, that which appealed to us most forcibly.  If we
could have studied your nineteenth century globes we should have learned to
express ourselves differently; but, bless you again, dear modern scholars, may
not some of your own expressions run risk of being misunderstood after an
equal lapse of time?"

[Footnote 1: Avezac, Martin Waltzemuller, p. 105]

[Footnote 1: "Hec terra cum adiacentibs insulis inuenta est per Columbu
ianuensem ex mandato Regis Castellae."]

[Footnote 2: As for instance Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. iv. pp. 118-120;
Avezac, Martin Waltzemuller, p. 154; Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, p.
386.]

     If along with our two editors of Ptolemy we could also call back for a
moment from the Undiscovered Country that learned geographer, accomplished
scholar, and devoted son, Ferdinand Columbus, and let him hear their
explanation, I feel sure that he would promptly and heartily recognize its
substantial correctness.  Upon the point in question we already have
Ferdinand's testimony, clothed in a silence more eloquent than any conceivable
words.  I have already remarked upon Ferdinand's superb library, of which the
remnant of four or five thousand volumes is still preserved, - the Biblioteca
Colombina at Seville.  It will be remembered that he had a habit of marking
and annotating his books in a way that is sometimes quite helpful to the
historian.  Now the number 1773 of Ferdinand's library is a copy of the
Cosmographice Introductio in the edition published at Strasburg in 1509.  His
autograph note not informs us that he bought it at Venice in July, 1521, for
five sueldos. ^1 As his death occurred in 1539, he had this book in his
possession for eighteen years, and during a part of this time he was engaged
in preparing the biography of his father.  He was naturally very sensitive
about everything that in any way great or small concerned his father's fame,
and if any writer happened to make statements in the slightest degree
derogatory to his father's importance or originality, Ferdinand would pause in
his narrative and demolish the offender if it took a whole chapter to do it.
^1 But his book makes no allusion whatever to Waldseemuller or his suggestion
of the name America or his allusion to Vespucius as the discoverer of Quarta
Pars.  Not so much as a word had Ferdinand Columbus to say on this subject!
Still more, the book of Waldseemuller did not sleep on the shelf during those
eighteen years.  Ferdinand read and annotated it with fullness and care, but
made no comment upon the passage in question!  This silence is absolutely
decisive.  Here was the son of Columbus and for some years the fellow-townsman
of Americus at Seville, the familiar friend of the younger Vespucius who had
gone with his uncle on most if not all his voyages, - can we for a moment
suppose that he did not know all that had been going on among these people
since his boyhood?  Of course he understood what voyages had been made and
where, and interpreted them according to the best light of an age in which he
was one of the foremost geographers.  His annotations show him to have been
eminently clear-headed, accurate, and precise.  It would be impossible to
find a contemporary witness more intelligent or more certain to utter a sharp
and ringing protest against any attempt to glorify Americus at the expense of
his father.  Yet against Waldseemuller's suggestion Ferdinand Columbus uttered
no protest.  He saw nothing strange in the statement that it was Americus who
discovered the Quarta Pars, or in the suggestion that it should bear his name.
Under the circumstances there is but one possible explanation of this.  It
proves that Ferdinand shared Waldseemuller's opinion, and that to the former
as to the latter this Fourth Part meant something very different from what we
mean when we speak of America or of the New World. ^1

[Footnote 1: Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, tom. ii. p. 370.]

[Footnote 1: See, for example, his refutation of Giustiniani's "thirteen lies"
in Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. ii.; and his attacks upon Martin Pinzon and
Oviedo, cap. x., xvi., xli.  As M. Harrisse observes, "Lorsqu'il rencontre sur
son chemin un rival de Christophe Colomb, ou un ecrivain dont le recit semble
devoir diminuer l'importance du navigateur genois devant la posterite, il le
vilipende sans pitie." Fernand Colomb, p. 141.]

