Geographically ignorant of the longitude of the discovered part of North America, then called the New Land (Terra Nova), Ruysch represents it as if it were a part of the eastern coast of Asia, between the two hundred and eightieth and the three hundredth meridians. Better informed respecting its latitude, he delineates it as extending from the forty-fifth to the fifty-fifth parallel of north latitude.[288] Immediately north of the New Land is the Greenland Sea (Sinus Grvenlantevs), and beyond it, Greenland (Grvenlant), discovered by the Northmen. South of the New Land, between the fortieth and twenty-fifth parallels is the unnamed and falsely represented island of Cuba, on the west side of which is a scroll bearing the information: “As far as this the ships of Ferdinand, king of Spain, have come.” South of this island and that of Española (Spagnola) is the discovered part of South America, then denominated the Land of the Holy Cross or the New World (Terra Sancti Crucis sive Mundus Novus). The inscription on the represented territory embraces the following information: “At different places this region is inhabited, and it is supposed by many to be another world. Women and men appear either entirely naked or clad with interwoven leaves and the feathers of birds of various colors. They live together in common without any religion or king. They are continually at war among themselves. They eat the human flesh of captives. They exercise so much in the salubrious air that they live more than one hundred and fifty years. They are rarely sick, and then they cure themselves solely with the roots of plants. Here lions are born, and serpents and other terrible monsters found in the forests. Very large quantities of pearls and gold are in the mountains and rivers. From here Brasil-wood, or verzini, and cassia are carried away by the Portuguese.” Below this inscription is another which contains the following statement: “Portuguese navigators have inspected this part of this land, and have sailed as far as the fiftieth degree of south latitude without seeing the southern limit of it.”
On the scroll on the western part of the delineated territory of South America this information is inscribed: “As far as this Spanish navigators have come, and they have called this land, on account of its greatness, the New World. Inasmuch as they have not wholly explored it nor surveyed it farther than the present termination, it must remain thus imperfectly delineated until it is known in what direction it extends.”
On the upper part of the right margin of the map the following fiction respecting the configuration of the earth at the north pole is inscribed. “It is said in the book concerning the fortunate discovery[289] that at the arctic pole there is a high magnetic rock, thirty-three German miles in circumference. A surging sea surrounds this rock, as if the water were discharged downward from a vase through an opening. Around it are islands, two of which are inhabited.”
North of Greenland is another inscription containing a popular fiction of the dangers besetting ships in the Arctic Ocean: “Here a surging sea begins; here the compasses of a ship do not hold, nor are ships which have iron about them able to turn about.” Among the perils of the Greenland Sea were the deceptions practised by the savages inhabiting the islands in it: “It is said that those who came formerly in ships among these islands for fish and other food were so deceived by the demons that they could not go on land without danger.”
The four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci had acquainted him with so many unknown peoples and places in the New World that he was induced by his own inclinations and the suggestions of his friends to write an account of the explorations of the different expeditions with which he had been sent by the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal. In his letter, dated in Lisbon, the fourth of September, 1504,[290] he speaks of the intended publication of his voyages in a volume in the style of a geography (un uolume in stilo geografia), and calls the composition (zibaldone), “Le Quattro Giornate” (The Four Journeys).
The earliest known work containing an account of Vespucci’s four voyages is entitled “Cosmographiae introductio” (Introduction to geography), printed in St. Dié, in Lorraine, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1507.[291] This rare Latin book was the work of a German scholar named Martin Waldseemüller, a professor of geography in the gymnasium in St. Dié,[292] who having translated his surname into Hylacomylus[293] affixed this Greek pseudonym to his writings. On the reverse page of the fifteenth leaf of Hylacomylus’s Introduction to geography is the notable suggestion that the land in the western hemisphere visited by Amerigo Vespucci should be called Amerige or America. The enthusiastic geographer, having described Europe, Asia, and Africa, remarks:
“And as now these parts have been more widely surveyed, and another fourth part has been found by Americus Vesputius (as will be perceived by what follows), I can not see why any one can justly forbid the calling of this part Amerige or America, that is, the land of Americus, from Americus, the discoverer, an intelligent man, as Europe and Asia have taken their names from women.”[294]
The name America in a short time became a popular designation for the continent in the western hemisphere.[295]
Although Vespucci repeatedly mentions in his letter that he held subordinate positions under the superior captains commanding the different fleets with which he had sailed to the New World, twenty-one years after his death he was unjustly accused by Johannes Schoner, in a little geographical work, as having contrived to have the continent called by his name.[296] Schoner’s imputation was evidently caused by a spirit of ill-will, for he attempted, it would seem, to lessen the importance of the discoveries made by Spain and Portugal, by placing on a globe, made by him in 1520, this inscription designating South America: “America vel Brasilia sive papagalli terra” (America or Brasil or the land of parrots).[297] Later still a number of writers in turn undertook to defame Vespucci by asserting that he did not make the voyage of 1497, and to support their arguments quoted the erroneous statements of the different versions of his letter. The assumptions of these writers, however, are not corroborated by the Italian text of Vespucci’s letter, in part presented on the preceding pages, nor are they verified by later researches in the archives of Spain and Portugal.[298]