cassia are carried away by the Portuguese.” Below this inscription is another which contains the following statement: “Portuguese navigators have inspected this part of this land, and have sailed as far as the fiftieth degree of south latitude without seeing the southern limit of it.” On the scroll on the western part of the delineated territory of South America this information is inscribed: “As far as this Spanish navigators have come, and they have called this land, on account of its greatness, the New World. Inasmuch as they have not wholly explored it nor surveyed it farther than the present termination, it must remain thus imperfectly delineated until it is known in what direction it extends.” On the upper part of the right margin of the map the following fiction respecting the configuration of the earth at the north pole is inscribed. “It is said in the book concerning the fortunate discovery[289] that at the arctic pole there is a high magnetic rock, thirty-three German miles in circumference. A surging sea surrounds this rock, as if the water were discharged downward from a vase through an opening. Around it are islands, two of which are inhabited.” North of Greenland is another inscription containing a popular fiction of the dangers besetting ships in the Arctic Ocean: “Here a surging sea begins; here the compasses of a ship do not hold, nor are ships which have iron about them able to turn about.” Among the perils of the Greenland Sea were the deceptions practised by the savages inhabiting the islands in it: “It is said that those who came formerly in ships among these islands for fish and other food were so deceived by the demons that they could not go on land without danger.” The four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci had acquainted him with so many unknown peoples and places in the New World that he was induced by his own inclinations and the suggestions of his friends to write an account of the explorations of the different expeditions with which he had been sent by the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal. In his letter, dated in Lisbon, the fourth of September, 1504,[290] he speaks of the intended publication of his voyages in a volume in the style of a geography (_un uolume in stilo geografia_), and calls the composition (_zibaldone_), “Le Quattro Giornate” (The Four Journeys).