ON A MAP P E M - -. - -_ 
 :-„. LE0>3ARD0 . DA VINCI: 
 
 R. H. MA JO R, 
 

 7^fi fITQC?^gOTi 
 
 '3^ '\\ 
 
 ■y-- 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 GA308.L5 M23 
 
 + + - mmnemonde by Leonardo |te vi 
 
 Memor on a maopemonoe u^^^^^ 
 
 3 1924 029 955 550 
 
 Overs 
 

^'^'0~:Lkfn^ — ? 
 
 y^,H^e^^ y^^ ,A*^^>^- yt:^^. 
 
 
 /^^ /t^'^i^^^^^ ^A^^ 
 
 Li-uAki -.-jv' ... 
 
\^\ 
 
 V. 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tiie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029955550 
 
w 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 ON 
 
 A MAPPEMONDE 
 
 BY 
 
 LEONAKDO DA VINCI, 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 EAKLIEST MAP HITHERTO KNOWN 
 
 .CONTAINING 
 
 THE KAME OF AMEEICA 
 
 NOW IN THE ROYAL COLLECTION AT WINDSOR. 
 
 COMMUNICATED TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES 
 BY 
 
 EICHAUD HENRI MAJOR, ESQ., F.S.A., &c. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY J. B. NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. 
 
 1865. 
 
 - ■» -'• ki .r .^ 
 
 ~Y 
 

 /\.Sb^^(^4. 
 
 FEOM THE 
 
 AECHiEOLOGIA, 
 
 VOL. XL. 
 
 4^ 
 
MEMOIB 
 
 ON 
 
 A MAPPEMONDE 
 
 BY 
 
 LEONAEDO DA VINCI. 
 
 To AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON FEANKS, ESQ., 
 
 DiKECTOR OP THE SoCIBTY OF ANTIQUARIES. 
 
 Mt dear Franks 
 
 I HAVE had placed in my hands by B. B. Woodward, Esq., E.S.A., the Queen's 
 Librarian, a Map of the World, which he has found in Her Majesty's Library at 
 Windsor, in the collection of papers in the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci. 
 Mr. Woodward's object in sending it to me was that I might ascertain as nearly 
 as possible the date of its construction, from the nature of the geographical 
 information which it contained. It was evident at a glance that, apart from 
 the value attaching to it from its connection with so illustrious a name as that 
 of Leonardo da Vinci, the map possessed an intrinsic interest in connection 
 with the history of geography and cartography, inasmuch as it not only belonged 
 to a period fertile in geographical discoveries, though scantily represented by 
 maps which have come to our knowledge, but contained delineations of a stage in 
 those discoveries not represented at all in any map with which I am acquainted. 
 Independently of this, it happens to possess some special points of priority of 
 information, which have led me to think it desirable to submit it, with the 
 following notice of its contents, to the attention of the Society of Antiquaries. 
 
 The points of distinct priority which I shall hope to establish are — 1st. That 
 it is the earliest map yet made known to the world on which the name of 
 America stands inscribed; 2ndly. That it is the earliest known map on which 
 the severance of the western coasts of America from their previously supposed 
 
 B 
 
2 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 continuity with Asia is recognised ; Srdly. That it is the only map, as yet known, 
 which contains an indication of the early fancied existence of a great southern 
 continent anterior to the discovery of Magellan's Straits, after which, though at 
 some distance of time, that supposition was assumed to be a reality, and laid 
 down upon maps as an indefinite continuation of the then discovered land of 
 Tierra del T'uego. In order that I may commend my own belief on these three 
 points to the acceptance of the Society, my duty will manifestly be to show 
 the date which I assign to the map, and the geographical grounds upon which I 
 assign it. But, first, let me describe the map itself.* It is drawn in eight equal 
 parts ; each part being the eighth of a supposed globe represented in a plane ; 
 the lines of separation being the equator, and two equi-distant meridian circles. 
 These parts, of course, thus form equilateral triangles, each side of which is an 
 arc of a circle, of wliich the opposite point is the centre. The diameter of these 
 triangles is exactly five inches. The usually adopted form of orientation is used, 
 as shown by the word " Cima " being placed between the four converging points 
 at the north, and the words " LaBassa " between the corresponding points at the 
 south. It will be seen that the scale is very small; but, though the insertion of 
 names of places is consequently by no means abundant, a certaia amount of care 
 has been given to the delineation of the outline of the then known parts of the 
 world. It has no meridians or parallels of latitude ; but that is not to be won- 
 dered at, for numerous manuscript maps were made at that time, which have now 
 disappeared, but which were drawn up, like the one before me, with the object of 
 giving the picture of the discoveries without supplying navigators with any infor- 
 mation as to the dangers or courses by the routes. The date which I assign to 
 the map is 1513-1514. 
 
 It is obvious that on a map of so small a scale we cannot hope to find any 
 points of minute interest in the delineation of those parts of the world which 
 were at that time comparatively well known. In the easternmost parts of Asia 
 we see the Cathay and Mangi of Marco Polo, on what is freely described as the 
 Smanrni Situs, and also Marco Polo's Zipangu, here mis-spelt Zipugna, intended 
 to represent Japan. In the South Seas we have an indication, but without 
 names, of Sumatra, and the Sunda Isles, which may have been gathered from 
 Marco Polo, but which islands we also know from Barros and Galvao to have 
 been visited, at the close of 1511, by the Portuguese captains Antonio de Breu 
 and Prancisco Serrao, who were sent out to Banda and Malacca by Albuquerque, 
 and who passed along the east side of Sumatra to Java, and thence by Madura, 
 
 » See tte accompanying Plates, executed by photo-lithography, and of the same size as the originals. 
 
in the JB^oyal Collections at Windsor. 3 
 
 Bali, Sumbavaj Solor, &c. to Papua or New Giiinea. Thence they went to 
 the Moluccas and to Amboyna. (See Barros, d. 3, L. 5, c. 6, p. 583 ; and Galvao, 
 translated by Hakluyt, p. 3*78.) 
 
 The peninsula of Hindustan is laid down with tolerable correctness, not 
 differing much, although with far fewer insertions of names, from its representa- 
 tion in the map of Bernardus Sylvanus of Eboli (Eboliensis) in the kingdom of 
 Naples, of the date of 1511, when the discoveries of the Portuguese had already 
 made them acquainted with the outline of that country. In Africa we find, as 
 might be expected, the west coast delineated with tolerable accuracy, but with 
 comparative emptiness of description on the eastern side; the only internal 
 feature being the river Nile, with the river and two lakes from which it was 
 supposed to take its source, laid down as in Ptolemy and the Portuguese maps of 
 the time, in a latitude much nearer to the Cape of Good Hope than to the 
 equator. But as, at the time that this map was made, the passage of the 
 Portuguese to India by the Cape of Good Hope had become a beaten track, it is 
 not upon the delineations either of Asia or the west coast of Africa that we need 
 rest for evidence as to the period of its construction, unless indeed we should find 
 amongst the few names laid down on those countries any that might betray a 
 later period than that which we should otherwise be led to ascribe to it ; but this, 
 upon examination, proves not to be the case. 
 
 On the east coast of Africa, we have but three places mentioned, Sapall, 
 (Sofala) ; Inclind, a manifest miscopying for Melinda ; and Abassia or Abyssinia ; 
 but if these names be few, they are full of interest in connection with the period. 
 Melinda was the northernmost point attained by Vasco da Gama in his northward 
 passage along that coast. It was on the 15th of April, 1498, that he arrived 
 there, and from that arrival may be traced the successful accomplishment of the 
 magnificent dream that first had birth in the brain of the never-to-be-forgotten 
 Prince Henry of Portugal, namely, the attainment of the coast of India by the 
 rounding of the Gape of Good Hope. In the sovereign of Melinda, Da Gama 
 found a friend and a helper beyond all price ; he supplied him with a Guzerat 
 pilot, named Malemo Cana, or Canaca, who was not only perfectly acquainted 
 with the navigation of the Indian Ocean as known at that period, but entered 
 into the service of the Portuguese with so much loyalty and good faith that, after 
 leaving the coast of Africa on the 28th of AprU, he brought them on the 17th of 
 May in sight of that India which had been the subject of such ardent longings 
 and such earnest efforts on the part of his countrymen for nearly a century. It 
 was on Sunday the 20th of May that, under the directions of his skilful pilot, 
 
 b2 
 
4, Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 Da Gama anchored off Capocata, two leagues below Calicut. But, meanwhile, at . 
 the very time that this map was made, there was resident in Abyssinia a Portu- 
 guese, who was not only the first, since ancient times, to visit the coast of Abyssinia,, 
 but who also may be called the theoretical discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope. 
 So great had been the desire of finding a short route to India, implanted into the 
 Portuguese by the life-long efforts of that great glory of their nation, the noble 
 Prince Henry, that his nephew King John the Second had determined to gain 
 information respecting India, by means of a voyage over-land, concurrently with 
 the expeditions which were being constantly made, with the view of tracking a 
 course thither by way of the sea. Antonio de Lisboa, a Pranciscan friar, had 
 been dispatched for that purpose, in company with a layman, but the attempt was 
 rendered nugatory by their ignorance of Arabic, and, after reaching Jerusalem, 
 they were obliged to return. This disappointment only rendered King John 
 more determined on securing his object, and he now resolved on making a double 
 effort to accomplish it. Bartholomew Diaz had a squadron fitted out for him, 
 with which he set sail in August, 1486, and first rounded that famous cape, to 
 which, from the storms he had encountered, he gave the name of Cabo dos 
 Tormentos, or Cabo Tormentoso. On the 7,th of May of the next year Pedro 
 Covilham and Alphonso de Payva, both of them well versed in Arabic, received 
 the following orders respecting a second journey over-land : They were to discover 
 the country of Prester John ; to trace the Venetian commerce for drugs and 
 spices to its source ; to ascertain whether it were possible for ships to sail, round 
 the southern extremity of Africa, to India, and to take particular information on 
 eyery point relative to this important navigation ; and from Alvarez we learn 
 that they had a sea-card given them, taken out of a general map of the world. 
 We find from Castanheda, that Pedro de Covilham and Alphonso de Payva 
 left Lisbon with five hundred crowns in money and a letter of credit on 
 Naples, where, says Alvarez, their bUls of exchange were paid by the son of 
 Cosmo de' Medici. Prom Naples they sailed to the island of Bhodes. Then 
 crossing over to Alexandria, they travelled to Cairo as merchants, and, proceeding 
 with the caravan to Tor, on the Bed Sea at the foot of Mount Sinai, gained some 
 information relative to the trade with Calicut. Thence they sailed to Aden, 
 where they parted , Covilham directing his course towards India, and Payva 
 towards Suakem in Abyssinia, appointing Cairo as the future place of their 
 rendezvous. At Aden Covilham embarked in a Moorish ship for Cananore, on 
 the Malabar coast, and, after some stay in that city, went to Calicut and Goa, 
 being the first of his countrymen who had sailed on the Indian Ocean. He then 
 
m the Moyal Collections at Windsor. 5 
 
 passed over to Sofala, on the eastern coast of Africa, and examined its gold 
 mines, where he procured some intelligence of the Island of St. Lawrence, called 
 by the Moors the Island of the Moon. 
 
 Covilham had now, according to Alvarez, heard of cloves and cinnamon, and 
 seen pepper and ginger ; he therefore resolved to venture no farther until the 
 valuable information he possessed was conveyed to Portugal. With this idea, 
 he returned to Egypt; but found on his arrival at Cairo that Payva had been 
 murdered. Here he met with two messengers from King John, whose names 
 were Rabbi Abraham of Beja, and Joseph of Lamego ; the latter immediately 
 returned with letters from Covilham, containing, among other curious facts, the 
 following remarkable report : — " That the ships which sailed down the coast of 
 Guinea might be sure of reaching the termination of the continent by persisting 
 in a course to the south ; and that when they should arrive in the eastern ocean, 
 their best direction must be to inquire for Sofala and the Island of the Moon " 
 (Madagascar) . 
 
