[84] Not long from the time of his first voyage the Orbis breviarium of Lilius, which later passed through other editions and translations, summarized the references of the ancients (Stevens, Bibl. Geog. no. 1,670). But Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 180, holds that the earliest instance of the new found islands being declared the parts known to the ancients, and referred to by Virgil in the 6th book of the Æneid,—
“Jacet extra sidera tellus,” etc.,
is in the Geographia of Henricus Glareanus, published at Basle in 1527. Cf. also Gravier, Les Normands sur la route des Indes, Rouen, 1880, p. 24; Harrisse, Bibl. Am. Vet. 262. Mr. Murphy, in placing the 1472 edition of Strabo’s De Situ orbis in his American collection, pointed to the belief of this ancient geographer in the existence of the American continent as a habitable part of the globe, as shown when he says: “Nisi Atlantici maris obstaret magnitudo, posse nos navigare per eundem parallelum ex Hispania in Indiam, etc.” Cf. further, Charles Sumner’s Prophetic Voices concerning America; also in his Works; Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 68, 122; Baldwin’s Prehistoric Nations, 399; Fontaine’s How the World was peopled, p. 139; Las Casas, Historia general; Sherer, Researches touching the New World, 1777; Recherches sur la géographie des anciens, Paris, 1797-1813; Memoirs of the Lisbon Academy, v. 101; Paul Gaffarel, L’Amérique avant Colomb, and his “Les Grecs et les Romains, ont ils connu l’Amérique?” in the Revue de Géographie (1881), ix. 241, etc.; Ferdinand Columbus’ life of his father, and Humboldt’s examination of his views in his Examen critique; Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Introduction to his Popul-Vuh.
Glareanus, above referred to, was one of the most popular of the condensed cosmographical works of the time; and it gave but the briefest reference to the New World, “de regionibus extra Ptolemæum.” Its author was under thirty when he published his first edition in 1527 at Basle. There is a copy in the Carter-Brown Library (Catalogue, i. 90). Cf. also Bibl. Amer. Vet., 142; Huth, ii. 602; Weigel, 1877, p. 82, priced at 18 marks. It was reprinted at Basle, the next year, 1528 (Trömel, 3), and again in 1529. (Bibl. Amer. Vet., 143, 147.) Another edition was printed at Freiburg (Brisgau) in 1530, of which there are copies in Harvard College and Carter-Brown (Catalogue, no. 95) libraries. (Cf. Bibl. Amer. Vet., 147; Muller, 1877, no. 1,232.) There were other Freiburg imprints in 1533, 1536, 1539, 1543, and 1551. (Bibl. Amer. Vet., 183, 212, 248; Additions, 121; Carter-Brown, i. 160; White Kennett, p. 12; Trömel, no. 12; Murphy, 1049.) There were Venice imprints in 1534, 1537, 1538, 1539, and 1544. (Bibl. Amer. Vet., 225, 228, 259; Additions, 120; Lancetti, Buchersaal, i. 79.) An edition of Venice, without date, is assigned to 1549. (Catalogue of the Sumner Collection in Harvard College Library.) Editions were issued at Paris in 1542, with a folded map, “Typus cosmographicus universalis,” in 1550 (Court, 144), and in 1572, the last repeating the map. (Bibl. Amer. Vet., 139.) The text of all these editions is in Latin. Sabin, vol. vii. no. 27,536, etc., enumerates most of the editions.
[85] Such as Plato’s in his Critias and Timæus, and Aristotle’s in his De Mundo, cap. iii., etc.
[86] Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima; Additions, no. 36.
