Volume 5 — Translated from Revue des Questions Historiques. Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus. The True Origin of the Name of America.

I.

For three centuries, the world has regarded it as an historical fact that Christopher Columbus, after enduring many wrongs at the hands of ungrateful Spain, had the unspeakable mortification of seeing a usurper, screened behind public injustice, wrest from him not only the honor of bestowing his name on the world he had discovered, but the reward of glory, and the supreme consolation of his last days. Fortunately this belief is erroneous. Neither was Americus Vespucius a despoiler, nor was Columbus the victim of so poignant an affront. It is true that the great navigator became after death the subject of shameful misapprehensions; but his countrymen should be held as free from the responsibility of this injustice as Columbus was free from suspicion or presentiment of coming evil. The facts are fully explained by the illustrious Prussian savant, who has consecrated his glorious career in great part to the study of the New World. [Footnote 187]

Americus or Alberic Vespucius, (Amerigo Vespucci,) born at Florence, March 9th, 1451, of an important family, was educated by his uncle, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a Dominican monk, and one of the honorable personages connected with the Renaissance. His fellow-student was René de Vaudémont, who, later in life, after gloriously defending his duchy of Lorraine against Charles the Bold, exercised in peace a noble patronage of science and letters.

Americus, when about forty years of age, left Italy for Spain, and entered the flourishing commercial house founded at Seville by his countrymen the Berardi. At this period a large number of Italians established themselves in Spain, in Portugal, and even in England. Some became promoters of the commerce fed by Portuguese discoveries, (the Marchioni at Lisbon;) others (Cadomosto, the Corte reali) traced out a route along the African coast or explored the icy barrier that guards the north-west passage; while others again, (Christopher Columbus, John and Sebastian Cabot,) crossed the Atlantic ocean, bringing back a wondrous discovery. This was one of the glories of Italy, so rich in all glory during the fifteenth century.

At first a clerk, and in 1496 the general accountant of the Berardi, Americus Vespucius listened with passionate interest to narrations uttered by the lips of Christopher Columbus himself. He studied astronomy and the science of navigation, and made four voyages; the first two under protection of the Spanish flag, the last two under that of Portugal.

He naturally drew up an account of these expeditions. Like Columbus he related his foreign experiences to friends and patrons; first, in three successive letters, describing his first three voyages, written to the Florentine, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici; and later, after his fourth expedition, in a single narrative, containing a résumé of all his travels, addressed simultaneously, but not in the same form, to another countryman, the gonfalonniere Piero Soderini, and to the Duke of Lorraine, René II. This last was similar in tenor to a narrative sent by him a short time before to Ferdinand the Catholic.

These four voyages, so soon made famous, are extracts, varied by Vespucius according to the correspondents for whom they were destined. He drew them from a complete and detailed account, written according "to the weakness of his puny talent," [Footnote 188] as his overstrained modesty expresses it; a work executed with assiduous care, "in order that coming generations might remember him," but which he never published. It has not yet been brought to light.

It is, then, only by those of his printed letters that have come down to us—and they are not all preserved—that we know the dates and circumstances of his voyages.

In the first voyage, which took place between May 20th, 1497, and October 15th, 1499, he recognized the coasts of Surinam and of Paria, at the mouth of the Orinoco. In the second, dated from May 6th, 1499, to September 8th, 1500, he crossed the equator and saw Cape St. Augustine off Brazil; and from there sailed north to Paria and Hispaniola. The dates of these two expeditions contradict each other; for, according to them, his second voyage must have begun five months before the first ended. Moreover, the date 1497 for the beginning of the first voyage is inadmissible. The registers of the Spanish administration (La Casa de Contratacion at Seville) prove that, from April, 1497, to May, 1498, Americus Vespucius was detained at Seville and San Lucar, occupied with preparations for the third voyage of Christopher Columbus. [Footnote 189]

For this reason the Florentine has been accused of fabricating this pretended voyage by disguising a few incidents drawn from the second; and of having antedated his departure from Spain, in order at one stroke to earn the credit of first touching terra firma at Paria, and deprive Christopher Columbus of that honor. We shall discuss this question later.

It is a singular fact that, without attributing to himself any share in the command, and even while distinctly stating that he was there under orders "to aid in making discoveries," [Footnote 190] he does not name the chiefs under whose authority he was placed.

But, in spite of this reticence, we gather from the deposition of Alonzo de Hojeda in the lawsuit brought against the crown by the son of Columbus in 1508, that Vespucius served on the squadron of Hojeda. [Footnote 191]

A comparison between the narratives left by both leads to the conclusion that the first voyage of Americus, so inaccurately dated, must be identified with that of Alonzo. [Footnote 192]

But, instead of accompanying the latter during the entire expedition, Vespucius, after exploring the coast of Paria with him, left him at Hispaniola at the end five months. Then, having been absent only from May 5th to October 15th, 1499, he must have returned to Spain in time to embark in the December of that year with the expedition Vicente Yanez Pinzon. [Footnote 193]

This expedition, which ended in September, 1500 agrees in a host of details with the second voyage of Vespucius. [Footnote 194]

