The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525Weise, Arthur James
History
The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525
Weise, Arthur James
America -- Discovery and exploration
With this fourth voyage, the zealous and enthusiastic navigator ended
his life-work. On the twelfth of September, 1504, Columbus for the last
time set sail from the attractive field of his numerous explorations
and arrived at San Lucar, on the seventh of November, broken down in
health, aged, and the victim of many unjust accusations and bitter
disappointments. Two years afterward, on the twentieth of May, 1506, he
died at Valladolid, being about seventy years old, leaving to another the
discovery, by the way of the west, of a navigable route to the remote
coast of Cathay.
As intended by him, when he set sail on his first voyage, Columbus
afterward made a map on which he delineated “all the sea and the lands
of the ocean-sea” (_del mar Océanus_) discovered by him.[218] Although
the admiral’s chart is lost, there are several maps extant, which, in
part, represent the islands of Juana, Jamaica, Española, and the smaller
ones, as he evidently had outlined them on his new sailing chart (_carta
nueva de navegar_). A map of the world, in the Estense library, at
Modena, made between the years 1501 and 1504,[219] and the map of the
New World (_tabula terre nove_), in the edition of Ptolemy’s geography,
printed in 1513, at Strasburg,[220] exhibit the islands, discovered by
Columbus on his first voyage, and of which he speaks in his journal of
1492 and 1493. The high latitudes in which he placed the Rio de Mares and
other rivers of Juana, when he made his discoveries “toward the north,”
are designated on these maps. On the Ptolemy map the name _c doffun de
abril_ at the southeast point of Cuba appears to designate the same
cape as that of _c de fvndabril_ on the map of the world made by Johann
Ruysch, the German cartographer, contained in the edition of Ptolemy’s
geography, printed at Rome in 1508.[221] Both of these misspelled
names are evidently anomalous forms of the Spanish designation, _C. de
Fuenterabia_. The names on Ruysch’s representation of the island of Cuba
correspond more closely to the Spanish orthography of the designations
given by Columbus to the places he visited than those which are inscribed
on the two maps previously mentioned.[222]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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