Note 90 — Chapter I

Humboldt, Examen Critique, i. 61, 65, 70; ii. 349. Columbus quoted this passage in October, 1498, in his letter from Santo Domingo to the Spanish monarch. Margry, Navigations Françaises, Paris, 1867, p. 71, “Les deux Indes du XVe siècle et l’influence Française sur Colomb,” has sought to reflect credit on his country by tracing the influence of the Imago mundi in the discovery of the New World; but the borrowing from Bacon destroys his case. (Major, Select Letters of Columbus, p. xlvii; Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 84.) If Margry’s claim is correct, that there was an edition of the Imago mundi printed at Nuremberg in 1472, it would carry it back of the beginning of Columbus’s advocacy of his views; but bibliographers find no edition earlier than 1480 or 1483, and most place this editio princeps ten years later as Humboldt does. It is generally agreed that the book was written in 1410. A copy of this first edition, of whatever date, is preserved in the Colombina Library in Seville; and it was the copy used by Columbus and Las Casas. Its margins are annotated, and the notes, which are by most thought to be in the hand of Columbus, have been published by Varnhagen in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, January, 1858, p. 71, and by Peschel in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 112,—who, however, ascribes the notes to Bartholomew Columbus. A fac-simile of part of them is given on p. 31. Cf. Major, Prince Henry, p. 349; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 3; Murphy catalogue, no. 27, bought by Cornell Univ. and Dinaux, Cardinal P. d’Ailly, Cambray, 1824.