These enterprises aroused the attention of the King of Portugal, Emmanuel le Fortune, in whose service our traveller let himself be enrolled. He joined a squadron (May, 1501, to Sept. 1501) sent to reconnoitre the land of Santa Cruz, or Brazil, discovered April 22d, 1500, by the Portuguese Admiral Alvarez Cabral, who, while on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and the East-Indies, had been dragged westward by winds and currents. In this voyage Americus Vespucius passed the equator by a distance which he values at 52°. On this he boasts of having traversed one fourth of the world (40° lat. north of Lisbon to the equator 50° lat. south; total 90°, or the quarter of a meridian.) He gives a brilliant description of the inhabitants, of natural features in that region, and of southern constellations. The leader of this expedition is not known. One remarkable fact, the encounter at Cape Verd with the vessels of Alvarez Cabral, returning from Malabar to Lisbon, and the details which Vespucius received from a member of that expedition concerning the admiral's adventures in the Indies, and transmitted to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, [Footnote 195] prove the habitual veracity of the Florentine navigator, confirmed and attested in this instance by Portuguese documents. [Footnote 196]

The fourth voyage, (June, 1503, to June, 1504,) made probably under the direction of Gonzalo Coelho, had an object which Americus extols beforehand without clearly explaining it: "I shall do many things," he writes to Medicis, "for the glory of God, the good of my country, and the perpetual commemoration of my name." It appears that the king of Portugal wished to discover a passage to the Indies further south than Brazil; and, if it be true that Vespucius had already penetrated to the fiftieth degree of southern latitude, he must have just missed giving his name to the straits, whose discovery twenty years later immortalized Magellan. But results disappointed these cherished hopes and anticipations. The incapacity of the commander-in-chief, whose name the narrator conceals while roundly abusing his presumption and folly, rendered it disastrous.

Emmanuel, occupied at that period with grand projects of conquest in Oriental India, abandoned all attempts directed to the West. Vespucius on his side, disgusted with the barren service of Portugal, lent ear to King Ferdinand's solicitations, and, with a facile change of patron not without precedent among his contemporaries, returned to Castile. We find him leaving Seville for Valladolid, where the court was assembled, bearing an introduction to Diego, son of Christopher Columbus, from the admiral himself. Columbus recommends him (February 5th, 1505) as a man "to whom fortune has been adverse, and who has not enjoyed the legitimate fruit of his labors."

He received a commission to equip a squadron destined to seek a western route to the "land of spices." But after two years of preparation, Ferdinand, wearied with dissensions with his son-in-law Philippe le Beau, abandoned the design. At all events, on the 2d of March, 1508, he appointed Americus Vespucius to be pilot-in-chief (piloto mayor) at Seville, with a salary of fifty thousand maravedis, with these duties: first, to make sure that the pilots understood the use of astrolabe and quadrant; second, to make out a table of positions, to bear the name of Padron real, and serve the sole purpose of fixing maritime routes; third, to oblige pilots after each voyage to explain, in the presence of the officers of La Casa de Contratacion and of the piloto mayor, the exact position of the newly discovered lands, and also any corrections in the bearings of coasts, in order that all necessary changes might be recorded in the Padron real.[Footnote 197]

It was while filling this eminent position that Americus Vespucius died at Seville, on the 22d of February, 1512, aged sixty-one years, without having made another voyage.

II.

Thus lived Americus Vespucius, joining actively and honorably for the last twenty years of his life in the gigantic labors by which the mariners of Castile and Portugal wrenched one by one her secrets from the sea.

Valued and sought by kings as well as by the most illustrious men, a little vain himself, proud of the early education that had raised him above the generality of navigators, with a mind rather commonplace than brilliant, nowhere does he give evidence in his narratives of a dishonest leaning toward usurpation; nor does a single act accuse him of such desires.

And yet usurpation there was. Let us discover its source and the manner of its consummation.

The Italian friends with whom Americus was in correspondence probably took upon themselves to publish his letters. The first one put in print was the letter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, containing an account of his third voyage. Rich in curious details, and in vivid pictures of habits and manners, this little work was the more striking to imaginations already overwrought, that the narrator's explorations had embraced vast coast regions of southern latitudes. [Footnote 198]

The first publication of this third voyage appears to have been made in Italy. The Latin language served it for a passport beyond the Alps, and furnished the type for numerous French and German translations. The first Latin edition known is without date, and bears the name of the publisher Lambert, in Paris. Afterward came those of Otmar, in Augsburg, 1504, published previously under the title of Mundus Nova, an expression used by Americus himself; and those of Strasburg, published by Hupfuff, in 1505; those of Leipzig, 1506.

Soon the Italians with their génie d'ensemble gather together into ever-increasing collections various narratives published separately. First appeared the "Book of all the Expeditions of the King of Spain among the newly discovered Islands and Mainlands," (printed in Venice, 1504, in quarto,) by Albertine Vercellese di Lisona. This collection comprises only the first three voyages of Christopher Columbus, with those of Pietro Alonzo, and of Pinzon. Three years later, the great collection of Vicenzo absorbs all these, adding to the voyages made by Spaniards those made by the Portuguese, and placing en vedette, as we say nowadays, the name of Americus Vespucius: Mondo Novo e Paesi Nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vespuxio, Florentine, 1507. The author, who writes anonymously, was Alessandro Zorzi.

This book was also translated into Latin at Milan, 1508; into German by Jobst Ruchamer, of Nuremberg, 1508; and into French, by Mathurin du Redouer, of Paris, without date. Of the French version, several editions followed each other in rapid succession about the year 1516.

Thus popularity became rapidly attached to the name of Americus Vespucius. These collections, disseminated through the learned nations of Europe, gave the Florentine the fame of having traversed a greater extent of newly discovered country than any other man, and predisposed public opinion to give him all the credit of the essential discovery.

But the decisive influence came from a remote corner of the Vosges.

René II., Duke of Lorraine, the old school companion of Vespucius, shared, as has been already said, the elevated tastes natural to princes of the Renaissance. He followed with attentive eye the explorations of navigators, and favored the progress of geographical science.