 Rabbi Abraham and his companion had, previously to this event, visited the 
 city of Baghdad and the Island of Ormuz, and had made themselves acquainted 
 with many particulars respecting the spice trade. This alone was sufficient to 
 recommend them to the patronage of King John II., and they accordingly were 
 employed by him to seek Covilham and Payva at Cairo, with further instructions 
 to proceed to Ormuz and the coast of Persia, in order to improve their informa- 
 tion. Covilham eagerly embraced this opportunity to visit Ormuz, and, having 
 accompanied Abraham to the Gulf of Persia, returned with him to Aden, whence 
 the latter hastened to give King John an account of their tour, and Covilham 
 embarked for Abyssinia to complete that part of his voyage which the death of 
 Payva had hitherto frustrated. 
 
 Crossing the Straits of Babelmandeb, he landed in the dominions of the Negus. 
 That prince took him with him to Shoa, the residence of the court, where he met 
 with a very favourable reception, and at length he became so necessary to the 
 prince, that he was compelled to spend the remainder of his life in Abyssinia. 
 He married in that country, and, from occupying highly important posts, amassed 
 a considerable fortune. It is stated by Alvarez, that when, in 1525, the Portu- 
 guese embassy, under Don Rodriguez de Lima, arrived in Abyssinia, Covilham 
 shed tears of joy at the sight of his feUow-countrymen. He passed thirty-three 
 years of his life in Abyssinia, and died there. His original account is not now 
 in existence, or at least is unknown; but from the third volume of " Brace's 
 Travels " we derive the following information, although from what authority he 
 
6 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 supplies it we are not told. He says, " Prequent despatches from Mm came to 
 the King of Portugal, who, on his part, spared no expense to keep open the 
 correspondence. In his journal Covilham described the several ports in India 
 which he had seen ; the temper and disposition of the princes ; the situation and 
 riches of the mines of Sofala. He reported that the country was very populous, 
 full of cities both powerful and rich ; and he exhorted the King to pursue with 
 unremitting vigour the passage round Africa, which he declared to be attended 
 with very little danger, and that the Cape itself was well known in India. He 
 accompanied this description with a chart or map, which he had received from 
 the hands of a Moor in India, where the Cape, and cities all around the coast, 
 were exactly represented." 
 
 Dr. Vincent's remarks on this passage from Bruce are important. He says : 
 (see Feripltis, p. 197) " Whence Bruce draws this account I cannot discover ; 
 and if there was such a map among the Moors it must be a fiction, for none 
 of them had ever passed Corrientes by sea ; and cities there are none for almost 
 20° from Corrientes to the Cape or from the Cape for 20° to the northward 
 on the western coast. That fictitious maps of this sort might exist, both in 
 the Indies and Europe, among Muhammedans and Christians, is highly probable, 
 for it was a prevailing notion in all ages that Africa was circumnavigable. We 
 may allow even more than this, and say that the natives had gone by land much 
 further south than the navigators by sea, and that their accounts were almost 
 unanimous in maintaining the same assertion. Whenever I can discover the 
 authority of Bruce it will deserve consideration ; till then I shall think that if 
 Covilham filled up the map he had received, or corrected it, or added to it 
 such information as he could coUect, it is a more probable account than the 
 report of this Moorish map, which contained cities that never existed. Such a 
 corrected map of Covilham's we read of in Castanheda, who seems to have 
 seen it, as he says it was ill-written and disfigured. This I take to be the map 
 to which Bruce alludes." In any case, it is the aforesaid letter of Covilham to 
 King John, which, beyond aU other information, affords the reason for our 
 assigning to Covilham the honour of the theoretical discovery of the Cape of 
 Good Hope, as the practical is to be assigned to Diaz and Da Gama ; for Diaz 
 returned without hearing anything of India, though he passed the Cape, and Da 
 Gama did not sail till after the intelligence of Covilham had ratified the dis- 
 covery of Diaz. 
 
 Thus much for the east coast of Africa. With respect to Madagascar itself we 
 have the island laid down, but without a name. It was in 1500 that the Portu- 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 7 
 
 guese, in their reconnaissances of the coast of Zanguebar, became acquainted 
 with the Island of Madagascar, although Marco Polo had previously spoken of 
 it under the name of Magaster. It received its name of S. Lorenzo from the visit 
 of the Portuguese Lorenzo Almeida, but it was not till 1506 that its coasts and 
 capes and harbours were examined by Tristan d'Acunha. We also find, on the 
 map, what would seem, to judge from their relative position with regard to the 
 north point of Madagascar, the Aldabra Islands ; but, if the size rather than the 
 exact position of the islands were to be accepted as a criterion, we might infer 
 that the Comoro Isles were intended. Purther north, though still without name, 
 we find what is doubtless meant for the Mahe or Seychelles Islands. Of the 
 Mascaren Islands there is no indication whatever. Research has hitherto been 
 fruitless in the attempt to establish the exact date of the discovery of these 
 islands. Various dates have been assigned, but in none of the Portuguese authors' 
 who treat of the exploits of Pedro Mascarenhas in the Portuguese conquests in 
 India do I find any allusion to the discovery of these islands. One thing, 
 however, is certain, although I have not found it hitherto noticed, that these 
 islands were discovered, not only before the period of the map now before us, 
 but also before 1507, inasmuch as they are laid down in the invaluable map 
 of Johann E-uysch, in the 1508 edition of Ptolemy, published at Rome, where 
 Mauritius bears the name of Dinarobin, and Bourbon that of Margabin, which 
 means "western," as rightly describing its more western position. 
 
 It is in America, the scene of active and progressive exploration, that we find 
 the special value and interest of the map before us, as well as the means of more 
 clearly fixing its approximate date. And first I would call attention to the frag' 
 mentary parts of North America, indicated by what is represented on the map as 
 islands, viz. : the names of Bacalar and Terra Florida. In the former name we 
 have no difficulty iu tracing the Terra de Bacalaos or country of the Codfish. The 
 name of Bacalaos is the earliest we find applied to any part of North America sub- 
 sequently to the Scandinavian voyages. It has been advanced by Pather Cordeiro, 
 in his "Historia Insulana," that it was discovered in 1463, twenty-nine years 
 before the first voyage of Columbus, by Joao Vas Cortereal, a nobleman of the 
 household of the Infant Don Perdinand of Portugal. Against the correctness of 
 this statement we have the reasonable argument of the Baron von Humboldt, that, 
 had this been the truth, so important a fact would scarcely have been omitted by 
 Martin Behaim in the minutely detailed notes which are inserted in the globe 
 which he constructed in 1492, and which is now at Nuremberg. The solidity 
 of this argument is confirmed by the fact that Cordeiro makes Cortereal to 
 
8 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 have been appointed Governor of Terceira on the 12th of April, 14.64, while it 
 is a certain fact that Jobst de Hiirter, the father-in-law of Behaim, only a few 
 years after, went to the Azores, with the rank of Governor of the Flemish 
 colony of Payal. The truth would rather seem to be that the name of Bacalaos, 
 which in the Basque language means codfish, was first given to Newfoundland, 
 and then also to the countries which they found near that island, by the Biscayan 
 fishermen, who frequented those coasts for codfish as early as the year 1504. 
 
 The Biscayans pretend that a countryman of theirs, named Juan de Echaide, 
 discovered the shores of Newfoundland many years before the New World was 
 known, but there is no authority to prove it. 
 
 I now come to speak of that country which is here laid down as an island 
 under the name of Florida. The question, as to whether England or Spain may 
 claim the priority in the discovery of Florida, has given rise to many contra- 
 dictory statements. By the English, the honour has been claimed for Sebastian 
 Cabot ; and by the Spaniards, for Ponce de Leon. Upon this subject the 
 historian De Thou, in his " Historia sui Temporis," lib. xliv. 12mo, 1609, has 
 the following remark : 
 
 "Eloridam qui primus invenerit, inter scriptores ambigitur. Hispani . . . 
 gloriam Joanni Pontio Legionensi deferunt ; . . . verum, quod et certius est, 
 plerique affirmant, jam ante Sebastianum Gabotum , , . primum in earn 
 Indiarum provinciam venisse." 
 
 But, whatever may have been the southernmost point reached by Cabot in 
 coasting America on his return, it is certain, that he did not land in Florida, and 
 that the honour of first exploring that country is due to Juan Ponce de Leon. 
 This cavalier, who was governor of Puerto Bico, induced by the vague traditions 
 circulated by the natives of the West Indies, that there was a country in the 
 north possessing a fountain whose water restored the aged to youth, made it an 
 object of his ambition to discover this marvellous region. With this view, he 
 resigned the governorship, and set sail with three caravels on the 3rd of March, 
 1512. Steering N. ^ N. he came upon a country covered with flowers and 
 verdure : and, as the day of his discovery happened to be Palm Sunday, called 
 by the Spaniards Pascua Florida, he gave it the name of Florida. He landed 
 on the 2nd of April, and took possession of the country in the name of the 
 King of Castile. 
 
 Cuba is here, for the first time, made an island. Columbus died in the beKef 
 not only that the newly-found continent was part of Asia, but that Cuba was 
 part of Japan, or the Zipangu of Marco Polo. It was not till 1508, two years 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 9 
 
 after his death, that Captain Sebastian de Ocampo proved it to be an island by 
 sailing round it by the orders of Nicolas de Ovando. 
 
 The Isabella of our map is manifestly intended for Hispaniola, although it is 
 mistakenly so called, as that name was originally given by Columbus to Saometo, 
 now known as Long Island. 
 
 The other West Indian islands, not indicated by names, may all be without 
 hesitation accepted as amongst the discoveries of Columbus. 
 
 I now come to speak of the delineation of South America on the map of 
 Leonardo, but, as the peculiar form of the map itself renders it difficult to trace 
 the form and sequence of all the names which I shall have to refer to, I wUl, for 
 clearness' sake, take them in the order in which they occur on the north coast of 
 South America westward from St. Augustine, and in a second series along the 
 east coast of that continent southward from the same point. 
 
 Of Cape St. Augustine itself I will simply say that it was first seen in January, 
 and again in April, of the year 1500 by Vicente Yanez Pinzon, Diego de Lepe, 
 Alonzo Yelez de Mendoza, and Pedro Alvarez Cabral. The word Angla, which we 
 meet with first in passing westward from Cape St. Augustine along the northern 
 coast of South America, is too vague to call for comment, as in Spanish it simply 
 means " a cape," and, I may observe, differs from the similar Portuguese word 
 " Angra," which is " a creek, bay, or station for ships." 
 
 The next name which presents itself is C. di S. Giovanni, for which I have not 
 succeeded in finding any explanation either in history or in maps within a 
 century and a half of the period of our map ; but in the Nova et accurata 
 Brasilise totius Tabula, by J. Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1662, and in subsequent maps, 
 there is I. S. Juan, about 2° west of Maranhani, which is about the position of 
 the S. Giovanni of Leonardo's map. 
 
 The next name, Plaia, is doubtless the equivalent of the Portuguese word Praya, 
 which simply signifies " a shore." 
 
 The Tanabacoa of Leonardo's map I have no difficulty in identifying with the 
 Tamaragua of the map of Johann Huysch, in the 1508 edition of Ptolemy, pub- 
 lished at Rome, where it is represented as an island, which, in the " Tabula Terre 
 Nove " by Hylacomilus, inserted in the 1513 edition of Ptolemy published at 
 Strasburg, has its name reduced to Eiqua, and is in all probability the island of 
 Aruba. 
 
