[8] I might mention here an interesting map composed by the English merchant, Robert Thorne, while residing in Seville in Spain, in 1527, and sent, with a long discourse on cosmography, to Dr. Ley, English ambassador to Charles V. The map is very rude, and was first published with the discourse by Hakluyt in his little quarto in 1582. Along the line of the coast of Labrador is a Latin inscription of which the following is the English reading: “This land was first discovered by the English.” Thorne was very urgent—as well in his letter to Dr. Ley as in a letter to the king, Henry VIII., also published by Hakluyt—that the English should engage in those maritime discoveries to the west which the Spaniards and the Portuguese were monopolizing.
[9] In Ziegler’s original work he begins this sentence thus: “Petrus Martyr mediolanensis in hispanicis navigationibus scribit, Antoninum quendam Cabotum solventem a Britannia,” etc. This clerical or typographical error as to Cabot’s Christian name probably arose from a misreading of Martyr’s language in Dec. iii. lib. 6: “Scrutatus est eas Sebastianus quidam Cabotus.” Eden did not hesitate to substitute Sebastian for Anthony. As a mystification concerning the name Antoninum (or Anthony) Cabot, I will add that Mr. Brevoort has called my attention to the following entry in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII., vol. i. pt. 1, p. 939, doc. 5639, Nov. 27, 1514: “Patent denization to Anthony Chabo, surgeon, native of Savoy,” with another entry showing that in 1512 an annuity of twenty pounds was granted to him; and Mr. Brevoort asks the question if Anthony could have been another son of Jean Cabot, arriving in England later; and also whether the Cabots might not have come originally from Savoy? [Ziegler’s title reads: Syria, Palestina, Arabia, Ægyptus, Schondia, Holmia,—the section on Schondia, as he calls the north, takes folios 85-138; and the last of the eight maps in the book is of Schondia. See Harrisse’s Biblio. Amer. Vetus, no. 170; F. Muller’s Catalogue, 1877, no. 3595. The Schondia section was reprinted in Krantzius’s Regnorum Aquilonarium, etc., Frankfort, 1583. F. Muller’s Catalogue, 1872, no. 844.—Ed.]
[10] [It is also so drawn in Ruscelli’s map of 1544.—Ed.]
[11] Ziegler’s book is rare and curious; he was a geographer of great repute. Such books often serve to perpetuate references to more important works, and to show the erroneous geographical opinions of the period. A second edition, under a different title, was published at the same place in 1536. See Harrisse’s Biblio. Amer. Vetus, pp. 290, 291, 350, and the Carter-Brown Catalogue, pp. 106, 120, where will be found a notice of Ziegler. Biddle, p. 31.
[12] Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. 110.
[13] See Année Véritable de la Naissance de Christophe Colomb, p. 10, n. 8.
[14] See also Relationi del S. Pietro Martira Milanese, Della cose notabili della provincia dell’ Egitto, etc., by Carlo Passi, Venetia, 1564.
[15] In a recent letter from Mr. J. Carson Brevoort, the distinguished bibliographer and historical scholar, of Brooklyn, N. Y.,—who has kindly communicated for my use his abundant materials relating to the Cabots, and has laid me under great obligations for aid in preparing this paper,—he says he has been collating the first part of the Summario of 1534 with the Latin Decades of Peter Martyr, and he finds them to differ in a way that no mere translator would have ventured to effect; that in one instance two books of the Decades are condensed into a few lines, and the whole worked over as an author only could do it. The Italian Summary closes at the end of the ninth book of the third Decade. He thinks that Ramusio, with the edition of 1516 before him, would not have omitted the tenth book. Mr. Brevoort therefore is led to believe that Martyr himself rewrote in 1515, in Italian, the three Decades (the last book not having yet been written) and sent the MS. to a friend in Italy, where it slumbered until 1534, when it fell into the hands of Ramusio, who committed it to the press. This is a curious question in bibliography.
It should be added here that the statements of Martyr included in the Latin Decades of 1516 (afterward published in the entire work of 1530) are so often referred to by the author, in the course of his correspondence, that we are bound to accept that edition as the genuine work. It was published during his lifetime, and received his imprimatur.
[16] The figures of men and animals on the map are colored. I have recently received from my friend M. Letort, of the National Library in Paris, a more particular description of the legends of this map than has hitherto been published.