Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/31

Rh France that first inscribed the name of America (Amérique) on its geographical charts. The oldest charts printed at Lyons bear the name of Amérique, as designating the New World. Such was the chart of 1522, engraven on wood, which was joined to the edition of Ptolemy in the shops of Melchoir and Gaspard Frechsel. Such, also, was the one published in 1541, by Hugues de Portes.

The Protestant presses of Germany were not slow, through envy, in giving currency to this usurpation. The apostate monk, Sebastian Munster, author of "The IntrotroductionIntroduction [sic] to a Table of Cosmography," spread the name of America by the press of Basle. In another direction, Joachim Vadianus, in his "Universal Cosmography," printed at Zurich, in 1548, propagated the name "America." Florence welcomed with ardor a name that flattered its patriotism; and Italy became the dupe of these ridiculously vain assumptions. After having first been inserted in a work of Cosmography, then graven on planispheres, the name is found, the first time, in 1570, engraved on a globe in relief. This globe, of a metallic composition, richly embossed in gold and silver, was the work of a Milanese, — Francesco Basso.

At that time the name "America" was accepted without dissent. For a long period Columbus was not remembered. His posterity, who could have revived his name, were already extinct in the male line. In forming his "Collection of Voyages," in 1507, Fracanzo de Montalbodo made no inquiry as regarded the death of Columbus, and even was ignorant of his last maritime expedition. In the Latin translation, the preface of which appears signed by Madrignano, the first of June, 1508, it was said, that "Up to this date, Christopher Columbus and his brother, delivered from their captivity, lived in honor at the Court of Spain." The continuator of Hernandez del Pulgar's celebrated "Chronicle of the Catholic Sovereigns," Master