[Footnote 1: M. Harrisse (in his Fernand Colomb, Paris, 1872, pp. 141-145)
uses the silence of the Vita dell' Ammiraglio, as an argument in support of
his crotchet that the book was not written by Ferdinand.  His argument suffers
severely from "bondage to the modern map." Referring to Waldseemuller, he
says: - "On declare d'abord que c'est Vespuce, et non Christophe Colomb [!!
the italicizing is mine: Waldseemuller says nothing of the sort], qui a
decouvert le Nouveau Monde; ensuite on promet de le prouver 'ut in sequentibus
audietur,' en publiant la relation de ses quatre voyages; enfin, pour l'en
recompenser, l'auteur propose de donner et donne en effet d'une maniere
indelebile a ces pays nouveaux le nom d'Amerique." It should be added that M.
Harrisse, while calling Waldseemuller's book "ce mechant petit livre, does
full justice to the integrity of Vespucius.  In the argument just cited the
reader will now be able to see that all its force is lost by its failure to
seize the historical perspective; it uses the phrase Nouveau Monde in its
nineteenth century sense.  As regards Ferdinand Columbus, its force is
destroyed by the fact that his silence extends to his copy of Waldseemuller's
book. But indeed Las Casas, as will presently be shown, expressly declares
that Ferdinand's book says nothing about the naming of America (Historia de
las Indias, tom. ii. p. 396). - Among other books belonging to Ferdinand, in
which the name America was adopted, or Vespucius mentioned as discoverer of
Mundus Novus, were Walter Lud's Speculum, the 1518 edition of Pomponius Mela,
the works of Johann Schoner, and the Cosmographicus Liber of Apianus
(Harrisse, op. cit. p. 144).  There is nothing to show that anything in them
disturbed him.]

     What that Fourth Part really meant I believe I have now sufficiently
explained.  It is again defined for us most clearly and explicitly in the
revised edition of Waldseemuller's Ptolemy published at Strasburg in 1522,
three years after his death.  This edition was completed by Lorenz Fries, and
is usually known by his name.  It uses the three names America, Mundus Novus,
and Quarta Pars as synonymous and interchangeable; and in its map
corresponding to the Tabula Terre Nove, but variously amended, it substitutes
America for Terra Incognita about where the name Brazil would come on a modern
map; while at the same time in the Venezuelan region it repeats the
inscription stating that this coast and the neighbouring islands were
discovered by Columbus.

     It is not be supposed that all map-makers at that day took just the same
view of this or of any other obscure subject.  Some thought the Mundus Novus
deserved its name because it was Ptolemy's unknown land beyond Cattigara, as
the Orontius globe proves; some because it was of indefinite extent and
reminded them of Mela's antipodal world, as we may gather from Ruysch's map;
^1 some simply because it was an enormous mass of land in an unexpected
quarter. ^2 When carefully placed, with strict reference to its origin, the
name Mundus Novus, or its alternative America, is always equivalent to Brazil;
but sometimes where the southern continent appears as a great island its
position is so commanding as to make it practically the name of that island.
This is the case with the earliest known map upon which the name America
appears.  This map was discovered about thirty years ago in Queen Victoria's
library at Windsor Castle, in a volume of MS. notes and drawings by Leonardo
da Vinci.  There is much reason for regarding the map as the work of Leonardo,
but this has been doubted. ^3 It represents the oceanic theory in its extreme
form and has some points of likeness to the Lenox globe.  The northern
continent is represented by the islands of Bacalar and Terra Florida, and the
latter name proves the date of the map to be subsequent to Ponce de Leon's
discovery on Easter Sunday, 1513.  Cipango, here spelled Zipugna, still hovers
in the neighbourhood.  The western coast of the southern continent is drawn at
random; and the antarctic land, the inevitable reminiscence of Ptolemy and
Mela, protrudes as far as the parallel of 60 Degrees S.

[Footnote 1: "Terra etiam nova ... a Vesputio nuper inventa, quam ob sui
magnitudinem Mundum novum appellant, ultra aequatorem plus 35 gradibus,
Vesputii observatione protendi cognita est, et necdum finis inventus." Alberto
Pighi Campense in 1520, apud Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. iv. p. 145.
Compare the inscriptions E and G on Ruysch's map.]

[Footnote 2: "Sic si ad austrum spectes, magna pars terrae nostra tempestate
explorata est, aut salte circumnavigata, quam Ptolemaeus ut incognitam
reliquit: ab Hispanis uero quum in orientem nauigio contendunt, obambulatur &
circuitur, ut paulo post diseremus.  Quin & in oceano occidentali fere nouus
orbis nostris teporibus ab Alberico Vesputio & Christophoro Columbo, multisque
aliis insignibus uiris inuentus est, qui non abs re quarta orbis pars
nuncupari potest, etiam terra non sit tripartita, sed quadripartita, quum hae
Indianae insulae sua magnitudine Europam excedant, presertim ea qua ab Americo
primo inuentore American uocat." Sebastian Munster, Tabulae cosmographicoe,
apud Grynaeus, Novus Orbis, Paris, 1832.]

[Footnote 3: The subject is elaborately discussed by Major, "Memoir on a
Mappemonde by Leonardo da Vinci, being the earliest Map hitherto known
containing the name of America," Archaeologia, London, 1866, vol. xl. pp.
1-40.  The sketch here given is reduced from Winsor (ii. 126), who takes it
from Wieser's Magalhaes-Strasse.]

