The map is explained by the following key: 1. Asia. 2. India. 3. Ganges. 4. Java major. 5. Cimpangi [Japan]. 6. Isola verde [Greenland?]. 7. Cuba. 8. Iamaiqua. 9. Spagnola. 10. Monde nuova [South America].
The map is of interest as the sole instance in which North America is called a part of Africa, on the supposition that a continental connection by the south enclosed the “sea toward the sunset.” The insular Yucatan will be observed in the annexed sketch, and what seems to be a misshapen Cuba. The land at the east seems intended for Baccalaos, judging from the latitude and the indication of fir-trees upon it. This map is one of twelve engraved sheets constituting the above-named work, which was published by Johannes Grieninger in 1530. Friess, or Frisius, who was a German mathematician, and had, as we have seen, taken part in the 1522 Ptolemy, says that he drew his information in these maps from original sources; but he does not name these sources, and Dr. Kohl thinks the maps indicate the work of Waldseemüller.
Among the last of the school of geographers who supposed North America to be an archipelago, was Pierro Coppo, who published at Venice in 1528 what has become a very rare Portolano delli lochi maritimi ed isole der mar.[447]
CHAPTER II.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI.
BY SYDNEY HOWARD GAY
AMERIGO VESPUCCI,[448] the third son of Nastugio Vespucci, a notary of Florence, and his wife Lisabetta Mini, was born on the 9th of March, 1451. The family had the respectability of wealth, acquired in trade, for one member of it in the preceding century was rich enough to endow a public hospital. Over the portal of the house, so dedicated to charity by this pious Vespucci nearly three quarters of a century before Amerigo was born, there was, says Humboldt, engraved in 1719, more than three hundred years after the founding of the hospital, an inscription declaring that here Amerigo had lived in his youth. As the monks, however, who wrote the inscription also asserted in it that he was the discoverer of America, it is quite possible that they may have been as credulous in the one case as in the other, and have accepted for fact that which was only tradition. But whether Amerigo’s father, Nastugio, lived or did not live in the hospital which his father or grandfather founded, he evidently maintained the respectability of the family. Three of his sons he sent to be educated at the University of Pisa. Thenceforth they are no more heard of, except that one of them, Jerome, afterward went to Palestine, where he remained nine years, met with many losses, and endured much suffering,—all of which he related in a letter to his younger brother Amerigo. But the memory even of this Jerome—that he should have ever gone anywhere, or had any adventures worth the telling—is only preserved from oblivion because he had this brother who became the famous navigator, and whose name by a chance was given to half the globe.