Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/29

Rh from his conversations with him, a liking for cosmography and for distant wonders. Amerigo quitted the counter for the astrolabe and the sextant, and made several voyages; after which he became pilot-major. At a later period, he was placed at the head of the hydrographic council. In his youth, his uncle, George Anthony Vespucci, a learned religious of St. Mark, charged with the education of several children of illustrious blood, had associated him in their studies. His style of writing being graceful and diffuse, Amerigo, after his studies, continued to correspond with several of his old fellow-students, who attained high positions in Europe. The description of the voyages he made to these new countries, addressed by him to the Duke René de Lorraine, to Lorenzo de Pier Francesco de Medicis, and to the gonfalonier of Florence, Pietro Soderini, was echoed aloud. In one of his "Four Narrations," some vague and ambiguous expressions he used, led to the belief that he was the first who had seen terra firma. He seems to have given to these new countries the name of the New World.

Nevertheless, nobody hitherto had bestowed a name on the continent discovered by Columbus. The Discovery having been made under the auspices of the Cross, and for the triumph of the Cross, this new land was indicated on charts by the sign and name of the Cross. The continent was at first called ", or New World." The celebrated edition made in Rome of the Geography of Ptolemy, by Marc de Benevent and Jean Cotta de Vérone, in 1608, reproduced Ruysch's Map of the World, in which the new continent was designated by these words: ", sive Mundus Novus." But during this time, the Narration of Amerigo Vespucci, already published at Vicenza, was, the preceding year, republished at Milan; and, without desiring