Americus Vespucius addressed to him, as we know, from Lisbon, in 1504, an account or rather an abstract of his four voyages.

There lived in those days in Lorraine, in the little town of Saint Dié, a learned bookseller, a native of Fribourg-en-Brisgau, and an ancient student in the university of that town. Following a custom of the time, he had, by a Greek transformation, translated his name from Martin Waldsee Muller to Martinus Hylacomylus. [Footnote 199] He prepared an edition of Ptolemaeus. The mathematician of Alexandria, the last exponent of geographical knowledge and of cosmography among the ancients, had been successively the oracle of the immovable middle ages and of the invincible pioneers who opened the modern era. The world was never weary of making reprints of his writings, adding in a supplement what antiquity had not known of our globe, or as the saying went, of lands outside Ptolemaeus, (regiones extra Ptolemaeum.)

But before entering upon his great work, Hylacomylus published an introduction to the cosmography, and as an addition precious as it was novel, enriched it with the four voyages of Americus Vespucius, under this title "Cosmographiae introductio cum qui busdam geometriae ac astronomiae principlis ad eam rem necessariis. Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucii navigationes." He wrote anonymously, revealing his name only with the second edition in 1509.

From whom did he obtain these four voyages, never before printed? No doubt from the Duke of Lorraine. But he is silent upon that point, limiting himself to the information that they had been translated from Italian into French and from French into Latin.

Here and there in the nine chapters that compose his work Hylacomylus alludes to the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, extolling their extent and their scientific importance. "The torrid zone," he says, "is habitable and inhabited. The Golden Chersonesus and Taprobane contain many human beings, as well as a very considerable portion of the country entirely unknown until lately, when it was discovered by Americus Vespucius."

Further on, in a more decided manner, after mentioning the seven climates described by Ptolemaeus, and named after several remarkable towns, mountains, or rivers of the northern hemisphere, Hylacomylus opposes to them six others recently recognized in the southern hemisphere. The names of the first five repeat those of the north in symmetrical opposition. [Footnote 200] In the sixth, toward the antarctic region and the extremity of Africa, he places Zanzibar, discovered shortly before, the islands of Java Minor, (Sumatra,) Seula, (Ceylon,) with the fourth part of the world; "and this quarter, since Americus discovered it, we may be allowed to call the land of Americus, or America."

Finally, and it is here that this obscure author decides the question for future ages, he enumerates the countries comprised in Europe, Asia, and Africa. He reminds us that Europe and Asia are the names of two queens, and continues: "Now these three portions have been explored to their utmost limits; and another, a fourth, has been discovered by Americus Vespucius, (as we shall see later.) Now I see no grounds upon which opposition can be made to naming it America, or the land of Americus, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of sagacious genius, since Europe and Asia owe their names to women."

Two series of distichs precede and announce the four navigations. We mention them merely for the characteristic enthusiasm that they exhale in honor of the fortunate mariner. He alone who sang the maritime adventures of the Trojan hero, says the poet in closing his verses, could worthily celebrate this theme. [Footnote 201]

This, then, was the baptism of the new-born world. It was in one of the humblest cities of Lorraine that an unknown bookseller bade Europe and Asia hold it with him over the font, inscribing it in the classic family by a name thenceforth imperishable.

III.

This name became quickly famous in the Old World. Its birth in Lorraine was an advantage in the beginning. This country was fortunately placed for facilities of intercourse between France and Germany, very near the Rhine, along whose banks were crowded so many famous towns from Bâle to Rotterdam, and close to Strasburg, that centre of powerful radiation.

From the presses of Grieninger, or Gruninger, issued, in 1509, the second edition of the Cosmography, bearing this time the author's name affixed to the dedication. Piquant selections were made from the four voyages of Americus, and many persons, allured by its success, falsely claimed the paternity of the book. [Footnote 202] Long after the death of Hylacomylus his work was destined to be reprinted at Venice in 1535 and in 1554. The suffrage of Italy served not a little the popularity of the navigator and the name of America.

Everywhere an irresistible and universal concurrence enhanced the renown of Americus Vespucius, as wave after wave bears its tribute to the rising tide. From the time of the appearance of that first edition, (1507,) maps and globes were printed in Strasburg and sold at low prices, bearing indication of the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, with his name. [Footnote 203]

In 1509, the same year when the second edition of Hylacomylus appeared, an anonymous opvscule, another product of John Grieninger's active press, called, "Globus mundi declaratio, sive descriptio mundi et totius orbis terrarum," sanctions the proposition of the scholar of Saint-Dié. This is the first geographical treatise in which the name of America takes undisputed possession as the designation of the New World. The phraseology in which it is couched is fantastic, and, independently of its significance, merits a moment's attention.

"Doctors," saith the cosmography "compare our earth to the human frame as possessing all the parts contained in a body. First, the flesh is the earth itself; blood corresponds to water, bones to stones, veins to mountains. The head is the East, or Asia; the feet are the West and America lately discovered. Africa is the right arm, and our own continent of Europe the left."

Science in her first essays was sometimes satisfied with very naive puerilities, and young America was received under strange auspices. But at that time, perhaps, this was an advantage. The author of the Globus shows himself more rational while undertaking to demonstrate clearly, even to persons of small education, the existence of antipodes whose feet are opposed ours; and the possibility of life in any portion of the globe, because the sun shines upon all parts of the earth—problems that disturbed many minds.

