It is a striking instance of careless contemporary observation, which the student of this early cartography has often to confront, that while Reisch, in his popular cyclopædia of the Margarita Philosophica which he published first in 1503, gave not the slightest intimation of the discoveries of Columbus, he did not much improve matters in 1515, when he ignored the discoveries of Balboa, and reproduced in the main the so-called "Admiral's map" of the Ptolemy of 1513. It is to be observed, however, that Reisch was in this reproduced map of 1515 the first of map makers to offer in the word "Prisilia" on the coast of Vespucius the prototype of the modern Brazil. It will be remembered that Cabral had supposed it an island, and had named it the Isla de Santa Cruz. The change of name induced a pious Portuguese to believe it an instigation of the devil to supplant the remembrance of the holy and sacred wood of the great martyr by the worldly wood, which was commonly used to give a red color to cloth!
Theories of seamanship.
In 1519, in the Suma de Geographia of Fernandez d'Enciso, published later at Seville, in 1530, we have the experience of one of Ojeda's companions in 1509. This little folio, now a scarce book, is of interest as first formulating for practical use some of the new theories of seamanship as developed under the long voyages at this time becoming common. It has also a marked interest as being the earliest book of the Spanish press which had given consideration at any length to the new possessions of Spain.
1522. Frisius.
We again find a similar indisposition to keep abreast of discovery, so perplexing to later scholars, in the new-cast edition of Ptolemy in 1522, which contains the well-known map of Laurentius Frisius. It is called by Nordenskiöld, in subjecting it to analysis in his Facsimile Atlas, "an original work, but bad beyond all criticism, as well from a geographical as from a xylographical point of view." One sees, indeed, in the maps of this edition, no knowledge of the increase of geographical knowledge during later years. We observe, too, that they go back to Behaim's interpretation of Marco Polo's India, for the eastern shores of Asia. The publisher, Thomas Ancuparius, seems never to have heard of Columbus, or at least fails to mention him, while he awards the discovery of the New World to Vespucius. The maps, reduced in the main from those of the edition of 1513, were repeated in those of 1525, 1535, and 1541, without change and from the same blocks.
SCHÖNER.
The results of the voyage of Magellan and Del Cano promptly attained a more authentic record than usually fell to the lot of these early ocean experiences.
1523. Magellan's voyage described.