[149] The original is now preserved at Venice, in the Biblioteca Marciana. A large photographic fac-simile of it was issued at Venice, in 1877, by Münster (Ongania); and engraved reproductions can be found in Santarem, Lelewel, and Saint-Martin, besides others in Vincent’s Commerce and Navigations of the Ancients, 1797 and 1807; and in Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1881. A copy on vellum, made in 1804, is in the British Museum.
[150] Cf. G. Gravier’s Recherches sur les navigations Européennes faites an moyen-âge, Paris, 1878.
[151] Navarrete, i. 304, ii. 280; Bandini’s Amerigo Vespucci, pp. 66, 83; Humboldt, Examen critique, i. 26, iv. 188, 233, 250, 261, v. 182-185; and his preface to Ghillany’s Behaim; Harrisse, Ferdinand Colomb, pp. 121-127; Major’s Prince Henry, p. 420; Stevens’s Notes, p. 372. When the natives of Cuba pointed to the interior of their island and said “Cubanacan,” Columbus interpreted it to mean “Kublai Khan;” and the Cuban name of Mangon became to his ear the Mangi of Sir John Mandeville.
[152] Dec. i. c. 8.
[153] Da Gama’s three voyages, translated from the narrative of Gaspar Correa, with other documents, was edited for the Hakluyt Society by H. E. J. Stanley, in 1869. Correa’s account was not printed till 1858, when the Lisbon Academy issued it. Cf. Navarrete, vol. i. p. xli; Ramusio, i. 130; Galvano, p.93; Major, Prince Henry, p. 391; Cladera, Investigaciones históricas; Saint-Martin, Histoire de la géographie, p. 337; Clarke, Progress of Maritime Discovery, p. 399; Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen pp. 109, 135, 188, 189; Lucas Rem’s Tagebuch, 1494-1542, Augsburg, 1861; Charton’s Voyageurs, iii. 209 (with references), etc.
“Portugal,” says Professor Seeley, “had almost reason to complain of the glorious intrusion of Columbus. She took the right way, and found the Indies; while he took the wrong way, and missed them.... If it be answered in Columbus’s behalf, that it is better to be wrong and find America, than to be right and find India, Portugal might answer that she did both,”—referring to Cabral’s discovery of Brazil (Expansion of England, p. 83).
[154] The Bull is printed in Navarrete, ii. 23, 28, 130; and in the app. of Oscar Peschel’s Die Theilung der Erde unter Papst Alexander VI. und Julius II., Leipsic, 1871. Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, gives the letter of May 17, 1493, which Alexander VI. sent with the Bulls to his nuncio at the court of Spain, found in the archives of the Frari at Venice. Cf. also Humboldt, Examen critique, iii. 52; Solorzano’s Política Indiana; Sabin’s Dictionary, vol. i. no. 745; and the illustrative documents in Andres Garcia de Céspedes’ Reg. de nav., Madrid, 1606.
[155] There is more or less confusion in the estimates made of the league of this time. D’Avezac, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, September and October, 1858, pp. 130-164, calls it 5,924 metres. Cf. also Fox, in the U. S. Coast Survey Report, 1880, p. 59; and H. H. Bancroft, Central America, i. 190.
[156] Cf. Humboldt, Examen critique, iii. 17, 44, 56, etc.
[157] Humboldt, Examen critique, iii. 54; Cosmos, v. 55. Columbus found this point of no-variation, Sept. 13, 1492. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, for a similar reason, St. Michael’s in the Azores was taken for the first meridian, but the no-variation then observable at that point has given place now to a declination of twenty-five degrees.