Note 576 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Humboldt (Cosmos, Eng. tr., ii. 420) particularly instances his descriptions of the coast of Brazil. For fifteen hundred years, as Humboldt points out (p. 660), naturalists had known no mention, except that of Adulis, of snow in the tropical regions, when Vespucius in 1500 saw the snowy mountains of Santa Marta. Humboldt (again in his Cosmos, Eng. tr., ii. 664, 667), according Vespucius higher literary acquirements than the other early navigators had possessed, speaks of his extolling not ungracefully the glowing richness of the light and picturesque grouping and strange aspect of the constellations that circle the Southern Pole, which is surrounded by so few stars,—and tells how effectively he quoted Dante at the sight of the four stars, which were not yet for several years to be called the Southern Cross. Irving speaks of Vespucius’ narrative as “spirited.”