[593] See chapter on Magellan.
[594] Helps, however, cannot trace him at work upon it before 1552, and he had not finished it in 1561; and for three centuries yet to come it was to remain in manuscript.
[595] Book i. cap. 140.
[596] Harrisse (Fernand Colomb, p. 30), says: “The absence of nautical charts and planispheres, not only in the Colombina, but in all the muniment offices of Spain, is a signal disappointment. There is one chart which above all we need,—made by Vespucius, and which, in 1518, was in the collection of the Infanta Ferdinand, brother of Charles V.” A copy of Valsequa’s chart of 1439 which belonged to Vespucius, being marked “Questa ampla pelle di geographia fù pagata da Amerigo Vespucci cxxx ducati di oro di marco,” was, according to Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet. Add., p. xxiii), in existence in Majorca as late as 1838.
[597] The letters AM appear upon the representation of the New World contained in it.
[598] Cf. on Gemma Frisius’ additions to Apianus’ Cosmographia, published in Spanish from the Latin in 1548, what Navarrete says in his Opúsculos, ii. 76.
[599] Antwerp, 1544, cap. xxx. “America ab inventore Amerio [sic] Vesputio nomen habet;” Antwerp, 1548, adds “alii Bresiliam vocât;” Paris, 1548, cap. xxx., “de America,” and cap. xxxi. “de insulis apud Americam;” Paris, 1556, etc. Cf. Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., nos. 156, 252, 279; Additions, nos. 92, 168.
[600] “Quam ab Americo primo inventore Americam vocant.”
[601] “Insularum America cognominata obtenditur.”
[602] Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (which it will he remembered was an island on which Vespucius is represented as leaving one of his companions), as published in the 1551 edition at London, speaks of the general repute of Vespucius’ account,—“Those iiii voyages that be nowe in printe and abrode in euery mannes handes.” Cf. Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. i. no. 162. William Cuningham, in his Cosmographical Glasse (London, 1559), ignores Columbus, and gives Vespucius the credit of finding “America” in June, 1497 (Ibid., no. 228).