 Poriana, the name which next presents itself, is a mis-spelling for Curiana, the 
 coast where pearls were found, and which comprised the coast of Cumana and the 
 Gulf of Cariaco, as is shown by a passage in the stipulation of Hojeda with the 
 
10 Memohr on a Mappemonde 
 
 Spanish sovereigns, where the expression occurs, " desde el parage de los Prailes, 
 antes de la Margarita, fasta elParalJon, tierra que se llama Curiana," i. e. "Prom 
 the neighbourhood of the Prailes (islands off the north-east coast of Margarita) to 
 the Parallon, (probably Cape Codera,) which country is called Ouriana." See Na- 
 varrete, tom. iii. p. 13 . The discovery of this country had been attributed to Eodrigo 
 Bastidas, in the voyage which he made with the pilot Juan de la Cosa, ranging 
 from October, 1500, to September, 1502 ; but this claim was contested by Alonzo 
 de Hojeda, who claimed the discovery for himself in his second voyage, which 
 occupied from January, 1502, to January, 1503. See Apendice a la Coleccion 
 diplomatica. Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 426. My inference that Poriana is a misspelling 
 for Coriana or Curiana is confirmed by the circumstance that the name is re- 
 peated further westward, beyond the name "Ciribiceni," which is manifestly Point 
 Chiriviche, off the mouth of the River Tocayo, near Porto CabeUo ; for beyond 
 this same point I find a similar repetition of the name of Coriana, represented as 
 explored in 1500 by Hojeda and Vespucci, in the valuable map of the coasts of 
 Tierra Pirme, drawn up by Colonel Codazzi to illustrate the routes of Columbus 
 and contemporary navigators. ( See Atlas fisico y politico de la Republica de 
 Venezuela, por el Coronel Agustin Codazzi, Caraccas, 1840.) 
 
 Por the intervening name, Palinmot, I find an equivalent in the Palinmete of 
 Codazzi, occupying the same position, but not in any preceding map or book. 
 
 Areolodo is a manifest mis-spelling for Arboleda, a grove or plantation of trees. 
 CD. Grana occupies the position of the Peninsula of Paraguana, the Indian 
 name of Cape San Roman, which protrudes twenty leagues into the sea. See 
 Herrera, tom. i. p. 13, who, a few lines after, speaking of Cape de la Vela yet 
 further west, says that it was so named by Alonzo de Ojeda when accompanied 
 for the first time by Amerigo Vespucci, long after that coast had been discovered 
 by "el primer Almirante" Columbus. Aldea simply signifies a village or hamlet. 
 Its occurrence in this place agrees with the account of the Bachiller Martin Per- 
 nandez Enciso, who is said to have accompanied Bastidas in his voyage along 
 this coast. In his Suma de Geografia, printed in 1519, the first Spanish book 
 which gives any account of America, Enciso says, " Desde Sancta Marta vuelve 
 la costa al sur veynte leguas y en la vuelta [del] Cabo Sancta Maria esta Caria, 
 que es la gente muy mala, y adelante esta Aldea grande." The next name that 
 we encounter in our progress westward on the map of Leonardo is Santa Marta 
 itself, which we all know as the name of an important province lying eastward of 
 the Bio Grande de Magdalena, and including the mountains of the same name. 
 Vespucci and Hojeda did not sail so far westward in their voyage between May 
 
in the Royal Collections at Windsor. 11 
 
 and September, 1499 ; but, as just shown from Enciso's account, this coast was 
 visited in 1501 by Eodrigo de Bastidas. Herrera describes their route thns : " I 
 pasaron por la ribera de la Mar que aora se Uama Santa Marta i Cartagena hasta 
 la Oulata o Ensenada que es el Gulfo de TJraba, dentro del qual se contiene la 
 provincia del Darien;" i.e. "They passed by the coast which is now called Santa 
 Marta and Cartagena, as far as the Culata or Ensenada, which is the Gulf of 
 TJraba." This sentence at the same time supplies us with the explanation of 
 the word Calata, the next which occurs on our map. 
 
 The name which next follows is exceedingly indistinct. It appears to be 
 Arifep, my best explanation of which — and it must of necessity be conjectural — 
 is, that it maybe intended for the " Punto de Arecife," Anglice E-eef Point, which 
 is given in a similar locality on the 5th Map of Kunstmann's "Atlas zur 
 Entdeckungsgeschichte Amerikas, Miinchen, 1859," fol. 
 
 The next name is C. de S. Giovanni, which I can best illustrate by a quotation 
 from Acosta's " Descubrimiento y colonizacion de la Nueva Granada," in which 
 he says, " El dia 25 [de Setiembre, 1502] fonded la expedicion en cierta isla que 
 los indigenes Uamaban Quiriviri y Colon Husita, a mas de legua y media de 
 distancia de Cariay, poblacion que estaba situada a las margenes de un gran rio 
 (probablemente San Juan de Nicaragua)," i.e. " On the 25th of September, 1502, 
 the expedition anchored off a certain island called Quiriviri, but which Columbus 
 called Husita, at more than a league and a half's distance from Caria, an 
 inhabited spot on the shores of a great river (probably San Juan de Nicaragua)." 
 The two remaining names are Angla and Mastilca. Of the former I have spoken 
 already ; of the latter I am at a loss to do otherwise than conjecture that it 
 means the Mosquito Coast, which was visited by Columbus during his fourth 
 voyage in the month of September, 1502. In this voyage Columbus explored the 
 coast from Honduras to the Puerto de Mosquitos, at the western extremity of the 
 Isthmus of Panama. 
 
 I will now speak of the names as they occur on the east coast of South 
 America, southward from Cape St. Augustine. The first name which presents 
 itself is Abatia. This word, which is a blunder for Bahia, an abbreviation for 
 Bahia de todos os Santos, is, as I shall hereafter show, the most important for 
 me of any on the face of the map, as supplying me with the most valuable link 
 in connecting the map with the voyages of Vespucci. The next designation 
 which occurs is that of Brazil. The name at first given to the newly- discovered 
 land of South America was Terra de Santa Cruz, or Terra Sanctse Crucis. The 
 precise period of its replacement by that of Brazil is not known, but that it was 
 
 c2 
 
12 Memoir on a Mcippemonde 
 
 before 1507 is shown by the occurrence of the latter name in Ruysch's map, which 
 was made in that year, although not published till 1508. The word "brazil," which 
 properly signifies "red dyewood," was kaown in Europe long before the discovery 
 of the New World, as is shown by two documents relating to tariffs of exciseable 
 goods, inserted in Muratori's Antiq. Ital., tom. ii. dissert. 30. One of them is from 
 Ferrara, with the date of 1193 ; the other from Modena, with the date of 1306. 
 In them Brazil is mentioned among other articles of merchandise. Capmany, in 
 his excellent " Memorias sobra la antiqua marina, comercio, y artes de Barcelona," 
 Madrid, 1779-92-4, published several documents in which "brazil" is men- 
 tioned, in the years 1221, 1243, 1262, and 1271. It is a mistake, therefore, to 
 suppose that the red dye-wood known as brazil-wood took its name from the 
 country now called Brazil in South America, as has been stated by Covarrubias 
 in his " Tesoro de la Langua Castellana," art. Brazil. The converse was the case ; 
 for when the Portuguese discovered that that wood was growing in great quantities, 
 and of excellent quality, in the newly-discovered country to which Pedro Alvarez 
 Cabral had, when he first reached it in 1500, given the name of Terra de Santa 
 Cruz, they within a very few years after gave the name of Brazil to the country 
 -tself. This same name had already been given on maps of the 15th century 
 to an island near the Azores, which has been generally supposed to be equally 
 imaginary with the islands of St. Brandon and Antillia, also laid down on maps 
 of that period. (See Navarrete, tom. iii. p. 9.) 
 
 The next name. Cape S. Jorgio, I find in no contemporaneous map, nor is it 
 alluded to by Barros ; the earliest occurrence of the name that I have found is in 
 the form of Yilla de San Jorge in a corresponding position on the map of Brazil, 
 which I have already referred to as published by Jan Blaeu, in Amsterdam, 1662 ; 
 and Father Cazal mentions the place in his " Corografia Brazilica," but without 
 allusion to the period at which the name was given. 
 
 The last name which occurs on the east coast of South America is Oananea, 
 which lies in 25° 5' south latitude, and by its position presents great difficulties with 
 reference to the latitudes stated by Vespucci to have been attained by him in the 
 last two of his four voyages. In his third voyage he asserts that he reached 
 52° south. In his fourth he reaches only the 18th degree. In neither of his 
 letters does he make mention of Cananea, even as a resting-place, much less as 
 a place of which he took possession in the name of the King of Portugal ; and 
 yet it stands as a remarkable fact, that not only on the map of Leonardo, but 
 on the map of Buysch, published 1508; on the Charta Marina Portugallensium, 
 published 1513 ; and on the map of Apianus, dated 1520, and published in the 
 
m the B,oyal Collections at Windsor. 13 
 
 Polyhistoria of Julius Solinus, in the same year — all of which, by the repe- 
 tition of a blunder, betray, as I shaU have hereafter to show, a common origin 
 from Vespucci, — ^this name of Cananea, with slight changes in the spelling, 
 is given as the southernmost place on the coast, known to the compilers of 
 those maps, as having been visited and named by any explorer. It is true 
 that Ruysch adds a legend* apropos of the third voyage of Yespucci, to the 
 effect that the Portuguese sailors had explored this part of the land, and had 
 reached 50° of south latitude without coming to the end of the continent ; but I 
 repeat from Vespucci himself we get no intimation of a landing at Cananea.'' This 
 is the more remarkable as a pedrao or monumental stone bearing the arms of 
 Portugal, but without the towers in the bordure, and with the date of 1503, was 
 discovered in 1767 by Colonel Alfonso Botelho de Sousa, in the Island of 
 Cardoso, off the Bar of Cananea ; and it is well known to have been the custom 
 in more early days to place such boundary-marks to establish the right of 
 possession. 
 
 And here I trust it may not be considered a fault if I have purposely refrained 
 from touching upon the vexata qucestio of the authenticity of the voyages of 
 Vespucci, a question the consideration of which entailed upon Humboldt the 
 laborious research and deep reflection of many years, while even from his 
 magisterial decision the distinguished Erench geographer the Chevalier d'Avezac, 
 and my no less distinguished friend His Excellency Senhor E. A. de Varnhagen, 
 stiU find reasons to make exceptions. Were I to allow myself to dwell either 
 upon this or any other seductive ramification from the many points which it is 
 my duty to touch upon, even though occasionally such digressions might seem 
 desirable for completing the story, I should find myself writing a book instead of 
 a simple notice of this important map from the hand of Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 I have now examined all the portions of this map containing names indicative 
 of actual discovery ; but it possesses one feature peculiar to itself, with respect 
 to the indications of discovery westward and northward as to the continent of 
 America. We see nothing of North America beyond the two supposed Islands 
 of Bacalar and Elorida ; nothing of the coasts of Central America beyond the 
 shores of Honduras ; and here we find the coast line erroneously continued from 
 the Caribbean Sea into the Pacific, implying the certainty of the discovery of a 
 separation of the newly -found continent from Asia. I feel bound to accept this 
 
 * Nautse Lusitani partem banc terrse hujus observarunt et usque ad elevationem poll antarotici 50 graduum 
 pervenerunt, nondum tamen ad ejus finem austrinum. 
 * See Cazal, Corografia Brazilica, torn, ij p. 207. , 
 
14 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 fact as an indication of the map being posterior to the discovery of the Pacific 
 by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, on the 25th of September, 1513. The earliest 
 known map showing a similar indication is that of Johan Schoener printed at 
 Bamberg, 1520, but which at the same time presents this great difference from 
 Leonardo's map, that it contains the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and 
 thus manifestly indicates a period considerably later. This one feature, therefore, 
 I present to you as involving the latest date which, with respect to the progress 
 of discovery, can be applied to this map. Let a fair allowance be made for the 
 arrival of the information into Europe, and its delineation upon paper, and I 
 think I am safe in ascribing to the map the virtual date of 1514. 
 
