THE FIRST "AMERICA."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 264, 8 November 1933, Page 6

THE FIRST "AMERICA."

Who first gave America its name? According to the generally accepted view, the earliest printed mention of the word was in the famous map of Martin Waldseemuller, which dates to 1507 —fifteen years after Columbus' first voyage and ten years after Cabot had reached the American mainland. But there is a rival for the honour (says the "Manchester Guardian"). In a library at Providence, Rhode Island, a map is preserved which some have claimed to be older than that of Waldseemuller. These claims are examined and decisively rejected by a writer in the current issue of the "Geographical Journal," who also provides a new attribution for the map. In his opinion, it can be. put down to a copyist's following of Waldseemuller. Apparently what happened was that Amerigo Vespucci's account of his travels was read by Waldseemuller, who thereupon perpetrated his immortal howler of "America because Americus discovered it" — that howler which the world has agreed to follow ever afterwards. Then Cochlaeus, the humanist schoolmaster of Nuremberg, decided to imitate Waldseemuller and also put down "America" in the fine new maps he was making for his boys. So the ball started by the ingenious Amerigo 'began to roll. There can never have been a more stupendous piece of bluff. The trouble with Amerigo Vespucci was that he was a teller of fairy stories. His main' fairy story was that he had discovered America —had. made a long voyage in 1497 during which he had landed on' the American continent eight days before Cabot. Only slowly did tlie world later begin to suspect that Amerigo had never made the voyage at all. But the damage was done. Hi's account of the, trip, modestly entitled (in Latin) "Amerigo's Njw World," had been published. It is curious that "America" does not appear on the later maps of Waldseemuller, and some think this is because the cartographer had, in the interval, discovered Vespucci to be a fraud. But in the 1507 map the word had pone forth, and ever afterwards tlie lands beyond the seas were to be known not as "Columbia" nor yet as "Cabot Land," but as the "new world" of a man who never j=aw them.