The European connection is also not without interest, for the skit—the first part of the "Isle of Pines," published without name of author—had an extraordinary run.
In 1493 a little four-leaved translation into Latin of a Columbus letter announcing the discovery of islands in the west—De insulis nuper inventis—ran over Europe, startling the age by a simple relation which proved a marvellous tale as taken up by Vespuccius, Cortes, and a host of successors.{1} For a century the darkness of a new found continent slowly lifted and the record was collected in Ramusio, in De Bry, in Hulsius, and in Hakluyt, never felling treasuries of the wonderful, veritable schools for the adventurous. Another century had shown that, so fer from decreasing in greatness and in opportunities, the field of discovery had not begun to be tested, and in the summer of 1668 a new island—the Isle of Pines—was flashed before the London crowd, and proved that the flame of quest with danger was still burning. A new island! The interest was international, for nations had already long fought over the old discovered lands.
1 The intelligent industry of Mr. Wilberforce Eames has
identified eleven issues of the letter of Columbus, printed
in 1493, in Barcelona, Rome, Basle, Paris, and Antwerp; and
twelve issues of the Novus Mundus of Vespucci us, printed
in 1504, in Augsburg, Paris, Nuremberg, Cologne, Antwerp,
and Venice. An earlier and even more extraordinary
distribution of a letter of news is that of the letter
purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor
Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How
great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter,"
writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from
the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a
list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in
the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great
Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several
renderings in old German verse." The cause of this
popularity was the hope offered by the reported exploits of
Prester John of a counterpoise to the Mohammedan power.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxii. 305.
An even greater contest was being waged for commerce, and with the experience of Spain in gathering the precious metals from new found lands, every discovery of hitherto uncharted territory opened the possibility of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, and the merchantman sailed armed and ready to inflict as well as to repel aggression, only too willing to descend upon a weaker vessel or a helpless settlement of a power which had come to be regarded as a "natural enemy." So in Holland and in Germany the leaflets containing the story of the Isle of Pines were received with mingled feelings, exciting a desire to share in the possible benefits to be gained or extorted from natives of the new lands, or from those who had the first opportunity to exploit a virgin territory. On the first receipt of those leaflets merchants held back their vessels about to sail, to await more definite information on this fourth island of the Terra Australis incognita.
An examination of the known issues of the tract proves this interest and offers an almost unique study in bibliography; for I doubt if any publication made in the second half of the seventeenth century—even a state paper of importance, as a treaty—attained such speedy and widespread recognition. A list of the various issues will be found in an appendix: it only remains to call attention to a few of the many novelties and variant characteristics of the editions.
