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Updated: June 4, 2025
Under the same title this summario is published in the third volume of Ramusio, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi. An Italian translation of De Legatione Babylonica entitled Pietro Martyre Milanese, delle cose notabile dell' Egitto, tradotto dalla Lingue Latina in Lingua Italiana da Carlo Passi. In Venezia 1564. Novus Orbis, idest navigationes primæ in Americam. Roterodami per Jo.
The obscurity of many of the sentences is, in a great measure, owing to false pointing. "The cosmographical description forms the last three pages of the letter. It was doubtless intentionally omitted by Ramusio, though it would be difficult to say why. Some of the readings are apparently corrupt; nor, ignorant as we are of nautical science, was it in our power to correct them.
From Marco Polo to Scott's Journal the literature of geographical discovery abounds with classics, and standards of comparison suggest themselves in abundance to the critic of Champlain's Voyages. Most naturally, of course, one turns to the records of American exploration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to Ramusio, Oviedo, Peter Martyr, Hakluyt, and Purchas.
As, by the account of Leo, salt is the most valuable commodity throughout the countries of the Negroes, Ramusio proposed that the ships should take in cargoes of salt at the island of Sal, one of the Cape de Verds, and thence supply the countries on the Niger, which was reported to be navigable for 500 miles into the interior; and that they should bring back gold and slaves in return; the latter to be brought to market at St Jago, another of the Cape de Verd islands, where they would be immediately bought up for the West Indies.
It is evident that whatever may have been the motives of Ramusio in making these repeated alterations of the statements in the letter, they not only show his own sense of their necessity, but they have had the effect to keep from the world the real character of this narrative in essential particulars, until its exposure now, by the production of the Carli version.
He has himself given an account of his adventures, and two of his companions, Christopho Fioravente and Nicolo di Michiel, did the same. Both of these journals are to be found in the collection of Ramusio; and extracts have been published from them by Hieronimus Megiserus, in a work entitled, Septentrio Novantiquus, printed in 8vo, at Leipsic in 1613. Forst.
In the paucity of authentic information respecting these discoveries, it seems proper to insert the following abstract of the journal of a Portuguese pilot to the island of St Thomas, as inserted by Ramusio, previous to the voyage of Vasco de Gama, but of uncertain date; although, in the opinion of the ingenious author of the Progress of Maritime Discover, this voyage seems to have been performed between the years 1520 and 1540.
The latter was misled in regard to the date; which he has inadvertently placed in 1504, after the death of Prince Henry, and even subsequent to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Bernal Diaz. Even Ramusio, in his introduction to the voyages of Cada Mosto, has made a mistake in saying that they were undertaken by the orders of John king of Portugal, who died in 1433.
Yet that statement was a part of the information which Ramusio received and communicated to his readers at the same time with the Verrazzano letter; and constituted a part of the evidence upon which he relied. How utterly false it was is shown by the agreement with Chabot and the capture and execution of Verrazzano by the Spaniards.
These words would seem to contain the solution of most of the mystery of the suppression of John Cabot's name in the narratives of Peter Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara, and all the other writers who derived their information from Sebastian Cabot during his long residence in Spain.
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