Amerigo the Beautiful

In 1507 a German geographer named Martin Waldseemueller drew two maps of the known world. As research, he used the recent account of Florentine Navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who said he had found a new continent, actually South America. Waldseemueller named the land after its apparent discoverer--the first use of the word America for the New World.

Only later did Waldseemueller learn that in 1492 another navigator named Columbus had preceded Vespucci to the West. Waldseemueller tried to correct his error, but the misnomer stuck. His maps, one of them a rendition of the globe in twelve elliptical segments, became rare treasures for antiquarians.

Last week one of the two known surviving copies of the global map turned up for sale at London's famed auction house, Sotheby & Co. Owned by a Polish count, the map (11 3/8 in. by 16 3/8 in.) roused a gleam in the eye of Manhattan Rare Book Dealer Hans P. Kraus. He pushed the price up to $35,000 and walked off with the map.

Kraus further illustrated the high price of ancient manuscripts by plunking down $64,000 on the same day for an old (1480) French-English text, a first edition issued by William Caxton, England's first printer. The British Museum is already nibbling for the Caxton book, but Kraus intends to bring the map "home" to the U.S., hopes to sell it to the Library of Congress, "so Americans can see where their land was named.''

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