_Cortes_, _De Insvlis nvper inventis_, Coloniæ, 1532, is a translation of Hernan Cortés' second and third letters, with Peter Martyr's _De Insulis_, and a letter from Fray Martin de Valencia, dated Yucatan, June 12, 1531, with some letters from Zumárraga, first bishop of Mexico.
_Grynævs_, _Novvs Orbis_, Paris and Basle, 1532, is a collection of the voyages of Columbus, Pinzon, Vespucci, and others. In this work the assertion is made that Vespucci discovered America before Columbus, which aroused the wrath of Las Casas, and seems to have originated the subsequent bitter attacks on Vespucci. About the maps originally published with this work there seems to be some doubt, most copies, like my own, having no map. According to _Stevens' Notes_, pp. 19, 51-2, pl. iii. no. 4, the Paris edition of _Grynæus_ contained a map made by Orontius Fine in 1531. The following is a reduction from Stevens' fac-simile on Mercator's projection:
[Illustration: ORONTIUS FINE'S MAP, 1531.]
All of the New World, so far as explored, is represented with tolerable accuracy, but the unexplored South Sea coast is made to extend westward from the region of Acapulco, and to join the southern coast of Asia, which is laid down from the ancient chronicles. Instead of being, as Stevens terms it, a "culmination of absurdities," I regard this map as more consistent with the knowledge of the time than any other printed during the first half of the sixteenth century. North America when found was regarded as Asia; South America was at first supposed to be a large island, and later an immense south-eastern extension of Asia; subsequent explorations, chiefly that of Magellan, showed the existence of a vast ocean between southern America and southern Asia; official maps left unexplored regions blank, expressing no theory as to the northern extension of the Pacific Ocean; other maps, as we have seen, without any authority whatever, make that ocean extend north and completely separate Asia from the New World. The present map, however, clings to the original idea and makes North America an eastern extension of Asia, giving the name America to the southern continent.
The map in the Basle edition of _Grynæus_, also given in _Stevens' Notes_, pl. iv. no. 4, closely resembles _Schöner's Globe_ of 1520 (see page 137).