Nevertheless, great as is his admiration for Americus Vespucius, and for "the fourth part of the world by him discovered, that island larger than Europe whose shores develop westward with relation to Europe and Africa," the geographer of Strasburg does not inscribe the name of America on his map. He is content with the appellation of the New World. [Footnote 204] Pierre Apier, in 1520, was the first to enroll the name of America on a map of the world added to an edition of Solinus. [Footnote 205]

Then comes the author who, adding practice to precept, should have anticipated others—we mean Hylacomylus.

His ambition, like that of every cosmographer, was to re-edit the mathematician of Alexandria. The magnificent bounty of René II. furnished the funds for the preparatory labors and provided for the engraving of maps. But death interrupted the work in 1508 by snatching away its noble patron. [Footnote 206]

In the language of the editors, two ecclesiastical dignitaries of Strasburg, it was aroused from its sleep among the rocks of the Vosges only after six years of neglect. It was published at Strasburg in the year 1513, under the superintendence of Philesius. The maps do not present the name of Americus, nor the body of the work that of Hylacomylus. But, following those belonging to the geography proper of Ptolemaeus, there is a rich supplementary atlas, which represents the geographical state of the world in the sixteenth century, and offers us two very curious maps; a map of the world, entitled "Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem," with the profile of the western mainland and several islands of the Antilles and a special map of discoveries, Tabula Terre Nove, loaded with names that mount in a grand scale up to the fortieth degree of south latitude. This place is eminently suited to introduce the name of America, [Footnote 207] but we seek it in vain. It was destined to appear in a posthumous work of the bookseller of Saint-Dié.

In 1522, Laurentius Phrisius, who must not be confounded with Philesius, published a new edition of Ptolemaeus at John Grieninger's in Strasburg. Hylacomylus was dead; but how could they do better than employ the maps prepared by him in his lifetime? "That we may not seem," says Phrisius to the reader, "to arrogate to ourselves another's merit, know that these maps have been lately prepared by Martin Hylacomylus, dead in Christ, and reduced to dimensions smaller than their first form. If they are good, to him then, and not to us, peace and place among the celestial hierarchy, in the bosom of him who separated the edifice of this world by spaces so marvellous. For the remainder that follows, know that it is our own work." [Footnote 208]

Now, upon this map of the world, which is the work of Hylacomylus, and, is entitled as in the Ptolemaeus of 1513, "Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem," is displayed the name of America. And what a triumphant commentary upon it is given in the preface written by Thomas Aucuparius! "Not less worthy of panegyric are those who, since the days of Ptolemaeus, have succeeded by an incredible effort of genius in exploring new countries and islands. And in the first rank among them, and deserving an extraordinary fame, stands Americus Vespucius, the illustrious and eminent man who discovered and explored and was the first guest of the land of America, called to-day America, or the New World, or the fourth part of the world; as well as of other new islands adjacent to it or lying at no great distance."

This enthusiasm was not free from confusion. The savans on the borders of the Rhine received by repercussion the echoed reports of these wonderful Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, without distinguishing quite clearly the name and extent of each one. For instance, this Ptolemaeus of 1522 repeats the map of 1513, with the indication that the continent in question with its neighboring islands was discovered by the Genoese Columbus under orders of the King of Castile. [Footnote 209]

The same legend, under date of 1497, adjoining the words America provincia, on Apian's map, appears in the edition of Pomponius Mela, by Vadianus, (Joacquin de Watt,) Bâle, 1522. Yet the first pages in the book reproduce a letter from Vadianus to a friend, concerning the discovery of America by Vespucius, and the remarkable proficiency in mathematics of this navigator. The editor does not remark that the name of America upon the map is in contradiction with that of Columbus in the legend, or that elsewhere he attaches erroneously to the third voyage of Columbus, during which the great navigator touched Paria, the pretended date (1497) of the discovery of Americus Vespucius. [Footnote 210]

This discrepancy among Rhenish geographers was not of long duration.

Simon Grynaeus, author of a collection of voyages, (Orbis Novus, Bâle, March, 1532,) in which he inserts the four voyages of Americus Vespucius and only the first of Columbus, does not hesitate in deciding their respective importance; witness the following words in a little treatise by Sebastian Munster, placed at the head of the collection: "There has been discovered in our own day in the Western ocean, by Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, what one may call a new world, and very correctly the fourth part of the globe, so that our earth no longer consists of three parts, but of four; because these Indian islands surpass Europe in size, especially the one which takes its name of America from Americus, who discovered it." The same Munster writes in his Cosmography: "What shall I say of these great islands America, of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, Yucatan?" And again, upon a map giving the southern part of the New World: "Atlantic Island, called Brazil and America."

The collection of Grynaeus was reprinted in Paris about the month of November, 1532, and several times afterward.

Apian and Phrisius, the same who worked upon the Ptolemaeus of 1522, say in their Cosmography: "America takes its name from Americus Vespucius, who discovered it: others call it Brazil. Is it a continent or an island? We do not yet know." Of Columbus not one word.

These references to Christopher Columbus, evoked à contretemps, are only exceptions of ever lessening frequency. The name of America in a few years had taken possession of maps and of science, and passed into a brilliant and resonant notoriety with the public. The erudite, those who controlled the printing press, and those who, in the centre of Europe, formed opinions almost uninfluenced by Spain, and whose admiration, more or less enlightened, created fame, were fairly dazzled by Americus Vespucius. Columbus, after being faintly discerned from time to time, at last disappeared, and was lost like a satellite in the nimbus of a principal star planet. No doubt he could lay claim to a few islands; but he who, unveiling the vast expanse of southern shores, had discovered a new world, was beyond dispute Americus Vespucius, the noble, the illustrious traveller par excellence—egregius et nobilissimus inventor, visitator et primus hospes.

IV.

