Chapter II: Amerigo Vespucci (2)

It was of the first voyage from Lisbon—the third of the _Quatuor navigationes_—that, as has been already said, a narrative was first published in a letter addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici. This was illustrated with diagrams of some of the constellations of the southern hemisphere; and the repute it gave to the writer led the way to his subsequent fame. What Vespucci’s position was in the expedition is not known; but that it was still a subordinate one is evident from his own words, as he speaks of a commander, though only to find fault with him, and without giving his name. The object of the expedition was to discover the western passage to the Spice Islands of the East (Melcha, Melacca, Malaccha, according to the varying texts of different editions of the letter); and though the passage was not found, the voyage was, like Cabot’s, one of the boldest and most important of the age. But it is also, of all Vespucci’s voyages, real or assumed, that which has been most disputed. Navarrete, however, after a careful examination of all the evidence that touches the question, comes to the conclusion that such an expedition, on which Vespucci may have gone in some subordinate position, was really sent out in 1501 by the King of Portugal; and Humboldt concurs in this opinion.

The Terra de Vera Cruz, or Brazil, as it was afterward named, was visited successively for the first time, from January to April, 1500, by Pinzon, De Lepe, De Mendoza, and Cabral. But the expedition to which Vespucci was attached explored the coast from the fifth parallel of southern latitude, three degrees north of Cape St. Augustin,—first discovered and so named by Pinzon,—as far south, perhaps, as about the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. They had sailed along the coast for about seven hundred leagues; and so beautiful was the country, so luxuriant its vegetation, so salubrious its climate, where men did not die till they were a hundred and fifty years old, that Vespucci was persuaded—as Columbus, only three years before, had said of the region drained by the Orinoco—that the earthly Paradise was not far off. Gold, the natives said, was abundant in the interior; but as the visitors found none, it was determined at last to continue the voyage in another direction, leaving behind them this coast, of what seemed to Vespucci a continent, along which they had sailed from the middle of August to the middle of February. Starting now on the 15th of February from the mainland, they steered southeast, till they reached, on the 3d of April, the fifty-second degree of latitude. They had sailed through stormy seas, driven by violent gales, running away from daylight into nights of fifteen hours in length, and encountering a severity of cold unknown in Southern Europe, and quite beyond their power of endurance. A new land at length was seen; but it only needed a few hours of observation of its dangerous, rocky, and ice-bound coast to satisfy them that it was a barren, uninhabited, and uninhabitable region. This, Varnhagen suggests most reasonably, was the Island of Georgia, rediscovered by Captain Cook nearly three centuries afterward.

The return to Lisbon was in September, 1502. By order of the King, Vespucci sailed again in May, 1503, from Lisbon on a second voyage,—the fourth of his _Quatuor navigationes_. The object, as before, was to find a western passage to the Moluccas; for it was the trade of India, not new discoveries in the western continent, upon which the mind of the King was bent. There were six ships in this new expedition; and it is generally agreed that as Gonzalo Coelho sailed from Lisbon in May, 1503, by order of Emanuel, in command of six ships, Vespucci probably held a subordinate position in that fleet. He does not name Coelho, but he refers to a superior officer as an obstinate and presumptuous man, who by his bad management wrecked the flagship. Vespucci may have been put in command of two of the ships by the King; with two, at any rate, he became separated, in the course of the voyage, from his commodore, and with them returned to Lisbon in June of the next year. The rest of the fleet Vespucci reported as lost through the pride and folly of the commander; and it was thus, he said, that God punished arrogance. But Vespucci either misunderstood the divine will or misjudged his commander, for the other ships soon after returned in safety.

The southernmost point reached by him on this voyage was the eighteenth degree of southern latitude. At this point, somewhere about Cape Frio, he built a fort, and left in it the crew of one of the two vessels which had been shipwrecked. The precise spot of this settlement is uncertain; but as it was planted by Vespucci, and as it was the first colony of Europeans in that part of the New World, there was an evident and just propriety in bestowing the derivative—America—of his name upon the country, which at first was known as “The Land of the True Cross,” and afterward as “Brazil.” The name of Brazil was retained when the wider application—America—was given to the whole continent.

Soon after his return from this, the last of the _Navigationes_ of which he himself, so far as is known, gave any account, he went back, in 1505, to Spain. It is conjectured that he made other voyages; but whether he did or did not, no absolute evidence has ever been found.[469] We know almost nothing of him up to that time except what is told by himself. When he ceased writing of his own exploits, then also the exploits ceased so far as can be learned from contemporary authors, who hitherto also had been silent about him. In 1508 (March 22) Ferdinand of Spain appointed him pilot-major of the kingdom,[470]—an office of dignity and importance, which probably he retained till he died (Feb. 22, 1512). His fame was largely posthumous; but a hemisphere is his monument. If not among the greatest of the world’s great men, he is among the happiest of those on whom good fortune has bestowed renown.

