Congress of pilots at Seville.
It was in the midst of these developments, both of the practical parts of seamanship and of the progress of oceanic discovery, that in 1526 there was held at Seville a convention of pilots and cosmographers, called by royal order, to consolidate and correlate all the cartographical data which had accumulated up to that time respecting the new discoveries.
Ferdinand Columbus.
Ferdinand Columbus was at this time in Seville, engaged in completing a house and library for himself, and in planting the park about them with trees brought from the New World, a single one of which, a West Indian sapodilla, was still standing in 1871. It was in this house that the convention sat, and Ferdinand Columbus presided over it, while the examinations of the pilots were conducted by Diego Ribero and Alonso de Chaves.
HOUSE AND LIBRARY OF FERDINAND COLUMBUS.
1527-29. Maps.
There have come down to us two monumental maps, the outgrowth of this convention. One of these is dated at Seville, in 1527, purporting to be the work of the royal cosmographer, and has been usually known by the name of Ferdinand Columbus; and the other, dated 1529, is known to have been made by Diego Ribero, also a royal cosmographer. These maps closely resemble each other.