This account was scant; and though it was a little enlarged in the second edition in 1545,[176] it remained of small extent through subsequent editions, and was confined to ten pages in that of 1614. The last of the German editions appeared in 1628.[177] The earliest undoubted Latin text[178] appeared at Basle in 1550, with the same series of new views, etc., by Manuel Deutsch, which were given in the German edition of that date.[179] With nothing but a change of title apparently, there were reissues of this edition in 1551, 1552, and 1554,[180] and again in 1559.[181] The edition of 1572 has the same map, “Novæ insulæ,” used in the 1554 editions; but new names are added, and new plates of Cusco and Cuba are also furnished.[182]
MÜNSTER.
Fac-simile of a cut in Reusner’s Icones (Strasburg, 1590), p. 171.
The earliest French edition, according to Brunet,[183] appeared in 1552; and other editions followed in that language.[184] Eden gave the fifth book an English dress in 1553, which was again issued in 1572 and 1574.[185] A Bohemian edition, made by Jan z Puchowa, Kozmograffia Czieská, was issued in 1554.[186] The first Italian edition was printed at Basle in 1558, using the engraved plates of the other Basle issues; and finally, in 1575, an Italian edition, according to Brunet,[187] appeared at Colonia.
MONARDES.
The best-known collection of voyages of the sixteenth century is that of Ramusio, whose third volume—compiled probably in 1553, and printed in 1556—is given exclusively to American voyages.[188] It contains, however, little regarding Columbus not given by Peter Martyr and Oviedo, except the letter to Fracastoro.[189] In Ramusio the narratives of these early voyages first got a careful and considerate editor, who at this time was ripe in knowledge and experience, for he was well beyond sixty,[190] and he had given his maturer years to historical and geographical study. He had at one time maintained a school for topographical studies in his own house. Oviedo tells us of the assistance Ramusio was to him in his work. Locke has praised his labors without stint.[191]
Monardes, one of the distinguished Spanish physicians of this time, was busy seeking for the simples and curatives of the New World plants, as the adventurers to New Spain brought them back. The original issue of his work was the Dos Libros, published at Seville in 1565, treating “of all things brought from our West Indies which are used in medicine, and of the Bezaar Stone, and the herb Escuerçonera.” This book is become rare, and is priced as high as 200 francs and £9.[192] The “segunda parte” is sometimes found separately with the date 1571; but in 1574 a third part was printed with the other two,—making the complete work, Historia medicinal de nuestras Indias,—and these were again issued in 1580.[193] An Italian version, by Annibale Briganti, appeared at Venice in 1575 and 1589,[194] and a French, with Du Jardin, in 1602.[195] There were three English editions printed under the title of Joyfull Newes out of the newe founde world, wherein is declared the rare and singular virtues of diverse and sundry Herbes, Trees, Oyles, Plantes, and Stones, by Doctor Monardus of Sevill, Englished by John Frampton, which first appeared in 1577, and was reprinted in 1580, with additions from Monardes’ other tracts, and again in 1596.[196]
The Spanish historians of affairs in Mexico, Peru, and Florida are grouped in the Hispanicarum rerum scriptores, published at Frankfort in 1579-1581, in three volumes.[197] Of Richard Hakluyt and his several collections,—the Divers Voyages of 1582, the Principall Navigations of 1589, and his enlarged edition, of which the third volume (1600) relates to America,—there is an account in Vol. III. of the present work.[198]