During recent years (1892-3) John Fiske, in his _Discovery of America_, vol. ii., has reinforced the argument of Varnhagen in favor of the disputed (1497) voyage of Vespucius; Henry Harrisse, in his _Discovery of North America_, rejects his own earlier arguments in its favor; Clements R. Markham, in _Christopher Columbus_, totally discredits the theory, and Justin Winsor, in his _Christopher Columbus_, has considered the proposition not proven.

CRITICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON VESPUCIUS AND THE NAMING OF AMERICA.

BY THE EDITOR.

WHILE Vespucius never once clearly affirms that he discovered the main, such an inference may be drawn from what he says. Peter Martyr gives no date at all for the voyage of Pinzon and Solis to the Honduras coast, which was later claimed by Oviedo and Gomara to have preceded that of Columbus to the main. Navarrete has pointed out the varied inconsistencies of the Vespucius narrative,[471] as well as the changes of the dates of the setting out and the return, as given in the various editions.[472] All of them give a period of twenty-nine months for a voyage which Vespucius says only took eighteen,—a difficulty Canovai and others have tried to get over by changing the date of return to 1498; and some such change was necessary to enable Vespucius to be in Spain to start again with Ojeda in May, 1499. Humboldt further instances a great variety of obvious typographical errors in the publications of that day,—as, for instance, where Oviedo says Columbus made his first voyage in 1491.[473] But, as shown in the preceding narrative, an allowance for errors of the press is not sufficient. In regard to the proof of an _alibi_ which Humboldt brought forward from documents said to have been collected by Muñoz from the archives of the Casa de la Contratacion, it is unfortunate that Muñoz himself did not complete that part of his work which was to pertain to Vespucius, and that the documents as he collated them have not been published. In the absence of such textual demonstration, the inference which Humboldt drew from Navarrete’s representations of those documents has been denied by Varnhagen; and H. H. Bancroft in his _Central America_ (i. 99, 102, 106) does not deem the proof complete.[474]

Vespucius’ own story for what he calls his second voyage (1499) is that he sailed from Cadiz shortly after the middle of May, 1499. The subsequent dates of his being on the coast are conflicting; but it would appear that he reached Spain on his return in June or September, 1500. We have, of course, his narrative of this voyage in the collective letter to Soderini;[475] but there is also an independent narrative, published by Bandini (p. 64) in 1745, said to have been written July 18, 1500, and printed from a manuscript preserved in the Riccardiana at Florence.[476] The testimony of Ojeda that Vespucius was his companion in the voyage of 1499-1500 seems to need the qualification that he was with him for a part, and not for the whole, of the voyage; and it has been advanced that Vespucius left Ojeda at Hispaniola, and, returning to Spain, sailed again with Pinzon in December, 1499,—thus attempting to account for the combination of events which seem to connect Vespucius with the voyages of both these navigators.

It is noteworthy that Oviedo, who sought to interpret Peter Martyr as showing that Solis and Pinzon had preceded Columbus to the main, makes no mention of Vespucius. There is no mention of him in what Beneventano furnished to the Ptolemy of 1508. Castanheda does not allude to him, nor does Barreiros in his _De Ophira regione_ (Coimbra, 1560), nor Galvano in his _Descobrimientos_, nor Pedro Magalhaes de Gandavo in his account of Santa Cruz (1576).[477]

But it was not all forgetfulness as time went on. The currency to his fame which had been given by the _De orbe antarctica_, by the _Paesi novamente_, by the _Cosmographiæ introductio_, as well as by the _Mundus novus_ and the publications which reflected these, was helped on in 1510 by the Roman archæologist Francesco Albertini in his _Opusculum de mirabilibus Urbis Romæ_, who finds Florence, and not Genoa, to have sent forth the discoverer of the New World.[478]

Two years later (1512) an edition of Pomponius Mela which Cocleus edited, probably at Nuremberg, contained, in a marginal note to a passage on the “Zona incognita,” the following words: “Verus Americus Vesputius iam nostro seculo | novū illū mundū invenissefert Portugalie Castilieq. regū navibus,” etc. Pighius in 1520 had spoken of the magnitude of the region discovered by Vespucius, which had gained it the appellation of a new world.[479] The references in Glareanus, Apian, Phrysius, and Münster show familiarity with his fame by the leading cosmographical writers of the time. Natale Conti, in his _Universæ historiæ sui temporis libri XXX_ (1545-1581), brought him within the range of his memory.[480] In 1590 Myritius, in his _Opusculum geographicum_, the last dying flicker, as it was, of a belief in the Asian connection of the New World,[481] repeats the oft-told story,—“De Brasilia, terrâ ignis, de meridionali parte Africæ ab Alberico Vesputio inventa.”