     In 1515 Johann Schoner, professor of mathematics at Nuremberg, made a
globe upon which America is drawn very much as upon Leonardo's map, with an
inscription stating that the western coast is unknown; corresponding to
Mexico, is "Parias" in the true position of Vespucius's Lariab, and this is
joined to the Florida (with no name) taken from Cantino and ending with a
scroll, as in Ruysch, saying that what is beyond is unknown.  Leonardo's
antarctic land here comes up so as almost to touch America, and it bears the
name "Brazilie Regio," reminding us of Orontius.

     In 1520 Schoner made a second globe, which is still preserved at
Nuremberg.  Her the unnamed Florida has taken the name "Terra de Cuba," though
both globes also give the island.  "Paria" still denotes Mexico, while "Terra
Parius" appears for the true Paria on the Pearl Coast. America is expressly
identified with the land discovered by Cabral; the legend between latitudes 10
Degrees and 20 Degrees S. is "America or Brasilia or Land of Paroquetes." The
antarctic land has here become "Brasilia Inferior." ^1

[Footnote 1: Sketches of these two Schoner globes are given in Winsor, Narr.
and Crit. Hist., ii. 118, 119.]

     On the important map made by Baptista Agnese at Venice in 1536, the name
America does not appear, but Mundus Novus and Brazil are placed close together
and south of the equator.  And on the map made by Sebastian Munster for the
1540 Ptolemy, we read, a little below the equator, "Novus Orbis, the Atlantic
island which they call Brazil and America." Below, to the west of the river La
Plata, we read "Die Nuw Welt." These are some of the examples which show that
it was an essential part of the conception of the "New World," in the minds of
the men who first used the expression, that it was a world lying south of the
equator.  The opposition between Old World and New World was not, as now,
between the eastern and western hemispheres; the opposition was between the
northern hemisphere and the southern; and as Columbus had not crossed the
equator in the course of his four voyages, he had never entered or seen what
Waldseemuller and geographers generally during the first half of the sixteenth
century called the New World.

     But the course of time and the progress of discovery wrought queer
changes in men's conception of Mundus Novus and in the application of the name
America.  It was not very difficult for such a euphonious name to supplant its
unwieldy synonyms, Land of Paroquets and Land of the Holy Cross.  Nor did it
require much extension for it to cover the whole southern continent soon after
the idea of that continent as an integral whole distinct from other wholes had
once been conceived.  The names of Paria and the Pearl Coast, Venezuela and
Darien have remained upon the map to this day; but Terra Firma, the cumbrous
name which covered the four, was easily swallowed up by America.  Thus the
name of the Florentine navigator came to be synonymous with what we call South
America; and this wider meaning became all the more firmly established as its
narrower meaning was usurped by the name Brazil.  Three centuries before the
time of Columbus the red dye-wood called brazil-wood was an article of
commerce, under that same name, in Italy and Spain. ^1 It was one of the
valuable things that were brought from the East, and when the Portuguese found
the same dye-wood abundant in those tropical forests that had seemed so
beautiful to Vespucius, the name Brazil soon became fastened upon the country
^2 and helped to set free the name America from its local associations.

[Footnote 1: Muratori, Antichita italiane, tom. ii. pp. 894-899; Capmany,
Memorias sobre la antigua marina de Barcelona, tom. ii. pp. 4, 17, 20;
Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. 216-225.  The name of the fabulous island
Brazil or Bresylle in the ocean west of Ireland seems to be a case of
accidental resemblance.  It is probably the Gaelic name of an island in Irish
folk-lore.  See Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 50.]

[Footnote 2: The Portuguese historian Barros declares that the substitution of
such a name as Brazil for such a name as Holy Cross must have been the work of
some demon, for of what account is this miserable wood that dyes cloth red as
compared with the blood shed for our eternal salvation! - "Porem como o
demonio per o final da Cruz perdeo o dominio que tinha sobre nos, mediante a
Paixao de Christo Jesus consummada nella; tanto que daquella terra comecou de
vir o pao vermelho chamado Brazil, trabalhou que este nome ficasse na boca do
povo, e que se perdesse o de Saneta Cruz, como que importava mais o nome de
hum pao que tinge pannos, que daquelle pao que deo tintura a todolos
Sacramentos per que somos salvos, por o sangue de Christo Jesus, que nelle foi
derramado," etc. Barros, Decadas da Asia, Lisbon, 1778, tom. i. p. 391.]