 I said at the commencement of this paper that this map was the earliest 
 known, at least by me, on which was delineated the ancient notion of a great 
 southern continent, previously to the supposed corroboration of that idea by the 
 discovery of Tierra del Puego in the voyage of Magalhaens, after which we find 
 that country delineated on maps as an immense continuation of the Tierra del 
 Tuego over the whole southern portion of the globe. The existence of a great 
 southern land, habitable like our own, under the designation of Antichthone, 
 — not to be confounded with the Antichthone of Pythagoras, which was a 
 celestial body, — was admitted by Aristotle and Demosthenes. What Virgil in 
 his first Georgic, v. 233 to 239, says on this subject, 
 
 Quinque tenent coelum zonae : quarum una corusco 
 Semper sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni ; 
 Quam oircum extremes dextrS, Isev&que trahuntur, 
 Coerule^ glacie concrete atque imbribus atris. 
 Has inter mediamque duse mortalibus segris 
 Munere concessse divum: via secta per ambas, 
 Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo. 
 
 is but a translation from the Hermes of Eratosthenes. This opinion of a great 
 southern continent was also entertained by the school of Alexandria, with the 
 exception of Hipparchus and his partisans ; it also recurs in the Somnium of 
 Scipio, in Manilius, Mela, and Macrobius. 
 
 Thus far I have endeavoured to show what the date of this map would be if 
 the state of geographical information laid down upon it could be accepted as a 
 delineation by a person perfectly informed of the progress of discovery in the 
 "West ; but, as this is a condition not reasonably to be presumed upon, and as 
 nevertheless I am claiming for this map the distinction of being the first, hitherto 
 known, containing the name of America, it is necessary that I bring evidence to 
 
in the Hoyal Collections at Windsor. 15 
 
 prove that if later than 1513 or 1514, it is yet earlier than 1520, the date of the 
 earliest map previously known on which the name of America had been inserted. 
 I have stated, without hesitation, that this map is by the hand of Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and, if I can denionstrate this, my case is proved, for Da Vinci died on 
 the 2nd of May, 1519. In the first place, the map occurs marked with the 
 numbers 232b and 233a, holding the place of those numbers in an undoubted 
 collection of papers in the handwriting of that illustrious man, in Her Majesty's 
 library at Windsor. The history of the volume, on the cover of which are 
 stamped the words " Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci. Restaurati da Pompeo 
 Leoni," is as follows : — 
 
 During the war with France, Leonardo spent much time with his friend Fran- 
 cesco Melzi at Vaprio, and his books and drawings were left in the possession of 
 the latter in 1516, when Francis the First invited Leonardo to France. Subse- 
 quently Leonardo bequeathed them aU to Melzi. A successor in the Melzi 
 family had so little appreciation of them that he let them pass from his hands in 
 the following manner, as abridged from the description of one of the recipients, 
 Giovanni Ambrosio Mazzenta. {See " Le Cabinet de 1' Amateur," par E. Piot. 
 Juin, 1861, pp. 60—64.) 
 
 In 1587 one Lelio Gavardi, who had been a teacher in the Melzi family, found 
 an old forgotten coffer, from which he managed to abstract thirteen volumes of 
 MSS. and drawings, which he carried to Florence, with the view of offering them 
 to the Grand Duke Ferdinand I. This prince, however, fell ill and died at the 
 time of Gavardi' s arrival ; the latter therefore went to Pisa, where his near 
 relative, Aldus Manutius the younger, then held the chair of Belles Lettres ia 
 the university. At that time Mazzenta was at Pisa studying law. This man 
 reproached Gavardi on account of his ill-acquired property. The latter acknow- 
 ledged his fault, and begged Mazzenta, who, having finished his studies, was 
 returning home to Milan, to carry the volumes back with him. This he did, 
 and restored them to the head of the family the Doctor Orazio Melzi. That 
 gentleman was much astonished at the trouble he had taken, and made him a 
 present of the volumes, stating that he had many more lying in boxes under the 
 roof of his house. This being talked of caused many applications to Doctor 
 Orazio, who consequently gave away an abundance of drawings and anatomical 
 models and other precious relics from Leonardo's studio. Pompeo Leoni, then 
 in great favor with Philip II, for whom he made all the gilt bronze statues which 
 adorn the retablo of the high altar in the chapel of the Escorial, was one of these 
 applicants. Pompeo promised Dr. Melzi many lucrative posts, and a seat in the 
 
16 Memoir on a Ma/ppemonde 
 
 senate of Milan, if he could recover the thirteen volumes, and give them to him 
 for King PhUip, who was a great amateur of such curiosities. Melzi, excited with 
 these hopes, hastened to Mazzenta's brother, who then possessed the drawings, 
 and begged him on his knees to restore him the MSS. which he had given him. 
 Seven of them were given back. Of the six which remained, one, presented to 
 Cardinal Pederigo Borromeo, is now in the Ambrosian Library. Another was 
 given to Ambrosio !Pigini, a painter of the time, and left by him to Ercole 
 Bianchi with the rest of his cabinet. A third was obtained by Mazzenta from 
 his brother to give to Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, and the three others 
 fell into the possession of Pompeo Aretino, and were afterwards sold to Galeazzo 
 Arconati for 300 ducats. The drawings and MSS. which were recovered by 
 Melzi, and handed over to Pompeo Leoni, were mounted by hitn and arranged 
 in two great volumes. Por one of these volumes noAV at Milan and known as the 
 Codex Atlanticus, James I. is said to have offered 3,000 pistoles. Pompeo took 
 the other to Spain, and there Lord Arundel endeavoured to buy it of him. At 
 his death in 1610 it was bought by Don Juan de Espinas, and soon afterwards 
 was acquired by Lord Arundel. ( See his Letters in Tierney's History of Arundel, 
 and in Noel Sainsbury's E-ubens.) It certainly remained, Mr. Woodward informs 
 me, in the Arundel Collection at Antwerp till 1650. ( See dates on Hollar's 
 etchings after drawings in that collection.) Most probably it was purchased by 
 Charles II., by the advice of Sir Peter Lely, and at Lely's death forgotten. It 
 was discovered in 1763 by Dalton, the Keeper of the King's Prints, in the same 
 bureau at Kensington in which Queen Caroline had previously found the Holbein 
 drawings, which came from the same collection of Lord Arundel, and were 
 certainly bought by Charles II. ( See Sketch of the History of the Eoyal Collec- 
 tion in No. II. of Pine Arts Quarterly Eeview, Introduction to Catalogue of 
 Poussin's Drawings.) 
 
 A remarkable fact, which gave me the fear that I should be unable to bring 
 to an unanswerable proof the proposition that this map was by the hand of 
 Leonardo, has itself happily supplied that proof in a manner which I believe to 
 be perfectly incontestable. It was the habit of Leonardo to write down his 
 observations and memoranda from right to left in the oriental fashion. In the 
 British Museum we have, in the Arundel Collection, a volume illustrated with 
 numerous diagrams by him, on subjects connected with mechanical powers, 
 written entirely in this manner, and with only a very few words written from left 
 to right. In the library in Paris there are volumes of his writings, but these were 
 beyond my reach, and it therefore became necessary for me to inspect for myself 
 
in the Royal Collections at Windsor. 17 
 
 the collection of his MSS. at Windsor, to see if I could find evidence that the 
 hand-writing of the map now before me, which is written from left to right, was 
 that of Leonardo da Vinci. I take it for granted that, even if it should be 
 unreasonably supposed that, iu a collection preserved under the circumstances 
 already detailed, there had been some subsequent interpolations by another hand, 
 yet the most sceptical would not deny the evidence of writing on the same page 
 and in the same ink, both from right to left and from left to right. I found 
 cases of this kind, of which, and others corroborative of my conclusions, I give, 
 for the satisfaction of future investigators, the numbers in the series, viz., 212, 
 220, 226, 227, 230, 231, and 234. 
 
 It happened, however, that on most of these the writing was principally not in 
 capitals, but in small letters, and, although satisfied myself, I was not content to 
 advance those cases as evidence, because I know that, in all tests of the kind, the 
 strongest evidence lies not in small letters, but in capitals ; and it so happens that, 
 in the map now under consideration, a considerable number of words are given 
 entirely in capitals. At length I lighted upon a map of the Val di Chiana and 
 surrounding country, numbered 230, carefully drawn in colowrs, with the lettering 
 from left to right, and often ia capitals, which at a glance I recognised as cor- 
 responding with those of the map of which I am treating. Both the careful 
 drawing and the writiag from left to right showed that the map was intended for 
 the eyes of others. It then became a question whether this newly-discovered 
 map could be shown beyond all doubt to be by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci. 
 This question was speedily solved. The map thus numbered 230, was as I have 
 said, carefully drawn in colour, the hOls being in bistre and the base of them in 
 yellow, while the great marsh formed by the river Chiana was painted in blue. 
 On referring to number 227, I found a map of the same district, though far less 
 carefully dra/wn, depicted in the very same colours, with the exception of the 
 yeUow, but full of writing, in Leonardo's well-known hand, from right to left, 
 evidently only for his own purposes. Number 220 showed the same subject in 
 sepia, with the writing also from right to left. These maps seemed to me to 
 contain evidence sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical; but, if further evidence 
 were wanting, it is found in the very subject of the maps themselves, which 
 embody a fresh point of interest iu connection with the marvellous genius of this 
 highly-gifted man. 
 
 Amongst the many widely diverse branches of study which he cultivated in the 
 pursuit both of the useful and the beautiful, there was one in which he took more 
 than ordinary pleasure, namely, that of engineering and the science of dynamics. 
 
 D 
 
18 Memow on a Mappemonde 
 
 Of his finished efforts ia this direction the Martesana Canal, made navigable by 
 him from Trezzo to Milan, stiU exists as an evidence of his far-sighted ability. If 
 at the present day we visit the Val di Chiana, the site of that which is represented 
 in Leonardo's map as a huge marsh, we shall find one of the most fertile districts 
 of Tuscany, rich in corn, vineyards, and mulberry plantations, bestudded with 
 numerous villages, and inhabited by a healthy peasantry. In fact this valley ex- 
 hibits a phenomenon in the scientific modification of physical geography which is 
 almost unique. In the early periods of the Christian era, the Chiana, then called 
 the Clanis, was a branch of the Arno, which, separating itself from that river in the 
 neighbourhood of Arezzo, ran into the Tiber near Orvieto. To these bifurcations 
 a parallel case is advanced by Humboldt in the Oronoco, in South America. We 
 learn from Tacitus that, in the time of Tiberius, it was proposed that the waters of 
 the Clanis flowing into the Tiber should be diverted and made to flow into the 
 Arno, in order that Eome might be saved from inundation ; but the Florentines, 
 fearing that their lands would be flooded if this plan were carried into effect, 
 opposed it so strenuously that it was abandoned. In the process of time, the fall 
 of the Chiana being very slow and gradually becoming slower, it formed itself 
 into a marsh rather than a river, whose waters, stagnant in the middle, discharged 
 themselves at the two extremities into the Tiber and into the Arno. The evil by 
 degrees increased, till one of the most fertile provinces of Tuscany was rendered 
 unfit for healthy habitation. Of the pernicious nature of the exhalations from 
 this stagnant water a forcible description is given by Dante in the 29th canto of 
 the Inferno, where, wishing to express the intolerable stench of the lower regions, 
 he says : — 
 
 " Qual dolor fora se degli spedali 
 
 Di ValdicHana, tra '1 luglio e '1 settembre, 
 E di Maremma, e di Sardigna i mali 
 Fossero in una fossa tutti insembre ; 
 Tal era quivi." 
 