[87] Bernaldez tells us that Columbus was a reader of Ptolemy and of John de Mandeville. Cf. on the spreading of Ptolemy’s views at this time Lelewel, Géographie du moyen âge, ii. p. 122; Thomassy, Les papes géographes, pp. 15, 34. There are copies of the 1475 edition of Ptolemy in the Library of Congress and the Carter-Brown Library (cf. also Murphy Catalogue, no. 2,044); of the 1478 edition, the only copy in this country, so far as known, is the one in the Carter-Brown Library, added to that collection since its catalogue was printed. The Perkins copy in 1873 brought £80 (cf. Livres payés en vente publique 1,000 francs, etc., p. 137). It was the first edition with maps. Lelewel (vol. ii. p. 124) had traced the influence of the Agathodæmon (Ptolemean) maps on the cartography of the Middle Ages. The maps representing the growth of geographical ideas anterior to Columbus will be examined in another place. The Ulm edition of Ptolemy, 1482, showed in its map of the world a part of what is now called America in representing Greenland; but it gave it a distinct relation to Europe, by making Greenland a peninsula of the Scandinavian north. There seems reason to believe that this map was made in 1471, and it passes for the earliest engraved map to show that northern region,—“Engrone-land,” as it is called. If we reject the Zeno map with its alleged date of 1400 or thereabout (published long after Columbus, in 1558), the oldest known delineations of Greenland (which there is no evidence that Columbus ever saw, and from which if he had seen them, he could have inferred nothing to advantage) are a Genoese manuscript map in the Pitti palace, which Santarem (Histoire de la Cartographie, vol. iii. p. xix) dates 1417, but which seems instead to be properly credited to 1447, the peninsula here being “Grinlandia” (cf. Lelewel, Epilogue, p. 167; Magazine of American History, April, 1883, p. 290); and the map of Claudius Clavus, assigned to 1427, which belongs to a manuscript of Ptolemy, preserved in the library at Nancy. This, with the Zeno map and that in the Ptolemy of 1482, is given in Trois cartes précolombiennes représentant Groenland, fac-simile présentés au Congrès des Américanistes à Copenhague; par A. E. Nordenskiöld, Stockholm, 1883. In the Laon globe (1486-1487) “Grolandia” is put down as an island off the Norway coast. There is a copy of this 1482 edition of Ptolemy in the Carter-Brown Library, and another is noted in the Murphy Catalogue, no. 2,046. Its maps were repeated in the 1486 edition, also published at Ulm; and of this there was a copy in the Murphy Collection (no. 2,047,—bought by President White, of Cornell); and another belongs to the late G. W. Riggs, of Washington. In 1490 the Roman edition of 1478 was reproduced with the same maps; and of this there is a copy in the Carter-Brown Library; and another is shown in the Murphy Catalogue (no. 2,048). A splendidly illuminated copy of this edition sold in the Sunderland sale (part v. no. 13,770) has since been held by Quaritch at £600. See further on these early editions of Ptolemy in Winsor’s Bibliography of Ptolemy’s Geography, published by Harvard University.
[88] Gravier, Les Normands sur la route des Indes, Rouen, 1880, p. 37.
[89] Humboldt, Cosmos (Eng. ed.), ii. 619. The Speculum naturale of Vincenzius (1250) is an encyclopædic treatise, closely allied with other treatises of that time, like the De rerum natura of Cantipratensis (1230), and the later work of Meygenberg (1349).
[90] Humboldt, Examen Critique, i. 61, 65, 70; ii. 349. Columbus quoted this passage in October, 1498, in his letter from Santo Domingo to the Spanish monarch. Margry, Navigations Françaises, Paris, 1867, p. 71, “Les deux Indes du XVe siècle et l’influence Française sur Colomb,” has sought to reflect credit on his country by tracing the influence of the Imago mundi in the discovery of the New World; but the borrowing from Bacon destroys his case. (Major, Select Letters of Columbus, p. xlvii; Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 84.) If Margry’s claim is correct, that there was an edition of the Imago mundi printed at Nuremberg in 1472, it would carry it back of the beginning of Columbus’s advocacy of his views; but bibliographers find no edition earlier than 1480 or 1483, and most place this editio princeps ten years later as Humboldt does. It is generally agreed that the book was written in 1410. A copy of this first edition, of whatever date, is preserved in the Colombina Library in Seville; and it was the copy used by Columbus and Las Casas. Its margins are annotated, and the notes, which are by most thought to be in the hand of Columbus, have been published by Varnhagen in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, January, 1858, p. 71, and by Peschel in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 112,—who, however, ascribes the notes to Bartholomew Columbus. A fac-simile of part of them is given on p. 31. Cf. Major, Prince Henry, p. 349; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 3; Murphy catalogue, no. 27, bought by Cornell Univ. and Dinaux, Cardinal P. d’Ailly, Cambray, 1824.