In the next century the story is still kept up by the Florentine, Francesco Bocchi, in his _Libri duo elogiorum_ (1607),[482] and by another Florentine, Raffael Gualterotti, in a poem, _L’ America_ (1611),[483]—not to name many others.[484]

But all this fame was not unclouded, and it failed of reflection in some quarters at least. The contemporary Portuguese pilots and cosmographers give no record of Vespucius’ eminence as a nautical geometrician. The Portuguese annalist Damião de Goes makes no mention of him. Neither Peter Martyr nor Benzoni allows him to have preceded Columbus. Sebastian Cabot, as early as 1515, questioned if any faith could be placed in the voyage of 1497 “which Americus says he made.” It is well known that Las Casas more than intimated the chance of his being an impostor; nor do we deduce from the way that his countrymen, Guicciardini[485] and Segni, speak of him, that their faith in the prior claim in his behalf was stable.

An important contestant appeared in Herrera in 1601,[486] who openly charged Vespucius with falsifying his dates and changing the date of 1499 to 1497; Herrera probably followed Las Casas’ manuscripts which he had.[487] The allegation fell in with the prevalent indignation that somebody, rather than a blind fortune, had deprived Columbus of the naming of the New World; and Herrera helped this belief by stating positively that the voyage of Pinzon and Solis, which had been depended upon to antedate Columbus, had taken place as late as 1506.

In the last century Angelo Maria Bandini attempted to stay this tide of reproach in the _Vita e lettere di Amerigo Vespucci, gentiluomo fiorentino_, which was printed at Florence in 1745.[488] It was too manifestly an unbounded panegyric to enlist the sympathy of scholars. More attention was aroused[489] by an address, with equal adulation, which Stanislao Canovai delivered to the Academy at Cortona in 1788, and which was printed at once as _Elogio di Amerigo Vespucci_, and various times afterward, with more or less change, till it appeared to revive anew the antagonism of scholars, in 1817.[490] Muñoz had promised to disclose the impostures of Vespucius, but his uncompleted task fell to Santarem, who found a sympathizer in Navarrete; and Santarem’s labored depreciation of Vespucius first appeared in Navarrete’s _Coleccion_,[491] where Canovai’s arguments are examined at length, with studied refutations of some points hardly worth the labor. This paper was later expanded, as explained in another place.

He claims that one hundred thousand documents in the Royal Archives of Portugal, and the register of maps which belonged to King Emmanuel, make no mention of Vespucius,[492] and that there is no register of the letters-patent which Vespucius claimed to have received. Nor is there any mention in several hundred other contemporary manuscripts preserved in the great library at Paris, and in other collections, which Santarem says he has examined.[493]

An admirer of Vespucius, and the most prominent advocate of a belief in the disputed voyage of 1497, is Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, the Baron de Porto Seguro. As early as 1839, in notes to his _Diario_ of Lopez de Souza, he began a long series of publications in order to counteract the depreciation of Vespucius by Ayres de Cazal, Navarrete, and Santarem. In 1854, in his _Historia geral do Brazil_, he had combated Humboldt’s opinion that it was Pinzon with whom Vespucius had sailed on his second voyage, and had contended for Ojeda. Varnhagen not only accepts the statements of the St.-Dié publications regarding that voyage, but undertakes to track the explorer’s course. In his _Amerigo Vespucci, son caractère_, etc., he gives a map marking the various voyages of the Florentine.[494] For the voyage of 1497 he makes him strike a little south of west from the Canaries; but leaving his course a blank from the mid-Atlantic, he resumes it at Cape Gracias a Dios on the point of Honduras,[495] and follows it by the coast thence to the Chesapeake, when he passes by Bermuda,[496] and reaches Seville. In this he departs from all previous theories of the landfall, which had placed the contact on the coast of Paria. He takes a view of the Ruysch map[497] of 1508 different from that of any other commentator, in holding the smaller land terminated with a scroll to be not Cuba, but a part of the main westerly, visited by Vespucius in this 1497 voyage; and recently Harrisse, in his _Cortereal_,[498] argues that the descriptions of Vespucius in this disputed voyage correspond more nearly with the Cantino map[499] than with any other. Harrisse also asks if Waldseemüller did not have such a map as Cantino’s before him; and if the map of Vespucius, which Peter Martyr says Fonseca had, may not have been the same?