 The effects of this pestilential atmosphere are also described by Fazio degli 
 Uberti, in the Dittamondo, L. 3, C. 10, 1. 22, where, speaking of the people 
 dwelling near Chiusi, he says : — 
 
 " Quivi son volti pallidi e confusi, 
 Perchfe I'aere e la Chiana h lor nemica, 
 Sicoh^ li fa idropici e rinfusi." 
 
 Boccaccio also, wishing to describe a place of intolerable filthiness, uses the 
 word " Chiane " in the plural as an illustration, thus :— " NeUe chiane di mezza 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 19 
 
 state con molta men noia dimorerebbe ogni scbifo." (fLaberinto, Vinegia, 1558, 
 p. 41.) And in like manner Pulci, in his " Morgante," canto 23rd, stanza 41, 
 uses the name of Chiana to express a marsh. 
 
 " Tutto quel giorno cavalcato avieno 
 Per boschi, per buron, per mille chiane." 
 
 Such was certainly the condition of the Chiana at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, and it caused great anxiety to the two governments ; but the efforts 
 which were at first made to procure a discharge of the waters were utterly 
 fruitless, until the introduction of a mode of drainage peculiar to Italian hydraulic 
 engineering, namely, that of colmate. This process is effected by conducting 
 torrents charged with alluvial matter into the marshy districts, so that the mud 
 brought down in them is deposited. The subjacent soil thus becomes raised, and 
 a fall for the stagnant waters is procured, so as to allow of the employment of the 
 ordinary methods of drainage. These colmate, which have been long employed in 
 Tuscany, were first recommended by Leonardo da Vinci. (Libri, Storia delle 
 mathematiche in Italia, tom. iii. p. 219. ) The adoption of the principle thus recom- 
 mended was due to Torricelli, but it was not applied with success to the Chiana 
 until the close of the seventeenth century, when the engineer Oiaccheri began to 
 put it in practice with good effect ; the work went on, nevertheless, with compara- 
 tive slowness under tHe feeble government of the last of the Medici. At length the 
 Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, who neglected no means of contributing to the 
 material well-being of his subjects, in 1788 entrusted the superintendence of this 
 great undertaking to Count Possombroni, for many years prime minister of Tuscany, 
 under whose administration that country enjoyed a degree of peaceful prosperity 
 unknown elsewhere in Italy, and to him is due the happy change already 
 described as now visible in the lovely valley of the Chiana. 
 
 I have thus shown, I think, suflScient reasons why Leonardo da Vinci should 
 have occupied himself with the laying down of a detailed map of the district 
 comprising the Arno, the Tiber, and the Val di Chiana, whilst at the same time 
 I trust that I have thereby shown the authenticity of the map of the world now 
 before us, as being from the hand of Da Vinci himself. The question naturally 
 arises as to whether any link can be traced to connect Da Vinci with the subject 
 of general cosmography, so as to explain the circumstance of a map of the world 
 having been delineated by him. 
 
 I must here observe that the map shows indications of having been first drawn 
 in pencil, suggesting the great likelihood of its being a copy from the work of 
 another, and it would seem that the map from which it was copied was laid down 
 
 d2 
 
20 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 by an Italian, since the names in Spanish are not only Italianised in the spelling, 
 but are in some cases so grossly mis-spelt as to indicate misreading of names 
 from their form as written in Spanish, and in others the misapprehension of the 
 form of name as uttered vwd voce. Of the first kind of mis-spelling we have 
 examples : in the word " Inclind," on the east coast of Africa, a manifest mis- 
 spelling for " Melinda," the three strokes of the " M " being mistaken for " In," 
 and the " e " for a " c." " Areolodo," on the north coast of South America, foi* 
 " Arboleda," the third letter, " b," of the Spanish being mistaken for an " e." 
 Of the latter kind we have an instance in the sound of " Mosquito," on the coast 
 of Honduras, being altered into "MastUca," and " Tamaragua" into " Tanabacoa." 
 Now, although I am not prepared to show to a certainty — as indeed I should be 
 very fortunate if I could — from whose map this copy was made by Leonardo, yet 
 I am able to present a series of facts of the highest interest with reference to the 
 cosmography of the day, and which at the same time show a connection between 
 Leonardo and Amerigo Vespucci. 
 
 During the residence of Leonardo da Vinci at Florence, he was engaged for 
 four years, probably from 1500 to 1504, on what, as a portrait, has been con- 
 sidered his chef-d" ceiwre ( although he himself was dissatisfied with it as 
 incomplete), namely, that of Mona Lisa, the wife of a nobleman of Perrara, 
 named Francesco Giocondi. This picture, formerly at Fontainebleau, now at the 
 Louvre, was purchased by Francis the First for 12,000 francs. It is a perfect 
 marvel of life-like expression, and it is recorded by Vasari that Leonardo took 
 such interest in bringing it to perfection, that it was his habit to provide dancers 
 and buffoons to amuse the lady during her sittings, so as to throw animation 
 into a face which otherwise, though very beautiful, had somewhat too great a 
 tendency to pensiveness. Francesco Giocondi was an intimate friend of Leonardo, 
 and it was at the earnest request of the latter that permission was given by the 
 former, for this more than ordinarily elaborated portraiture of his wife. Further- 
 more, during this period, Leonardo enjoyed the especial patronage and friendship 
 of Pietro Soderini, Gonfaloniere of Florence, who, in his youth, had been a 
 schoolfellow of Amerigo Vespucci, under the tutelage of Vespucci's uncle, 
 Georgio Antonio Vespucci, as we find particularly mentioned by the antiquary 
 Giuliano Ricci, as quoted in Bandini's Life of Vespucci. 
 
 Now, when Vespucci was at Seville in 1501, we find from a statement in a letter 
 descriptive of his third voyage, addressed to Soderini, that one Giuliano, son of 
 Bartolommeo Giocondi, then resident at Lisbon, was sent to him by Don Manoel 
 King of Portugal, to induce him to exchange the service of the King of Spain 
 for that of Portugal; in which mission Giocondi was successful. In another 
 
in the Moyal Collections at Windsor. 21 
 
 letter describing the same third voyage, written originally by Vespucci in 
 Spanish, but translated into Italian and Latin, we find at the end of the Latin 
 version, printed at Augsburg in 1504, the words " ex Italica in Latinam 
 linguam Jocundus interpres banc epistolam vertit," and at the close of the 
 Italian version of the same letter, printed with the " Paesi novamente ritrovati" 
 at Vicenza, 1507, are the words, " De Spagnola in lingua Ho. et Joc6do inter- 
 prete, questa epistola ha traducta." This member of the Giocondi family was 
 supposed by Humboldt to have been identical with the just mentioned Giuliano, 
 son of Bartolommeo (whom, *. e. Giuliano, he incorrectly calls Bartolommeo) 
 Giocondi. In this very natural and reasonable conjecture, however, the illus- 
 trious Humboldt was in error. Meusel more correctly says, " Auctor versionis 
 fuisse dicitur Jocundo sive Johann Giocondi ; " and Brunet likewise, in his 
 "Manuel de Libraire," is right in stating " On croit que le ' Jocondus interpres,' 
 dont il a 6te question ci-dessus, est Giov. Giocondi." It is thus seen, that both 
 Meusel and Brunet, though right, speak with uncertainty as to the identity of 
 this Giocondi who made the translation. It has been my good fortune to see a 
 rare and possibly urdque work, purchased by the British Museum within the 
 last few weeks, which tells us distinctly who this translator was. This work, 
 entitled " Speculi orbis succiuctiss, sed neque poenitenda neque inelegans decla- 
 ratio et canon." consists of only four leaves. It is written by Walter Lud, 
 canon of the cathedral of St. Di6 in Lorraine, and secretary to Bend II., Duke 
 of Lorraine and titular King of Jerusalem and Sicily, to whom it is dedicated 
 with the date of 1507. In it, speaking of the aforesaid letter of Vespucci 
 descriptive of his third voyage, he says, that it was " per Jocundum Veronensem 
 qui apud Venetos architecti munere fungitur, ex Italico in Latinum sermone 
 verso." 
 
 This information enlightens us completely as to the person in question, who 
 was the celebrated !Fra Giocondi, a native of Verona, and highly distinguished as 
 an architect at Venice, and, furthermore, was, at the very period when Leonardo 
 was at work on the portrait of Mona Lisa, engaged in the service of Louis the 
 Twelfth, and built the bridge of N6tre Dame at Paris, which is at present 
 standing, together with, as some had supposed, the petit pont in continuation, 
 crossing the southern branch of the Seine. This supposition was drawn from the 
 following couplet by Sannazaro — 
 
 " Jocundus geminum imposuit tibi, Sequana, pontem, 
 Hunc tu jure potes dicere Pontifioem ;" 
 
 but it has been since disproved. 
 
22 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 !Pra Giocondi was also as remarkable for his skill in the classical languages as 
 for his scientific and artistic attainments, which, together with the probability of 
 his family connection with the above-named Giuliano Giocondi, will explain the 
 reasonableness of his having the letter of Vespucci placed in his hands for 
 translation. It is not improbable that Giuliano Giocondi was connected with the 
 Florentine mercantile house of Berardi at Seville, of which Vespucci had in 1496 
 been the manager. Francesco Giocondi, the husband of Mona Lisa, it is true, 
 was a native of Eerrara ; but the long period of four years, during which Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci was engaged on the portrait of his wife, shows that he was a 
 resident of Florence at the time when the discoveries of the Florentine Vespucci 
 were there followed with the keenest curiosity and pride. Although these facts, 
 however, do not prove to demonstration a connection between Leonardo and the 
 interest in geographical explorations thus represented by Giuliano and Fra Gio- 
 vanni Giocondi, yet I offer them for quantum valecmt, and thiuk they are not 
 without their suggestive importance. It is also worth mentioning that we learn 
 from Vasari that Leonardo made a portrait of Vespucci in charcoal, which is 
 described as being that of a very handsome old man. This portrait is now 
 unknown. 
 
