The opinion of Columbus that a strait could be found to the south or southwest of Cuba through which ships might sail to Cathay, induced Vicente Yañez Pinzon and Juan Diaz de Solis in 1506 to search along the coast bordering the Bay of Honduras for a navigable passage to the Indian Ocean.[285] They held the same course as the admiral, says Herrera, “and sailing as far as the islands Guanajos steered westward as far as Golfo Dulce, but did not see it, for it lies hid. However, they observed the inlet the sea makes between the land that forms the bay and the coast of Iucatan.... From where they descried the Sierras of Caria, they steered northward and discovered a great part of the main-land of Iucatan.”[286] The unique and peculiarly shaped map made by the German cartographer, Johann Ruysch, contained in the edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s geography, printed at Rome, in 1508,[287] is the earliest engraved chart on which appear the fields of discovery, in the western hemisphere, entered by Columbus, Cabot, Cortereal, Cabral, Vespucci, and other early explorers of the coast of the new continent. Geographically ignorant of the longitude of the discovered part of North America, then called the New Land (Terra Nova), Ruysch represents it as if it were a part of the eastern coast of Asia, between the two hundred and eightieth and the three hundredth meridians. Better informed respecting its latitude, he delineates it as extending from the forty-fifth to the fifty-fifth parallel of north latitude.[288] Immediately north of the New Land is the Greenland Sea (Sinus Grvenlantevs), and beyond it, Greenland (Grvenlant), discovered by the Northmen. South of the New Land, between the fortieth and twenty-fifth parallels is the unnamed and falsely represented island of Cuba, on the west side of which is a scroll bearing the information: “As far as this the ships of Ferdinand, king of Spain, have come.” South of this island and that of Española (Spagnola) is the discovered part of South America, then denominated the Land of the Holy Cross or the New World (Terra Sancti Crucis sive Mundus Novus). The inscription on the represented territory embraces the following information: “At different places this region is inhabited, and it is supposed by many to be another world. Women and men appear either entirely naked or clad with interwoven leaves and the feathers of birds of various colors. They live together in common without any religion or king. They are continually at war among themselves. They eat the human flesh of captives. They exercise so much in the salubrious air that they live more than one hundred and fifty years. They are rarely sick, and then they cure themselves solely with the roots of plants. Here lions are born, and serpents and other terrible monsters found in the forests. Very large quantities of pearls and gold are in the mountains and rivers. From here Brasil-wood, or verzini, and