THE WORLD OF POMPONIUS MELA.
[From Bunbury's Ancient Geography.]
Asiatic connection of North America.
We could hardly expect, indeed, to find in these maps of the Ptolemy of 1513 the results of Balboa's discovery at the isthmus; but that the maps were left to do service in the edition of 1520 indicates that the discovery of the South Sea had by no means unsettled the public mind as to the Asiatic connection of the regions both north and south of the Antilles. Within the next few years several maps indicate the enduring strength of this conviction. A Portuguese portolano of 1516-20, in the Royal Library at Munich, shows Moslem flags on the coasts of Venezuela and Nicaragua. A map of Ayllon's discoveries on the Atlantic coast in 1520, preserved in the British Museum, has a Chinaman and an elephant delineated on the empty spaces of the continent. Still, geographical opinions had become divided, and the independent continental masses of Stobnicza were having some ready advocates.
VADIANUS.
APIANUS.
[From Reusner's Icones.]
Vienna geographers.
Pomponius Mela.