Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
Meanwhile another student, Joachim Watt, a native of St. Gall, in
Switzerland, now about thirty years old, who had been a student
of Camers, and who is better known by the latinized form of his
name, Vadianus, had, in November, 1514, addressed a letter to
Rudolfus Agricola, in which he adopted the suggestion first made by
Waldseemüller that the forename of Vespucius should be applied to
that part of the New World which we now call Brazil. This letter
was printed at Vienna (1515) in a little tract,—_Habes, Lector,
hoc libello, Rudolphi Agricolæ Junioris Rheti ad Jochimum Vadianum
epistolam_,—now become very rare. It contains also the letter of
Agricola, Sept. 1, 1514, which drew out the response of Vadianus dated
October 16,—Agricola on his part referring to the work on Mela which
was then occupying Vadianus (a copy owned by Stevens, _Bibliotheca
geographica_, no. 2,799, passed into the Huth Library, _Catalogue_, v.
1506. Harrassowitz has since priced a copy, _Catalogue_, List 61, no.
57, at 280 marks).
The _De situ orbis_ of Mela, as edited by Vadianus, came out finally
in 1518, and contained one of the two letters,—that of Vadianus
himself; and it is in this reproduction that writers have usually
referred to its text (Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 92; Murphy,
no. 2,004; Leclerc, no. 458; Sunderland, no. 10,120; Graesse, v. 401;
Carter-Brown, i. 55). Camers also issued at the same time an edition
uniform with the Aldine imprint of Solinus; and this and the Mela are
often found bound together. Two years later (1520) copies of the two
usually have bound up between them the famous cordiform map of Apian
(Petrus Apianus, in the Latin form; Dienewitz, in his vernacular).
This for a long time was considered the earliest engraved map to show
the name of America, which appeared, as the annexed fac-simile shows,
on the representation of South America. There may be some question
if the map equally belongs to the Mela and to the Solinus, for the
two in this edition are usually bound together; yet in a few copies
of this double book, as in the Cranmer copy in the British Museum,
and in the Huth copy (_Catalogue_, iv. 1372), there is a map for each
book. There are copies of the Solinus in the Carter-Brown, Lenox,
Harvard College, Boston Public, and American Antiquarian Society
libraries (cf. Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, p. 175; _Bibl. Amer.
Vet._, no. 108; Murphy, no. 2,338; Trübner, 1876, £15 15s.; Weigel,
1877, 240 marks; Calvary, 1883, 250 marks; Leclerc, 1881, no. 2,686,
500 francs; Ellis & White, 1877, £25). The inscription on the map
reads: “Tipus orbis universalis juxta Ptolomei cosmographi traditionem
et Americi Vespucii aliosque lustrationes a Petro Apiano Leysnico
elucbrat. An. Do. M.D.XX.” Harrisse (_Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions_,
no. 68) cites from Varnhagen’s _Postface aux trois livraisons sur
Vespucci_, a little tract of eight leaves, which is said to be an
exposition of the map to accompany it, called _Declaratio et usus
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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