PETER MARTYR, PTOLEMY, AND MUNSTER.
Peter Martyr, De Orbe novo, Cõpluti, 1530, is the first complete edition of eight decades; and Opus Epistolarum, of the same date and place, is a collection of over eight hundred letters written between 1488 and 1525, many of them relating more or less to American affairs.
In the Ptolemy of 1530, in several subsequent editions, and in Munster's Cosmography of 1572 et seq., is the map of which the following is a reduction.
The New World, from Ptolemy, 1530.
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I give this drawing, circulated for many years in standard works, to illustrate how extremely slow were cosmographers to form anything like a correct idea of American geography, and how little they availed themselves of the more correct knowledge shown on official charts. The following map, made in 1544, illustrates still further the absurdities circulated for many years under the name of geography. Scores of additional examples might be given.
