30

'

COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY AND

withdrawal may have caused the delay in the production of that really valuable work till 1513. When it did appear, it contained a map, entitled, "Tabula Terre Nove," by Hylacomylus, on which, strange to say, the name of America does not appear, but, on the contrary, there is inserted on the very continent of South America the following legend: "Hæc terra cum adjacentibus insulis inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex mandatis Regis Castilliæ." As far as we have been hitherto able to trace the motives and meaning of the suggestion of the name of America, it seems that this sentence stands in direct contradiction of the only basis on which the suggester could have pretended to give this honor to Vespucci.

But now, at length, we come to the mode of suggesting the name of America. In the "Cosmographiæ Introductio" of Hylacomylus, occur the following words: "And the fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus, may well be called Amerige, which is as much as to say, the land of Americus or America.”*

A few pages later, he says: "But now these parts are more extensively explored, and, as will be seen in the following letters, another fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vesputius, which I see nojust reason why any one should forbid to be named Amerige, which is as much as to say, the land of Americus or America, from its discoverer Americus, who is a man of shrewd intellect; for Europe and Asia have both of them taken a feminine form of name from the names of women."+

In September, of the same year, appeared a re-issue, at St. Dié, of this same book, and, in 1509, a new edition of it was issued from the printing press of Johann Grüninger, of Strasburg. Now, in this very same year, 1509, the name of America, thus proposed two years before, appears as if it were already accepted as a well-known denomination in an anonymous work, entitled "Globus Mundi," printed also at Strasburg in that year. This was three years before the death of Vespucci. But, although the work is anonymous, the colophon has supplied me with the means of associating the adopter of the suggestion with the suggester himself. The colophon runs thus: "Ex Argentina ultima Augusti, 1509. J. Grüniger [sic] imprimebat, Adelpho Castigatore." Now, this Adelphus was a physician, a native of Mühlingen, near Strasburg, who afterwards established himself in the latter city. But the just-mentioned re-issue in 1509, of the "Cosmographiæ Introductio," containing the suggestion of the name of America, appeared from the press of this same Johann Grüninger, with the following words in the

* "Et quarta orbis pars quam quia Americus invenit, Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sive Americam nuncupare licet."

"Nunc vero et hæc partes sunt latius lustratæ, et alia quarta pars per Americum Vesputium, ut in sequentibus audietur, inventa est, quam non video cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore, sagacis ingenii viro, Amerigen quasi Americi terram sive Americam dicendam, cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint nomina. Ejus situm et gentium mores et bis binis Americi navigationibus quæ sequunter liquide intelligi dant."

colophon: "Johanne Adelpho Mulicho, Argentinensi, Castigatore. Mulicho simply means native of Mühlingen. The coincidence clearly brings the suggester and the adopter of the suggestion into remarkably close proximity.

The first place in which we find the name of America, used a little further a-field, is in a letter dated Vienna, 1512, from Joachim Vadianus to Rudolphus Agricola, and inserted in the Pomponius Mela of 1518, edited by the former. The expression used is "America discovered by Vesputius."* But although this Vadianus, whose real name was Joachim Watt, writes from Vienna in 1512, I find that he was a native of St. Gall, whence, in 1508, being then twenty-four years old, he went to the High School at Vienna. His learned disquisitions and verses gained him the chair of the Professorship of the Liberal Arts at that school, and he subsequently studied medicine, of whieh faculty he obtained the doctorate. This attachment to the study of medicine recalls to my mind a fact which awakens a suspicion that he may have been a personal friend of John Adelphus, just referred to, and, if so, of the little confraternity of St. Dié. Before Adelphus established himself in Strasburg, he had practised as a physician at Schaffhausen, and this at the time when Joachim Watt was a young man, still resident at St. Gall, which is distant from Schaffhausen seventy English miles, a distance which would offer very little hindrance to Swiss intercommunication. Whether this suspicion be worth anything or no, I advance it as a possible clue to yet further researches which may show the process by which this spurious appellation of America became adopted, through the efforts of a small cluster of men in an obscure corner of France.

The earliest engraved map of the new world yet known as bearing the name of America, is a mappe-monde by Appianus, bearing the date of 1520, annexed to the edition by Camers, of the Polyhistoria of Julius Solinus (Vienna Austr.), 1520, and a second time to the edition of Pomponius Mela by Vadianus, printed at Basle in 1522. The earliest manuscript map hitherto found bearing that name, is in a most precious collection of drawings by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, now in Her Majesty's collection at Windsor, to which, from an examination of its contents, I have assigned the date of 1513-14.

I have thus endeavored to unravel the intricate story of a great and irreparable injustice. No one can deny to Vespucci the credit of possessing courage, perseverance, and a practical acquaintance with the art of navigation; but he had never been the commander of an expedition, and had it not been for the great initiatory achievement of Columbus, we have no reason to suppose that we should ever have heard his name.

"To say the truth," as has been well remarked by the illustrious Baron von Humboldt, "Vespucci shone only by reflection from an age

* "Americam a Vespuccio repertam."

32

COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY AND NAMING OF AMERICA.

of glory. When compared with Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Bartholomeu Dias, and Da Gama, his place is an inferior one. The majesty of great memories seem concentrated in the name of Christopher Columbus. It is the originality of his vast idea, the largeness and fertility of his genius, and the courage which bore up against a long series of misfortunes, which have exalted the Admiral high above all his cotemporaries."

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