[Footnote 203: Crit. Exam, vol iv. pp. 140-142. Letters of the Benedictine Trithemius, Aug. 12th, 1507. Humboldt shows that this letter is often dated incorrectly 1510. Trithemius makes Vespucius a Spaniard.]
In 1509, the same year when the second edition of Hylacomylus appeared, an anonymous opvscule, another product of John Grieninger's active press, called, "Globus mundi declaratio, sive descriptio mundi et totius orbis terrarum," sanctions the proposition of the scholar of Saint-Dié. This is the first geographical treatise in which the name of America takes undisputed possession as the designation of the New World. The phraseology in which it is couched is fantastic, and, independently of its significance, merits a moment's attention.
"Doctors," saith the cosmography "compare our earth to the human frame as possessing all the parts contained in a body. First, the flesh is the earth itself; blood corresponds to water, bones to stones, veins to mountains. The head is the East, or Asia; the feet are the West and America lately discovered. Africa is the right arm, and our own continent of Europe the left."
Science in her first essays was sometimes satisfied with very naive puerilities, and young America was received under strange auspices. But at that time, perhaps, this was an advantage. The author of the Globus shows himself more rational while undertaking to demonstrate clearly, even to persons of small education, the existence of antipodes whose feet are opposed ours; and the possibility of life in any portion of the globe, because the sun shines upon all parts of the earth—problems that disturbed many minds.
Nevertheless, great as is his admiration for Americus Vespucius, and for "the fourth part of the world by him discovered, that island larger than Europe whose shores develop westward with relation to Europe and Africa," the geographer of Strasburg does not inscribe the name of America on his map. He is content with the appellation of the New World. [Footnote 204] Pierre Apier, in 1520, was the first to enroll the name of America on a map of the world added to an edition of Solinus. [Footnote 205]
[Footnote 204: Newe Welt. The indications on this map of the Globus are in German.]
[Footnote 205: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 255; vol. v. pp. 174, 188.]
Then comes the author who, adding practice to precept, should have anticipated others—we mean Hylacomylus.
His ambition, like that of every cosmographer, was to re-edit the mathematician of Alexandria. The magnificent bounty of René II. furnished the funds for the preparatory labors and provided for the engraving of maps. But death interrupted the work in 1508 by snatching away its noble patron. [Footnote 206]