But why this silence respecting Christopher Columbus? Whence this apparent conspiracy against a man who in our own day rears himself like a giant above all those who navigated the route opened by his genius? Where shall we seek the cause of the ingratitude no longer peculiar of Spain, but attributable to all Europe, that pains our hearts?

The truth must be told: he himself was one of its principal causes.

The illustrious Genoese never courted publicity. The only papers printed during his life, concerning his discoveries, were his first voyage, taken from his letter of March 14th, 1493, to the treasurer Sanchez; and his fourth, an account of which he addressed to the kings in a letter from Jamaica, (July 7th, 1503;) [Footnote 211] the one in Latin at Rome, (1493,) the other at Venice, translated into Italian, (1505.) The title of Lettera rarissima by which this last document is designated, shows plainly that it was not for general distribution. Of the writings of Columbus these are all that were published up to the close of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 212]

This great man thought it for his interest to keep the secret, if not of his discoveries, at least of the route he had followed. As his treaty of Santa Fé with Isabella and Ferdinand secured to him the government and a part of the fruits of the lands discovered by him, he had not cared to provoke or facilitate competition. Indeed we have two letters from Isabella, (September 5th, 1493, and August 16th, 1494,) reproaching him for leaving the degrees of latitude blank, and asking for a complete chart of the islands with their names and distances. [Footnote 213] He became still less communicative after the crown of Castile violated its engagements with him, (1495,) and when his enemy Fonseca gave up his charts to the navigator Hojeda. They had reduced him, he said, to the position of a man who opens the door for others to pass through. Silence may, then, have seemed to him a means of defending his legitimate possessions, or, at least, of diminishing the force of attacks upon his just rights.

Besides, though his discovery anticipated by six years the arrival of the Portuguese in the East-Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, it was eclipsed by the brilliant voyages of Vasco de Gama and Alvares Cabral, followed as they were by immediate results. What were Spaniards and Portuguese in search of? The Indies, the empire of Cathay, or of China, those regions depicted by antiquity and by the travellers of the middle ages as gorged with precious metals, with pearls and diamonds, with spices and glittering tissues. Now, the Portuguese had been wafted to the very source of these treasures. In the earliest years of the sixteenth century, their fleets returned laden with spoils from kingdoms of sonorous names, rendered famous by the songs or by the ambition of the poets and conquerors of classic antiquity. All this time the Spaniards, following the steps of Christopher Columbus, were groping in the western seas among remote regions supposed by them to belong to extreme Asia, finding only savage tribes where they had looked for imposing monarchies. They had picked up a few pearls, a little gold, and some slaves, and had returned to Europe, unable to conceal from themselves the fact that their rivals of Lisbon owed more to Vasco de Gama than Castile to Christopher Columbus.

If, then, in the eyes of history, the glory of the immortal Genoese lies in having sought with a reflective and discerning boldness, and discovered more than he sought, namely, an unknown world independent of all other lands, at a time when the only aim in view was to open a western route to the "land of spices," in the beginning his voyage looked like a half successful enterprise. Was the talk of discoveries, properly speaking? What were a small number of islands compared with that southern country coasted by Americus to the fiftieth degree of south latitude without finding its termination?

The discovery of the Southern sea by Balboa at the Isthmus of Panama, (1513,) the extraordinary conquests of Mexico and Peru, the adventures of a Cortez and of a Pizarro, chilled yet more the public opinion toward him whose works, considered then so humble, had given the impetus to these prodigious enterprises.

A little while yet, and he was considered a simpleton for believing that his navigation from east to west had brought him to Asia, and for having found what he did not seek. John Beller, in reprinting at Anvers (1584) the Cosmography of Apian and Frisius, adds a description of the Indies, drawn from the Cosmography of Jerome Girava, of Tarragona. The latter, à propos of Cuba, explains that under the name of Indies are comprehended all the lands recently discovered. "This name," he says, "comes from the fact that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, a distinguished mariner and a poor cosmographer, [Footnote 214] having obtained in 1492 the favor and aid of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Isabella to go in search of regions until then unseen and unknown, called them the Indies. After making the discovery, he returned in the same year, saying that he had found the Indies. Therefore have these lands retained the name."

Thus did Christopher Columbus lose ground so materially in the admiration of his contemporaries that his end was obscure and almost overlooked. Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who is called his friend, but hardly seems to have merited the title, for two months and a half saw him upon the bed of pain to which the last great crisis nailed him at Valladolid. He does not speak of this illness in his letters, nor of his death which took place May 20th, 1506, short time after his own departure. His Oceanic Decades mention it incidentally several years later.[Footnote 215]

Why wonder, then, that the editors of Vicenzo's collection in 1507, and the translator of this collection into Latin in 1508, inform us that at the moment they write the admiral and his brother are living honorably in the splendid court of Castile? Grynaeus in 1532 speaks in the same terms in his Orbis Novus. [Footnote 216] So had fame abandoned the life and the grave of Christopher Columbus.

V.

So far we have traced the principal features of the nautical career of Americus Vespucius. Still following the light of Humboldt's brilliant researches, we have found in the bookstore of Saint-Dié, the inventor of the name of America; we have shown how and at what period this appellation passed from the Introduction of the Cosmography on to maps and into public use; and how motives personal to Christopher Columbus, and the astounding exploits of Portuguese or Spanish conquerors, threw into the shade the services and genius of the most daring mariner the world has ever seen.

We have shown that a strong current of public opinion, self-formed in a certain sense, had developed, without leaving room to suppose or suspect any culpable participation in Americus Vespucius. Strictly speaking, this should absolve us from all obligation to justify him further from the reproach of usurpation. Yet it is our intention to conclude with a review of that side of the question.