 I have stated that the letter I have just been speaking of was intended for 
 Soderini, and so it is shown to be, not only from the tenor of the address at its 
 commencement, but by the fact that it was afterwards printed by Ramusio, and 
 later by Bandini, with the name of Soderini at the head of it. It is however 
 not the less true that it was first printed with the name of Lorenzo di Pier- 
 francesco de' Medici. In a valuable letter from Professor Banke to the Baron 
 Von Humboldt, upon the subject of this simultaneous correspondence of Vespucci 
 with Soderini and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, we are informed who 
 this latter personage was. He belonged to the younger branch of the Medici 
 family, which, although equally wealthy with the elder branch, had no share in 
 the power experienced by the latter. After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
 in 1492, Pietro de' Medici, who assumed the reins of government at Florence 
 by various affronts alienated from him all his cousins of the younger branch, and 
 a deadly rivalry between the two branches was the consequence. The opposition 
 of the younger branch was most remarkably shown on the invasion of Charles 
 VIII., when Pietro de' Medici allied himself with the King of Naples, while his 
 cousins entered upon negociations with France, and received the ambassadors of 
 that country. At the very time when the victories and the successes of Charles 
 the VIII. were exciting great discontent among the people at Florence, these 
 movements were encouraged by the younger branch of the Medici, and Lorenzo 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 23 
 
 di Pierfrancesco in particular, whose partisans adopted the name of Popolani. 
 The family of Soderini had for a long time been regarded as the adherents of the 
 elder branch of the Medici, and ia fact no citizen of ^Florence had rendered 
 greater services to the father and grandfather of Pietro de' Medici than had 
 Tommaso Soderini ; ^but these services were forgotten by Pietro de' Medici, who 
 neglected and treated with disdaia the children of Tommaso. The latter in 
 consequence made common cause with the younger branch of the Medici, had 
 a share in the revolution of the 9th of November, 1494!, which overthrew the 
 elder branch, and took an active part in the republican system of government 
 which follqwed on these popular movements. It is true that at a later period 
 there arose some slight disagreement between the Soderini and the Popolani, 
 and that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was not pleased with the nomination in 1502 
 of Pietro Soderini, the son of Tommaso, to the rank of Gonfaloniere of Plorence ; 
 yet, in the main, the political interests of the Soderini and the younger branch 
 of the Medici remained united. Now it can be further proved that the Vespucci 
 themselves belonged to the republican party of Plorence. Guidantonio Yespucci, 
 of whom Bandini speaks at p. xvi., was closely mixed up with the movements 
 of this party. After the expulsion of Pietro de' Medici in 1494, he at first sat, 
 together with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, among the twenty accopiatori of the 
 first magistrate (NerH, Oommentarii de fatti civili di Pirenze, p. 59), and 
 afterwards himself became Gonfaloniere. The political connection of the 
 Vespucci with the younger branch of the Medici is further confirmed by a 
 letter written from Pistoja, in 1494, by Pietro Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici, 
 (See Bandini, p. xv.) who is most probably .the identical Lorenzo di Pier- 
 francesco, to whom Amerigo Vespucci addressed some of his letters during his 
 long absence from Italy. This connection of Amerigo with the republican party 
 at Plorence is by no means difficult to comprehend. Even Prancesco Lotti, who 
 is mentioned by Vespucci in the narrative of his second voyage, and by whom 
 he proposed to send a mappemonde to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, was in 1529 
 member of an administration entirely hostile to the Medici of the elder branch. 
 The title of Magnifico sometimes given by Vespucci to Lorenzo is easily in- 
 telligible, for, as it had always been conceded without opposition to the elder 
 branch, it might readily be applied to the younger branch also on account of the 
 important position they now held in connection with the affairs of state. Lorenzo 
 di Pierfrancesco died in 1503, and in this fact the Baron Von Humboldt finds a 
 difficulty, on the score of this narrative of the third voyage having been written, 
 as he says, after the fourth voyage, which was finished in June, 1504, for which 
 he advances as evidence the expression " Peraventura vi aggiugner6 la quarta 
 
24 Memovr on a Mappemonde 
 
 giornata," as if it were already completed; now this inference is not for a 
 moment tenable, for the next words following, in this narrative of his third 
 voyage, are, " Ho in animo di nuovo andare a cercar quella parte del mondo che 
 riguarda mezzogiorno ; " and, what is still more important, this letter was written 
 three years earlier than, and of course quite independently of, the collective four 
 voyages addressed to Soderini under date of the 4th September, 1504. This 
 confusion removed, the diflB.culty disappears, for the true date of the independent 
 narrative of the third voyage was probably at the close of 1502, and certainly 
 before Vespucci's departure on his fourth voyage on the 10th of May, 1503. 
 
 So much for a probable personal connection between the two distinguished 
 Florentines,* Leonardo da Vinci and Amerigo Vespucci. I will now proceed 
 to show a yet further connection between the map of the former and the writings 
 of the latter —a connection the certainty of which is established by that surest 
 of aU tests, the repetition of a blunder. It has been seen that on the east coast 
 of South America occurs the word Abatia, the real interpretation of which is 
 the well-known name of Bahia de todos os Santos. It is fortunate, for the 
 avoidance of prolixity, that the examination of the origin of this blunder 
 leads us, at the same time, into the history of the first suggestion of the name 
 of America, which was otherwise a point of interest that would have to be 
 dealt with in connection with the prominent peculiarity which I claim for 
 Leonardo's map. 
 
 But, before I commence my narrative, I will for clearness' sake state, as briefly 
 as possible, the dates of the earliest manuscript and engraved maps on which the 
 new world is delineated, as well . as the date of the first suggestion of the name 
 of America, the date of the first adoption of that suggestion, and the date of 
 the first map hitherto known on which that name was inserted. 
 
 Until the year 1832, the earliest known manuscript map containing the deli- 
 neation of America was one of the date of 1527, now in the military library at 
 Weimar ; it is earlier by two years than the map of Diego Ribero, in the same 
 library. In 1832, however, was discovered the now famous map of the pilot Juan 
 de la Cosa, who accompanied Columbus in his second voyage in 1493, and Hojeda 
 and Vespucci in their expedition of 1499. It was this Juan de la Cosa of whom, 
 according to the testimony of Bernardo de Sbarra, in a suit against Diego 
 Columbus, the admiral complained that being " hombre habil, andaba diciendo 
 que sabia mas que d." In this map, which is dated 1500, we find the earliest 
 known delineation of the new world. 
 
 « I do not hesitate to call Leonardo a Florentine, as Vinci, his native place, was but five leagues west of 
 Florence. 
 
m the Moyal Collections at Wmdsor. 25 
 
 It was in May of 1507, just one twelvemonth after the death of Columbus, 
 that one Martin Waldseemiiller, whose name is strangely HeUenized into Hyla- 
 comilus, produced a little work, entitled " Cosmographise Introductio," to which 
 was appended a Latin translation of the four voyages of Vespucci. In this 
 book, which was printed at the small town of St. Die, in Lorraine, and was 
 one of the only two works known to have been printed at that place (of which I 
 shall have presently to speak more fully), he proposes that the name of America 
 should be given to the new world. His suggestion is offered in the following 
 words : — " Et quarta orbis pars, quam, quia Americus invenit, Amerigen, quasi 
 Americi terram, sive Americam nuncupare licet." And a few pages later he 
 says : — " Nunc vero et haec partes sunt latius lustratae, 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 ex his binis Americi 
 navigationibus quse sequuntur liquid^ intelligi dant." In September of the same 
 year appeared a re-issue at St. Die of this same book, and in 1509 a new 
 edition of it was issued from the printing-press of the celebrated printer Johann 
 G-riininger. 
 
 In 1508, in an edition of Ptolemy published at Rome, appeared the first 
 engraved map containing the new world, by Johann E/uysch. It does not bear 
 the name of America ; but it is proved, in common with Leonardo's map, to have 
 had a Vespucian origin, for it contains the remarkable word Abbatia, of which I 
 have spoken already, and shall have presently to speak more fully, 
 
 In 1509 the name of America, proposed by Hylacomilus in 1507, appears, as if 
 it were already accepted as a well-known denomination, in an anonymous work 
 entitled " Globus Mundi," printed at Strasburg in that year. This was three years 
 before the death of Vespucci." Although, as Humboldt says, this work is anony- 
 mous, yet from the colophon I have discovered, if not the author, at any rate 
 from what quarter the book emanated. It runs thus, " Ex Argentina ultima 
 Augusti, 1509. J. Gruniger imprimebat, Adelpho castigatore." Now, this 
 Adelphus was a physician, a native of Miihlingen, near Strasburg, who after- 
 wards established himseK in that city. But I have but just said that in this self- 
 same year, 1509, a re-issue of the " Cosmographise Introductio," containing the 
 first suggestion of the name of America, appeared from the press of this same 
 
 » The work has been erroneously attributed by Panzer to Henricus Loritus Glaucanus, born in 1488, 
 author of " Geographise Liber." Basil, 1527. 
 
 E 
 
26 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 # 
 
 Johann Gruniger, with the following words in the colophon, " Johanne Adelpho 
 Mulicho, Argentinensi, castigatore." Mulicho simply means native of Miihlingen. 
 The coincidence suggests the suspicion that HylacomUus, the author of the 
 suggestion, is the author also of its adoption ; but, in any case, I think that the 
 idea presented to the mind by Humboldt of the denomination being well known 
 on account of its insertion in the " Grlobus Mundi," receives a serious modifica'- 
 tion, for the original suggestion and its adoption two years later are thus shown 
 to emanate, almost to a certainty, from the same quarter. 
 
 The first place in which we find the name of America used a little further 
 a-field, is not, as has hitherto been stated by Humboldt and others, in the 
 Pomponius Mela of 1522, but in the edition of that work of 1518. The passage 
 itself is to the following effect : — " Si Americam a Vespuccio repertam et earn 
 Eoae Terrse partem quae terrse a Ptolemseo cognitse adjecta est ad longitudinis 
 habitatse rationem referimus, longfe ultra hemisphserium habitari terram constat," 
 and occurs in a letter addressed by the editor Joachim Vadianus to Rudolphus 
 Agricola at the end of his commentary on the ancient geographer, and this letter 
 is dated from Vienna, 1512. But, although this Vadianus, whose real name was 
 Joachim Watt, writes from Vienna in that year, 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 disputations and verses gained him the chair of 
 the Professorship of the Liberal Arts at that school, and he subsequently studied 
 medicine, of which 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. Di^. 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 in his native town of 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 Prance. 
 
 The first map of the New World, either engraved or manuscript, hitherto 
 known with the name of America inserted on it, is a mappemonde by Appianus 
 bearing the date of 1520, annexed to the edition by Gamers of the Polyhistoria of 
 Julius Solinus (Viennse Austr. 1520), and a second time to the edition of Pom- 
 ponius Mela, by Vadianus, printed at Basle in 1522. 
 
m the Moyal Collections at Wmclsor. 27 
 
 Having thus laid before you the leading points of priority in connection with 
 our subject, some of them as hitherto accepted and others newly discovered by 
 myself, I will proceed with my story. 
 
 In September, 1504, Amerigo Vespucci indited an account of his four 
 voyages, which Humboldt, influenced by the fact of the Italian containing many 
 Italianized Spanish words, felt convinced was originally written in Spanish. Por 
 my own part, I am bold to confess that this fact conveys to me an exactly con- 
 trary conviction, and in that conviction I am supported by the opinions of many 
 learned friends whom I have consulted, and who, without a single exception, 
 agree with me in the belief that the letters were written originally by Vespucci 
 himself in Italian ; and that the thirty-three purely Spanish, and about one hundred 
 and forty Italianized Spanish or Portuguese words, which occur iu the letters, are 
 the result of his almost uninterrupted habit of speaking Spanish or Portuguese 
 during the previous twelve years. Of the correctness of this judgment we have 
 collateral evidence in the eflfect upon the Italian language of the introduction of 
 Spaniards at the court of Charles V. at Milan, thus ironically spoken of by 
 Ariosto in his Satire (Ariosto, Satira 3, a Messer Galasso Ariosto) : — 
 
 Signor, diro, non s'usa piu fratello, 
 
 Poichfe la vile adulazion Spagnola 
 
 Mess' lia la signoria fin in bordello, 
 Signor, se fosse ben mozzo da spola, 
 
 Dir6, fate per Dio che monsignore 
 
 Eeverendissimo oda una parola. 
 Agora non se puede, et es megiore 
 
 Che vos torneis a la magnana ; almeno 
 
 Fate oh'ei sappia ch'io son qui di fuore, 
 Eisponde ohe'l padron non vuol gU sieno 
 
 Fatte imbasciate se venisse Pietro, 
 
 Paol, Giovanni e'l mastro Nazareno. 
 
