Sales catalogue 491: Maggs Bros

Date:
1927
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/50
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 491: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/326 (page 4)
    11 A.D. [5] VARTHEMA (Lodovico). Novum Itinerarium. First Latin Epirion. Folio. Half bound. Milan, Jacomo and Legnano, (1511). 15 The rare first Latin edition of Varthema’s famous travels to the India and the East. It was translated from the Italian edition of the previous year, by Archangelo Madrignano. Varthema set out on his travels in 1502. He visited India, then made for the Straits of Malacca and the Spice Islands. He is the first European to give a trustworthy account of Banda and the Moluccas. On his return to India he joined the victorious Portuguese and told them stories sf the Spice Islands, and of a sea-captain, presumably a Malay or Arab, who pointed out to him, how when the North Polar Star was no longer visible, he steered by a group of four or five stars in the South, a constellation now known as the Southern Cross, and how to the southward of Java there were other races who steered by these stars, and how the day in the far south only lasted four hours, and that it was colder than in any other part of the world. A day of only four hours duration would mean a latitude considerably south of Tasmania. Whether this captain was only spinning a yarn, or whether some Eastern seamen had actually ventured far southwards, is not known, but Varthema’s words were accepted and treated seriously at the time, and ‘‘ when the Sixteenth Century Map-maker drew in bold hard outline the coast of this great Southern Continent, he wrote across it the words: ‘‘ That immense lands exist here is consistent with what is said by Paulus Venetus (Marco Polo) and Ludovicus Varthema.’’ | Apart from theories, Varthema’s great voyage did lead to this, that a few years later, in 1512, three Portuguese vessels, said to have been commanded, according to contemporary statements, by d’Abreu, Francisco Serrano, and Ferdinand Magellan, set sail from India and traced the route to the Molucca Islands, and Ternate, the Islands of Cloves and Spices; a voyage which resulted in the Portuguese Settlement at the Maluccas. Serrano went to live in the Island of Ternate, and thence wrote to Magellan, who was in Portugal, describing the country. This led Magellan to determine on discovering a shorter route to the Moluccas and resulted in his famous voyage into the Pacific Ocean.