To begin with, there exists no proof or presumption that he had any hand in the publication of his voyage. The work contains details such as he would certainly not have consigned to a writing intended for the public; as, for example, when speaking of the second voyage, he complains, in a letter to Soderini, that the Queen Isabella had taken from him a shell to which were found attached one hundred and thirty pearls. "After that," he continues: "I took good care how I showed her such precious things."

Does not he himself tell us that he has in reserve the project of publishing a complete and extended narrative, the object of his assiduous cares, and the hope of his future glory? So scrupulously, it appears, he observed Horace's precept, (nonumque prematur in annum,) that death surprised him while still hesitating to bring it to the light. Its destiny is unknown.

Living and writing at Seville, in the very centre of the excitement of discoveries, among a crowd of seafaring men who had seen, accompanied, or talked with Christopher Columbus, whom he survived only six years, how can we suppose that he could conceive the plan of attributing to himself an honor known by all to belong to the admiral? And if he had dared to do so, how could he with impunity have attempted it before such judges, without calling forth a cry of indignation that should resound to the furthest extremities of Europe?

It is said that he gave to his first voyage, which really dates from May 20th, 1499, the fraudulent date of May 20th, 1497, in order to rob Columbus of priority in the discovery of terra firma. [Footnote 217] But in that case, would he not have adjusted his dates more adroitly? Would he have committed the gross blunder of assigning the end of this voyage to October 15th, 1499, mentioning directly afterward that he began the second in May, 1499, [Footnote 218] that is to say, five months before his return from the first? What answer could he have made to those who had the registers of La Casa de Contratacion in hand, [Footnote 219] and, armed with universal testimony, would have told him that, pending the pretended duration of this first expedition, all Seville and Cadiz had seen him occupied with preparations for the third voyage of Columbus, who set sail May 30th. 1498.

Moreover, these errors in dates were extremely common at the commencement of the sixteenth century. Education was incomplete. The means of verification were hard to obtain concerning expeditions that crossed each other in every sense. Thus, in the eighteen years following Vasco de Gama's expedition, the king of Portugal sent no less than 294 vessels to India and to the land of the Holy Cross, (Brazil.) The fourteen expeditions that sailed from Spanish ports between 1496 and 1509, though less numerous, followed each other as closely, and were no less difficult to disentangle.

The hurry of copying and of printing multiplied errors.

The different editions of the voyages of Vespucius are full of contradictions in dates, a confusion that seems to exclude all reasonable suspicion of intentional falsification. [Footnote 220] Christopher Columbus erred as to the duration of the two passages of his first expedition, and that at the very moment, when toward its close, he approached the shores of Europe. [Footnote 221] The most exact and attentive historians err constantly as to well-authenticated facts, as, for instance, Orviédo, the official historian of the Indies, in asserting as a notorious fact that Columbus discovered the Indies in 1491. [Footnote 222]

Not daring to misrepresent the facts in Andalusia, did Americus induce the editors in Lorraine to tell falsehoods at a distance, acting in his stead? Or, to speak more correctly, did he get them to decree to him the honors of the discovery, and suggest to them the name of America? We have absolutely no ground for the supposition. Nowhere do the numerous publications taking their origin from the Cosmography of Hylacomylus allude to any relation direct or indirect with the Florentine. If the maps of the editions of Ptolemaeus in 1513 and 1522, had resulted from interested suggestions on the part of Americus Vespucius, we should not find upon them, in large characters, the indication that the great southern country was discovered by Christopher Columbus, the Genoese. This southern country would assuredly have extended to that famous fiftieth degree of south latitude, of which Americus was so proud, instead of ending somewhere about the fortieth degree. The editors of 1513 would not have fallen into the singular blunder of making Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Portugal. Some explanation would be needed, too, of the impostor's having selected as an accomplice an obscure scholar in a still more obscure town of Lorraine, (which an eminent representative of the scientific world tried lately to locate in the depths of Hungary,) [Footnote 223] where he had many Italian friends to whom he would more naturally have addressed himself. And one might reasonably ask why the good people of Saint-Dié and Strasburg (whom one cannot know through their writings without conceiving a high opinion of their character and of their devotion to science) could have participated so coolly in a dishonest action, or even have entered hoodwinked into a snare spread for their ingenuousness—a snare, too, of which no trace remains.

To this accusation consisting of gratuitous and baseless assertions, there is a crowd of real motives to be opposed.

It is far more natural to admit, taking into consideration the extreme difficulties of communication at that period, that the enthusiasm of Hylacomylus and his Strasburg neighbors was spontaneous. Such is certainly the character of the extracts we have presented to the reader. It is extremely probable that Americus Vespucius never saw the Cosmography of 1507 or the Globus of 1509, and that he was to the end unconscious of the dangerous honor bestowed upon him at Saint-Dié. As to the maps illustrated with his name, they appeared in 1520 and 1522, eight and ten years after his death.

But for the tyranny of habit, which demands a response, point for point, to charges once preferred against an individual, we should have suddenly adopted a more radical system, and have declared not only that Americus Vespucius did not entertain the vile and criminal intentions ascribed to him with regard to Christopher Columbus, but that, at the stage of ideas and of science existing in his day, he could not have conceived them.

In using the expression New World, or the fourth part of the world, we attach to it the precise sense of the vast American continent. Our eyes instinctively behold that colossal dike, which, stretching, so to speak, from pole to pole, restrains and divides the two oceans facing easterly toward Europe and Africa, and westerly toward Asia, but separated by enormous distances from all three.