 I am further confirmed in my conclusion that the letters were originally 
 written in Italian by the fact that, whereas every one of the numerous 
 editions in. various languages, either of the separate third voyage or of the four 
 voyages collectively, declares from what language it had been translated, the 
 Italian edition of the four voyages, printed without date or year, but almost 
 certainly in the first decade of the sixteenth century, makes no allusion to any 
 translation at aU, while the earliest edition, a Latin one, which does announce 
 itself as a translation, declares it to be from the Italian into Prench, and from 
 the Prench into Latin. This question is not unimportant in connection with the 
 blunder in the word Abbatia, for, while Humboldt argues that '^ it is easier to 
 
 E 2 
 
28 Memoir on a Ma^pemonde 
 
 convert through ignorance the equally Spanish and Portuguese word ' Bahia ' 
 into ' Ahhaye ' than the Italian word ' Baia,' unless the Latin translator had 
 simply translated by mistake ' Abbaye ' for ' Bale,' " I venture to maintain, 
 in conformity with what I have already advanced, that Vespucci wrote iu his 
 original Italian letter the Portuguese word " Bahia," with the Italian conclusion 
 of the name " de tucti e sancte." Humboldt, it would seem, had never seen 
 the early separate Italian edition of these four voyages, a copy of which is in the 
 GrenviUe Library, but he had seen the reprint of the same in Bandini's " Life 
 and Letters of Vespucci; " for on page 159 of vol. iv. he quotes the passage in 
 question as having the form of "La Badia," and so, in fact, it stands in the 
 Grenville Library edition. And in this very form we have the explanation 
 of the whole blunder. It is easily intelligible how Vespucci, whose ItaKan 
 abounds in Italianized Spanish and Portuguese words, should, when writing 
 in Italian the Portuguese name "Bahia de todos os santos," describe it as 
 " Bahia (not the Italian ' Baia ') de tucti e sancte ; " and it is equally easy 
 to understand how the printer should misread an "h" for a "d," and thus 
 convert " La Bahia " into " La Badia." Whereas, had the original been 
 Spanish, and then translated into Italian, we should naturally have had the 
 pure Italian word " Baia," which would never by any blunder have led to 
 "La Badia" or anything like it. The translator from the Italian into the Prench, 
 finding nothing in the word " Badia " to suggest to his mind the idea of a bay, 
 gives it its literal rendering of " Abbaye," and hence, when translated into 
 Latin, comes in due course the word " Abbatia." An additional reason for 
 supposing that the original was written in ItaKan is, that the early Italian 
 edition in the Grenville Library is prefaced by an address to a person whose 
 name is omitted, but who is proved to be Pietro Soderini, Gonfaloniere of 
 Plorence, by the following concurrent points of evidence. Vespucci, in this 
 address, reminds the person that he is writing to, that " nel tempo della nostra 
 gioventu, vi ero amico, e hora servidore : e andando a udire i principii di 
 grammatica sotto la buona vita e dottrina del venerabile religiose frate di 
 S. Marco, fra Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, mio zio ; i consigli e dottrina del quale 
 piacesse a Dio che io avesse seguitato, che come dice il Petrarcha : lo sarei altro 
 huomo da quel che io sono. Quomodocunque sit, non mi dolgho ; perche sempre 
 mi sono dilettato in cose virtuose ; e anchora che queste mie patragne " non siano 
 convenienti alle virtu vostre, vi diro, como dixe Plinio a Mecenate j** voi solavate 
 
 * In this word " patragne," which means " fabulous stories," in Spanish " patranas," we have an 
 example of Vespucci's Italianized Spanish. 
 
 * He should have said, " Catullus to Cornelius Nepos." 
 
m the Royal Collections at TFmdsor. 29 
 
 in alciui tempo pigliare piacere delle mie ciancie. Ancliora che vostra Mag. 
 ' stia del continuo occupata n6 pubblici negotii, alchuna hora piglierete di scanso 
 consiunare un poco di tempo nelle cose ridicule o dilectevoU." He states also 
 that the bearer of these letters Benvenuto Benvenuti is " nostro Piorentino, molto 
 servitore di rostra magnificenza e molto amico mio," and the fourth letter 
 concludes with a recommendation of the writer's brother and family to the 
 protection of the person addressed in the following terms : — " E vi raccomando 
 Ser Antonio Vespucci mio frateUo e tucta la casa mia. Resto rogando Dio che 
 vi accresca i df della vita e che s'alzi lo stato di cotesta eccelsa Rep. e I'onore 
 di V. M. Data in Lisbona adi 4 di Settembre, 1504." 
 
 Now we know from the antiquary Giuliano Bicci that Soderini had been a 
 schooKeUow of Vespucci, and what I have read is otherwise sufficient in itself 
 to show that the letters were addressed to Pietro Soderini, but the fact is further 
 confirmed by Soderini's name being placed at the head of these letters forty- 
 three years later by Bamusio in his reprint of them in the first volume of the 
 " Navigationi e Viaggi " in 1550, and also by Bandini in his later reprint in 
 1745, it being presumable that they had seen the original letter with Soderini's 
 name placed at the head of the address. Who, then, will doubt that to 
 Soderini Vespucci would naturally write in Italian? But while it is thus 
 shown to be certaia that Soderini was the person thus addressed — a fact 
 upon which I have dwelt for the sake of showing one more incidental 
 link between Leonardo da Vinci, whose patron and friend Soderini was, and 
 Vespucci — another fact that is not so easily intelligible is equally certain, 
 and of the greatest importance to our subject. Forty-three years before 
 these letters and that address became placed before the world with Soderini's 
 name attached to them, we find them published in Latin so early as 1507, 
 with the address in the very same identical terms with respect to the writer and 
 the person addressed having been schoolfellows, but headed with the name of Ben^, 
 Duke, of Lorraine and King of Jerusalem and Sicily. This remarkable fact is sur- 
 rounded with mystery. What the relationship was between Duke Ben6 and Vespucci 
 I have been unable to trace, but the false glorification of both was unquestionably 
 given forth to the world in print in the lifetime not only of Vespucci and Duke 
 Ben6, but of Soderini also. It was under the auspices of Duke Bend II, 
 that these four letters were printed, as already stated, at St. Die in Lorraine, 
 with the dedication of the above-mentioned address of Vespucci to the Duke, 
 preceded by a Cosmographise Introductio, in which was offered the first 
 suggestion of giving to the New World the name of America. That this was 
 
30 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 a false glorification of Vespucci to the prejudice of his friend and captain the 
 illustrious and much-injured Columbus, whether intentional or not, has been 
 demonstrated by Humboldt in a manner which is as honourable to his impartiality 
 as it is to his rast learning and untiring industry. That it was a false glorifi- 
 cation of the Duke is highly presumable from the extreme improbability that 
 an address, involving personalities unquestionably applicable to Soderini, should 
 be equally applicable in the very same terms to the reigning Prince of Lorraine. 
 It is true that M. Beaupr^ in his "Etudes sur I'lmprimerie," Saint Nicolas 
 de Port, 1845, p. 81, advances arguments to the following effect to show 
 the possibility of Duke E/end having, in fact, been, as well as Soderini, a 
 schoolfellow of Vespucci. He says, " Is it so unlikely that Rene II., when 
 young, should have accompanied his father Perry de Vaudemont into Italy 
 either in 1460, when he was sent by Ren6 I. to the help of John of 
 Calabria, or in 1463, when Perry followed that prince, his brother by alliance and 
 his sovereign, in the last expedition which was attempted by the House of 
 Anjou to reconquer the kingdom of Naples ?" And he further suggests that no 
 city would be so convenient either for the education or the safety of the 
 youthful prince as Plorence. 
 
 This argument of M. Beaupr^'s is at the best but the advancement of a 
 possibility of very little probability, for, in mentioning the schoolfellows of 
 Vespucci, is it reasonable that the antiquary Griuliano Ricci should have omitted 
 the name of a person so high in rank, and who had otherwise subsequently ren- 
 dered himself so distinguished in history by his conflicts with Charles the Bold, 
 as King Eene, Duke of Lorraine ? But, whether truth or falsehood be at the 
 bottom of this presumed and publicly announced connection between Vespucci 
 and the Duke, I will proceed to a description of the details by which the 
 letters of the former came to be printed under the auspices of the latter. 
 
 The Duke's secretary was one Walter Lud, of whom I have already had occasion 
 to speak. Canon of the Cathedral of St. Dil, a small city on the banks of the 
 Meurthe within the Duke's dominions. A zealous friend of literature, this worthy 
 priest established a gymnasium or college at St. Di6, and, what is still more 
 remarkable, he there set up also a printing press. The professor of Latin at the 
 college was a young man of great abilities, named Mathias Ringmann, better 
 known in the literary world by the pseudonym of Philesius, with the adjunct of 
 Vosgesigena in allusion to his having been born either at Schlestadt or in a little 
 village near it, on the eastern side of the Vosges mountains. This Ringmann was 
 corrector of the press in Walter Lud's printing office. Another important 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 31 
 
 personage in tliis little confraternity was Martin WaldseemiiUer, or Hylacomilus, 
 for the first discovery of whose identity we are indebted to the unflagging zeal of 
 the Baron von Humboldt. He was a native of Fribourg in Brisgau, and entered 
 as student at the famous academy of that place on the 7th of December, 1490. 
 Going in the vintage season in 1504, in conformity with an annual habit of his, 
 to eat grapes in Lorraine, he became so charmed with the society of his 
 learned friends at St. Die, that he made up his mind to take up his abode 
 there, and became a teacher of geography at the gymnasium. Now, I cannot 
 but deem myself exceedingly fortunate that the possibly unique work of 
 Walter Lud, the " Speculum Orbis," to which I have referred, should have been 
 purchased for the British Museum at the very time that I was engaged in pre- 
 paring this paper. One sentence from this opuscule not only brings before 
 us the little group of fellow-labourers each in his own place, but Avill throw 
 a light, which has till now been wanting, on the history of the publication of 
 the letters of Vespucci. 
 
 After speaking of the " ignota terra per Lusitanise regem pridem inventa," he 
 says, " De quS. or& plura et veriora in Ptholomseo per nos et Martinum Ilacomylum 
 talium rerum scientissimum cum multis additamentis recognito (quem nostris 
 impensis mox Christo favente imprimemus) videre licebit. Quarum etiamre- 
 gionum descriptionem ex PortugaUia ad te, iUustrissime Rex Benate, GaUico 
 sermone missas, Jo. Basinus Sendacurius insignis poeta a me exoratus, quS, 
 pollet elegantly, Latin^ interpretavit. Et circumferunt bibliopolse passim ea de 
 re nostri Philesii Vogesigense quoddam epigramma in libello Vespucii per Jo- 
 cundum Veronensem qui apud Yenetos architecti munere fungitur ex Italico 
 in Latinum sermonem verso impressum quod bis subjicere libuit." Prom this 
 we learn that the Prench version of the letters of Vespucci, intended for King 
 Ben^, and which was probably in manuscript — ^for no copy in type has ever 
 been heard of — was prepared in lisbon, under the eye of Vespucci himself, 
 by which the seal of his sanction was given to the claim of early school-boy 
 intimacy, at first addressed ia Italian to Soderini but now transferred, without 
 any change except that of translation, to the Duke of Lorraine. We further 
 learn, and that now for the first time, that the translator from the Prench to the 
 Latin was not, as has been hitherto supposed upon Humboldt's conjecture, 
 Mathias Bingmann, otherwise known as Philesius, but the "insignis poeta," 
 Jean Basin de Sandacourt, also a canon of St. Di6. If his poetry were not 
 superior to his latinity, it must be confessed that his worthy friend Walter Lud 
 must either have been a very warm friend indeed, or a very incompetent critic. 
 
32 Memoir on a Mappemonde 
 
 unless, whicli is inconceivable, he spoke in irony of the " qu^ poUet eleganti^ " of 
 his really barbarous translation. 
 