We must set aside this preconceived idea, and return in thought to the latter days of the fifteenth century.

The ancients and the travellers of the middle ages prolonged Asia indefinitely eastward; and when at last they set a term to that country by India, the Mangi and Cathay, (China,) they continued it again by sowing in handfuls through the neighboring seas innumerable archipelagoes. It was while more especially acting upon the words of antiquity that Christopher Columbus braved the awful solitudes of the Atlantic, and, bearing directly westward, sought the Indies by another route than that used by the Portuguese. When the unknown land, the prize of his divination, rose from the bosom of the waters, the admiral never for an instant doubted that he was about to plant the standard of Castile upon an Asiatic island. He took Cuba for the very continent of Asia, the end and the beginning of the Indies. "I have discovered," wrote he to Pope Alexander VI. (February, 1502,) "333 leagues of the terra firma of Asia." On his third voyage, the spectacle of the immense flood of the Orinoco having suggested to him the very rational idea that such a river must belong to a large country, he made of it the India of the Ganges. In this conviction he lived and died.

In the same way Americus Vespucius, during his second voyage, coasting along the country destined to bear his name, fully believed himself to be in Asia. He tried to find Cape Cattigara in the great gulf of Ptolemaeus; [Footnote 224] and followed for 400 leagues a shore which was, he said, the end of Asia, by the eastern side, and the commencement by the western side. "This expedition has lasted thirteen months, during which we have run the greatest risks, and discovered an infinite stretch of the land of Asia as well as a number of islands." [Footnote 225] In passing over to the Portuguese service afterward, it was with a hope of pursuing his investigations, and of "finding the Island of Taprobana, (Ceylon,) situated between the sea of the Indus and the sea of the Ganges." His fourth had for its object the Molucca Islands, the land of spices, and Malacca.

The conviction of these two men decided general opinion, as is attested by the name of the Indies applied to the western lands. Both had passed away before Balboa's march to the great ocean (1513) and Magellan's voyage unsealed all eyes and dissipated the dreams of Ptolemaeus.

Now, since it is an indisputable fact that Christopher Columbus and Americus Vespucius never had an intuition of their veritable discovery, and that for the rest of their lives both of them firmly believed that they had reached the extreme end of the continent of Asia, how could the one have planned to frustrate the other of the glory of having revealed a new world whose existence they neither of them suspected? How could Vespucius undertake to slip surreptitiously into history, and impose a contraband name upon a continent that only seemed to him susceptible of bearing the name of Asia? Moreover, what personal advantage could he hope to reap from fraudulently dating his arrival at Paria during his first expedition, 1497, when the discovery of Oriental Asia was looked upon as accomplished by Christopher Columbus five years before?

Let us also take these expressions of fourth part of the world and new world according to their original sense, and not with the absolute signification attached to them at the present day. In the mouth of Americus Vespucius, the former meant simply that he had passed over, between Lisbon and the extreme point of his explorations, an arc of 90°, whether the quarter of a grand circle or of the terrestrial circumference from one pole to the other. As to the latter, it was quite natural that the extraordinary and unexpected extent of the Asiatic lands, contemplated for the first time, and the aspect of a nature of which nothing European could give an idea, with inhabitants of a strange color and of cannibal habits; it was quite natural, we repeat, that the navigator should exclaim that before him lay a new world.

Cosmographers in their turn were struck by the interminable succession of shores, whose development south of the equator resolved, contrary to old prejudices, the problems so long agitated concerning the torrid zone and the second temperate zone, and the question whether or not the sun enlightened the southern hemisphere in the same manner as the northern. Such a theatre suddenly thrown open to geographic science appeared to them worthy to rival Europe by its gigantic proportions, and to be accounted a new part of the world. And yet it was not considered the New World, as we understand it, until the time when, explorations being completed, it was known to have nothing in common with the continent or the archipelagoes of Asia. If precaution had been taken to disengage this idea, the accusation against Americus Vespucius would have died a natural death in the beginning.

But we are told that he abused his office of piloto mayor, and his right of rectifying the maps by inserting his own name upon them.

This assertion is not sustained by the shadow of a proof. Mariners were not in the habit of giving their own names to the lands they discovered, whether Americus Vespucius, Columbus, Balboa, or Magellan. Had he done so, it would have had only the very restricted and allowable signification of a name applied to one of the numerous islands near Asia that seemed to spring from the sea on all sides to greet the eyes of navigators. The scholars of Lorraine and Alsace had no other view in selecting for this destiny the largest southern country. They treated as coequals in importance the great island of America and the islands of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Yucatan. [Footnote 226] Finally, the name of America, applied to the whole of the New World, resulted from the mistake by which the island (Cuba) was taken for the mainland, and the mainland (Paria) for the island. When with time the first error was recognized, they extended to the whole the appellation given to what had proved to be the principal part.

For this Americus Vespucius could not have been responsible. He deserves, then, to preserve in the estimation of posterity the esteem accorded to him by all his contemporaries. He was loved and respected during his life, and from this fact we shall in conclusion draw a new testimony.

VI.

In the first place, Americus Vespucius possessed the friendship of Christopher Columbus. At the commencement of our article we saw Vespucius going to Toro, (where was assembled the court of Castile,) recommended by the admiral to his son Diego. We give the letter entire:

SEVILLE, Feb. 5, 1505. "My Dear Son: Diego Mendez [Footnote 227] left here Monday, the 3d of this month. Since his departure I have talked with Amerigo Vespuchy, who is going to court, called thither by business concerning navigation. He has always shown a desire to please me; and he is a very able man. Fortune has shown herself adverse to him as to many others. His labors have not proved so profitable to him as should have naturally been the case. He is going to court in my behalf, and with an ardent desire of effecting something useful to me, if occasion should offer. While in this place I cannot specify in what way he can serve us, not knowing how they stand affected toward him, but he is quite determined to do all in his power for my good. You will see for yourself how you can best employ him, for he will speak and set everything at work; I want it to be done secretly, that nothing may be suspected. I told him everything I could concerning our interests." [Footnote 228]

He who expressed himself thus concerning Americus had known him not merely a day or two, but for long years.

But let us admit that he was the dupe of a consummate hypocrite. The traitor was to be unmasked when death should relieve him of the obstacle who had been a source of such insupportable impatience to him. Witnesses there were, however, to denounce him. Let us hear them:

Sebastian Cabot, a worthy rival of the most illustrious navigators of his day, had been summoned from England to Spain about the year 1512, to succeed Americus as corrector of geographic tables. Three years later he took occasion to bear testimony to his expertness in the determination of latitudes.

Peter Martyr, whose hand falls willingly on all whom he suspects of intrigue, whether correctly or incorrectly, has only words of praise for Vespucius, à propos of his knowledge of nautical astronomy and of the art of navigation.

Ramusio, who employed thirty-four years of his life (1523-1557) in preparing and publishing his great collection of travels, and knew how to wither with his indignation all who enviously cavilled at Columbus, [Footnote 229] speaks five times in terms of high esteem, "of that high intelligence, of the excellent Florentine endowed with such fair genius, il signor Amerigo Vespucio."

But a discordant voice arose. Michel Servet, in re-editing the geography of Ptolemaeus at Lyons (1535, 1541,) says severe things of Americus, but not without making mistakes. "Columbus," he says, "discovered during a new voyage the continent and many more islands, of which the Spaniards are now completely masters. They then are totally misled who would call this continent America, since Americus never touched it until long after Columbus, and since he went there not with the Spaniards, but with the Portuguese, and to make trade."

Without pausing to notice details, we will confine ourselves to the morality of Vespucius which the author does not attack. He only blames those who invented the name of America. [Footnote 230]

To this accusation, such as it is, the History of India, by Gomara, (1551,) answered contemptuously: "There are persons who enjoy blackening Alberico Vespucio's reputation, as may be seen by some editions of Ptolemaeus in Lyons."

Now, having seen the proofs drawn from those who have spoken, let us look at the counter-proofs of those who have not spoken—a testimony not without significance.

Witness, for example, Oviedo, who systematically cries down Christopher Columbus. He is silent as to the supposed pretension of Vespucius to priority in the discovery of the mainland. Is it to be supposed that, if the Florentine had actually claimed this honor, Oviedo would not have taken him under his protection, and used his claim to make a breach in a reputation that annoyed him?

But there is another silence more decisive. Two years after the death of Christopher Columbus, that is to say in 1508, Don Diego, his eldest son, brought a lawsuit against the crown before the council of the Indies, to recover dignities and privileges that had been guaranteed to the admiral in the treaties acceded to by Ferdinand and Isabella. It was essentially important to the fiscal to prove that Columbus had been anticipated by some one else in Paria, in order to deprive the heirs of all claim to the revenues drawn from that country at least. Nor, although in this debate efforts were made to draw from the seamen testimony inimical to Columbus, and although the fiscal disdained to use no rumor, however vague or futile it might be—descending to every refinement of deceit and fraud, and pushing the hostility of the investigation even to extravagance, according to Las Casas; yet neither Americus Vespucius, who was still alive during the first four years, nor John Vespucius, his nephew, a renowned pilot, ever brought forward any claim to priority in the discovery. They were not called up as witnesses; the cosmographies printed in other countries in his honor were not mentioned; [Footnote 231] and the lawsuit came to an end in 1527, after nineteen mortal years, without the name of Vespucius having been brought forward in opposition to the great victim of injustice.

About the year 1513, Fernando Columbus, the admiral's second son, put the last touches to the history of his father. An openly expressed and pious indignation animated him against those who had embittered with so many mortifications that illustrious career. He leaves the memory of Americus Vespucius in peaceful repose. Evidently there was nothing to avenge in that quarter.

Sole and last of his contemporaries, finishing in extreme old age, at eighty-five, in the year 1559, a general history of the Indies, Las Casas accuses Vespucius of having falsified the date of his first voyage, and given the number 1497 to the editors of Lorraine, with the premeditated design of robbing Christopher Columbus of a glory so dearly acquired. [Footnote 232] Nevertheless, he does not prove this, nor try to do so. Las Casas was in fact mistaken. Americus Vespucius was a posthumous usurper, and absolutely irresponsible.

But a reaction came to the public conscience in favor of Christopher Columbus. To ingratitude, to the base passions and mean motives so cruelly leagued against him, there succeeded a more sound appreciation, in proportion as, further removed by time, perspective views re-established matters in their true position. He, who in 1492, had found the small island of San Salvador in the little group of the Bahamas, was not known to have that day discovered the New World. And yet it was another man's name that his discovery was destined to immortalize! Then opinion, deceived in the first instance about Christopher Columbus, erred in regard to Americus Vespucius. The latter had to bear the weight of an error he had not provoked, and, condemned without a hearing by a sort of universal consent, to incur the sad celebrity of imposture unveiled.

But to-day, we believe, a more enlightened judgment has acquitted him. His fame is pure. Christopher Columbus does not accuse one who was his friend. One glory does not mar another. It is sweet to have at least one injustice less to inscribe in the martyrology of great initiators.