 But further, we have in this extract from the " Speculum Orbis," an intimation 
 that our little cluster of friends were bent upon the production of an edition of 
 Ptolemy. Walter Lud wrote his "Speculum" in 1507, but it was not tUl six 
 years after, in 1513, that the great and reaUy valuable work thus promised ap- 
 peared. In a letter addressed to Essler and Ubehn, the editors of this edition, by 
 Giovanni [Francesco Pico di Mirandola, under date of Como, 1508, we have evidence 
 of two journeys made into Italy by Ringmann in connection with the subject of 
 Ptolemy, and in the same letter we have evidence of the manner in which the 
 discoveries of Vespucci were lauded, to the exclusion of those of Columbus. He 
 says : " Oujus viri (Ptolomsei) diligentise pleraque vos adhibituros retulit Phi- 
 lesius : inter quae ilia cum Ptolomseo ipsi, tum cseteris ignota scriptoribus, nostra 
 setate miro diviase providentiae munere, Lusitana classe reperta. QuS, de re ut 
 indicam illam navigationem subsignaremus, nuper in nostro ad Christum hymno 
 nostris etiam interpretamentis patefacto ita cecinimus : 
 
 " Quin et Ulysseo nuper de littore solvens 
 Nauta per infidum pelagus, per atlantica regna 
 Discurrens : viridique jugo post terga relicto 
 Arctoi relegens contraria sidera currus : 
 Pertulit BOOS tua Eex vexilla sub Indos." 
 
 The "Lusitana classe reperta" is all in Vespucci's honour, while Columbus is 
 utterly ignored. 
 
 In another letter from the editors of the 1513 edition of Ptolemy to the 
 Emperor Maximilian, we find that Pico de Mirandola gave Ringmann a Greek 
 manuscript of Ptolemy, and that this was before the appearance of the suggestion 
 of the name of America in 1507 is shown by an expression in the dedication of 
 the very book containing the suggestion. In it Hylacomilus says that he had 
 lately established a library or book-shop (librariam oflicinam), and that there he 
 had been laboriously occupied in the critical examination, both of a Greek manu- 
 script of Ptolemy, and of the edition of the four voyages of Vespucci. Whether 
 it was in the first or the second journey of Ringmann to Italy that he received 
 this manuscript from Pico de Mirandola I am unable to show, but it appears 
 probable that his first journey was several years before the second, and that in it 
 he caught the enthusiasm ia favour of Vespucci from communication with the 
 more justifiably enthusiastic compatriots of that navigator. I derive this 
 inference-from a remark in my extract from the Speculum Orbis of Walter Lud 
 
in the Royal Collections at Windsor. 33 
 
 wMch. says that a poem by Ringmann, which, appeared in the Cosmographise 
 Introductio, was also inserted in an edition of the third voyage translated by 
 Era Giovanni Giocondi four or five years before, as already described. In the 
 absence of a known reason for a connection between King E,en6 and Vespucci, 
 may it not be traced on the one side from this intercourse of E-ingmann with the 
 Italian connections of Vespucci, — among whom we must, upon grounds already 
 shown, reckon Leonardo da Vinci, — and on the other from the intimate relation- 
 ship of "Walter Lud with the prince in his character of secretary ; combined with 
 the manifest glorification of each and of aU of them, by the confraternity at 
 St. Di6 fixing upon Vespucci the honour of the discovery of the new world, by 
 the suggestion of the name of America in widely disseminated printed works 
 purposely dedicated to their princely patron ? 
 
 Prom the dates of the letter of Pico de Mirandola to the editors, and of another 
 from LUio Gregorio Giraldi to Pingmann himself in September, 1508, we may 
 presume that the preparation of the edition of Ptolemy was, at that time, going 
 on in full vigour ; but King Ren6 died in December of that year, and the con- 
 sequence was that the printing-press at St. Di6 was broken up, and Pingmann 
 went home to Schlestadt, where he died in 1511, at the early age of twenty-nine. 
 It is probable that his withdrawal from the work may have caused the delay 
 in the production of the contemplated edition of Ptolemy till 1513. When that 
 work appeared, however, it contained a new map, entitled Tabula Terre Nove, by 
 Hylacomilus, 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 : " Hec terra cum adjacentibus insuUs inventa est per 
 Columbum Januensem ex mandatis Pegis Castillise." No fact more strongly 
 than this could demonstrate the falsehood embodied by this very man in the 
 suggestion of the name of America, for this sentence is in direct contradiction 
 of the only basis upon which he could have pretended to have given this honour 
 to Vespucci; In the 1522 edition of Ptolemy, which I have not had an oppor- 
 tunity of seeing, there appears to be a repetition of a mappe-monde by Hyla- 
 comilus inserted in the 1513 edition, with the addition, on that of 1522, of the 
 name of America, for a long time considered the first insertion of that name 
 on any map. 
 
 These various facts, I submit, offer an explanation of the connection be- 
 tween Vespucci at Lisbon and the suggestion and adoption of the name of 
 America for the western world, as well as between both these and Leonardo da 
 
34 Memoir on a Ma/ppemonde 
 
 Vinci, on whose map we now find that name inserted at a period earlier than on 
 any other map with which we are as yet acquainted. 
 
 I ought scarcely to close this paper without one word of homage, however 
 feebly uttered, to the colossal genius of the wonderfully-gifted man who has now 
 in a manner been brought in presence before us. Of distinguished personal 
 beauty, with bodily strength so great that he could bend a horse-shoe with his 
 his hands as if it were lead, he possessed a comprehensive and effective grasp of 
 intellect which I believe we may look for in vain elsewhere amongst the sons of 
 men. Before I be blamed for this apparently audacious statement, let it be 
 remembered that his vast collections of manuscript notes in that uninviting hand- 
 writing of his from right to left, have not as yet been laid before the world in 
 print. But if only the statements made by Venturi, in his Essai sur les Ouvrages 
 physico-mathematiques de Leonard de Vinci, Paris, 1797, based upon the exami- 
 nation of a portion of Leonardo's papers be correct, I respectfully but confidently 
 repeat my eulogium. But, lest I be deemed presumptuous, let me quote the 
 words of one to whom all will listen with deference. Hallam, in his Literature of 
 Europe, vol. i. p. 216, says as follows : " His Treatise on Painting is known as a 
 very early disquisition on the rules of the art. But his greatest literary distinc- 
 tion is derived from those short fragments of his unpublished writings that 
 appeared not so many years since, and which, according at least to our common 
 estimate of the age in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths 
 vouchsafed to a single mind than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any 
 established basis." The discoveries which made Galileo and Kepler, and Maestlin 
 and Maurolycus, and Oastelli and other names illustrious, the system of Coper- 
 nicus, the very theories of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within 
 the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the 
 most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe 
 of preternatural knowledge. 
 
 But let facts be my sanction. " In an age of so much dogmatism," as Hallam 
 again remarks, " he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment 
 and observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature." 
 Beyond this, both as a musician and as an improvisatore poet, he surpassed all 
 his rivals. If we regard him as a sculptor, by the acknowledgment of all his 
 contemporaries, his monument to Erancesco Sforza could fairly claim the palm 
 by comparison with the most beautiful statues. As a painter he had Michael 
 Angelo for a rival, and Haffaelle for an imitator in energy and natural graceful- 
 ness of effect, and, if it should be the opinion of any that these two afterwards 
 
m the Royal Collections at Windsor. 35 
 
 surpassed him in that one art, it should he rememhered that to him justly he- 
 longs the merit of having first pointed out the road they so successfully followed. 
 In mechanics he was acquainted with the theory of ohlique forces applied to 
 the arm of the lever ; the relative resistance of beams ; the laws of friction ; 
 the influence of the centre of gravity on bodies in rest and in movement ; the 
 application of the principle of virtual velocities under a variety of circumstances, 
 the knowledge of which has been brought to so great perfection in our own times. 
 It was he who invented the smoke-jack, and, what is perhaps more striking than 
 all, there is found among his writings the design for a steam-gun. But beyond 
 evidences of theoretical knowledge of mechanics, his practical skill as a 
 mechanician was shown in most marvellous specimens of handiwork constructed 
 for adornment or amusement at a variety of princely festivals. In optics 
 he described the camera obscura, some ninety years before Porta developed 
 the idea into practice. He explained the effect of the sun's rays through 
 an angular hole, more than half a century before the same principle was 
 developed by Maurolycus. He instructs us on aerial perspective, the nature of 
 coloured shadows, the movements of the iris, the effects of the duration of 
 impressions on the eye, with many other optical phenomena, which were 
 unknown to his famous predecessor ViteUio. He conceived the first idea of a 
 barometer, and also of a diving apparatus. He not only made observations 
 promulgated a century later by Castelli on the movement of waters, but seems to 
 have been far superior to the latter, who, nevertheless, has been looked upon in 
 Italy as the founder of hydraulic science. He had very extraordinary but 
 correct notions as to the time of descent on inclined planes of equal height, 
 which he declared to be as their length. He first asserted that a body descends 
 along the arc of a circle sooner than down the chord, and that a body descending 
 an inclined plane will re-ascend with the same velocity as if it had fallen down 
 the height. He frequently repeats that every body weighs in the direction of its 
 movement, and weighs more in the ratio of its velocity ; by weight evidently 
 meaning what we call force. This is anticipative not only of Torricelli, a 
 century and a half later, but, as it would seem, approximatively at least, of 
 Huygens' theory of the wonderful properties of the cycloidal curve, some twenty 
 years later still. 
 
 Leonardo was in advance of the geologists in observing that the sea had 
 already covered mountains which contained shells ; and by remarking that 
 banks of such shells were, in process of time, covered by strata of fresh shells, 
 again covered by alluvium. He seems to have had an idea of the elevation of 
 continents, although he gives no intelligible reason for such a phenomenon. 
 
36 Memoir on a Map of the World. 
 
 He gave an explanation of the obscure light of the unUluminated part of the 
 moon by reflection from the earth, as Maestlin did one hundred years after. 
 He made the observation that respirable air alone could support flame. He 
 ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar to the heat 
 of the sun ; in which, with certain modifications, he is not far wrong. He 
 not only understood fortification well, but since, as he said, " artillery has 
 in our time four times the power it used to have, it is necessary that the fortifica- 
 tion of towns should be strengthened in the same proportion." He was 
 employed, as we have already seen, in several great works of engineering. 
 He was the first in his very boyhood to propose a canal from Pisa to Florence. 
 In after life, though still a young man, he made the Martesana Canal navigable 
 from Trezzo to Milan. He first proposed the use of lock-gates to meet the 
 difficulty of unequal levels in canals. He also was the fijst to recommend the 
 use of colmate, a process for removing marshes by conducting into them torrents 
 charged with alluvial matter, so that the mud brought down is there deposited, 
 and, the subjacent soil thus becoming raised, a fall for the stagnant water is pro- 
 cured, so as to allow of the employment of the ordinary methods of drainage. 
 He was, moreover, an ardent student of mathematics, of chemistry, of natural 
 history, of botany; and in his anatomical drawings the great John Hunter, who 
 examined them, remarked with admiring wonder the extreme diligence and ex- 
 quisite exactness of their author, especially in the drawing of the most minute 
 parts of the muscles. 
 
 In the presence of such a stupendous assemblage of original conceptions from 
 the mind of this one noble monument of God's creative power, what transcendant 
 honour must we own to have been shed upon the glorious country which gave 
 birth to such a man. Great as he was, and without compeer, we know that 
 he was not alone. Full many a kindred genius shed a lustre that can never die 
 upon the country and upon the age in which he lived ; many that, like him, have 
 poured forth thoughts to brighten the world's darkness, which in their amplitude 
 and perfection remind one of the birth of Miaerva full clad from the hand of 
 Jupiter ; and yet, amongst that host of intellectual giants, may I not fearlessly 
 assert that that one man, Leonardo da Vinci, has a right to be regarded in all 
 truth as inter maximos maximus ? 
 
 I remain, my dear Pkanks, yours very truly, 
 
 R. H. MAJOR. 
 
 To Augustus Wollastoa Franks, Esq. 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
•"'Fi^^i' "^fmj^ 
 
7uF*WiTW\Tre 
 
 Pi- 
 
 mi 
 
 ^MMo 
 
 
 1 ■•lis 
 
 mm 
 
 : 1 r.U.A '•rfirllMbr'i