Varnhagen, as might be expected in such an advocate, turns every undated incident in Vespucius’ favor if he can. He believes that the white-bearded men who the natives said preceded the Spaniards were Vespucius and his companions. A letter of Vianello, dated Dec. 28, 1506, which Humboldt quotes as mentioning an early voyage in which La Cosa took part, but hesitates to assign to any particular year, Varnhagen eagerly makes applicable to the voyage of 1497.[500] The records of the Casa de la Contratacion which seem to be an impediment to a belief in the voyage, he makes to have reference, not to the ships of Columbus, but to those of Vespucius’ own command. Varnhagen’s efforts to elucidate the career of Vespucius have been eager, if not in all respects conclusive.[501]

* * * * *

We get upon much firmer ground when we come to the consideration of the voyage of 1501,—the first for Portugal, and the third of Vespucius’ so-called four voyages. It seems clear that this voyage was ordered by the Portuguese Government to follow up the chance discovery of the Brazil coast by Cabral in 1500, of which that navigator had sent word back by a messenger vessel. When the new exploring fleet sailed is a matter of uncertainty, for the accounts differ,—the Dutch edition of the account putting it as early as May 1, 1501, while one account places it as late as June 10.[502] When the fleet reached the Cape de Verde Islands, it found there Cabral’s vessels on the return voyage; and what Vespucius here learned from Cabral he embodied in a letter, dated June 4, 1501, which is printed by Baldelli in his _Il Milione di Marco Polo_, from a manuscript preserved in the Riccardiana Collection.[503] Some time in August—for the exact day is in dispute—he struck the coast of South America, and coursed southward,—returning to Lisbon Sept. 7, 1502.[504]

Vespucius now wrote an account of it, addressed to Lorenzo Piero Francesco de Medici,[505] in which he proposed a designation of the new regions, “novum mundum appellare licet.” Such is the Latin phraseology, for the original Italian text is lost.[506] Within the next two years numerous issues of Giocondo’s Latin text were printed, only two of which are dated,—one at Augsburg in 1504, the other at Strasburg in 1505; and, with a few exceptions, they all, by their published title, gave currency to the designation of _Mundus novus_.

The earliest of these editions is usually thought to be one _Alberic’ vespucci’ laurētio petri francisci de medicis Salutem plurimā dicit_, of which a fac-simile of the title is annexed, and which bears the imprint of Jehan Lambert.[507] It is a small plaquette of six leaves; and there are copies in the Lenox and Carter-Brown collections. D’Avezac, and Harrisse, in his later opinion (_Additions_, p. 19), agree in supposing this the first edition. The dated (1504) Augsburg edition, _Mundus novus_, is called “extraordinarily rare” by Grenville, who had a copy, now in the British Museum. On the reverse of the fourth and last leaf we read: “Magister Johānes otmar: vindelice impressit Auguste Anno millesimo quingentesimo quarto.” There are copies in the Lenox and Carter-Brown libraries.[508] An edition, _Mundus novus_, whose four unnumbered leaves, forty lines to the full page, correspond wholly with this last issue, except that for the dated colophon the words LAUS DEO are substituted, was put at first by Harrisse[509] at the head of the list, with this title. There is a copy in the Lenox Library, which has another issue, _Mundus novus_, also in black-letter, forty-two lines to the page;[510] still another, _Mundus novus_, forty lines to the page;[511] and another, with the words _Mundus novus_ in Roman, of eight leaves, thirty lines to the page.[512] At this point in his enumeration Harrisse placed originally the Jehan Lambert issue (mentioned above), and after it a _Mundus novus_ printed in Paris by Denys Roce, of which only a fragment (five leaves) exists, sold in the Libri sale in London, 1865, and now in the British Museum.[513] Another Paris edition, _Mundus novus_, printed by Gilles de Gourmont, eight leaves, thirty-one lines to the page, is, according to Harrisse,[514] known only in a copy in the Lenox Library; but D’Avezac refers to a copy in the National Library in Paris.[515]

Harrisse, no. 29. Cf. Navarrete, _Opúsculos_ i. 99.]

Another _Mundus novus_ is supposed by Harrisse to have been printed somewhere in the lower Rhineland, and to bear the mark of Wm. Vorsterman, of Antwerp, on the last leaf, merely to give it currency in the Netherlands. It has four leaves, and forty-four lines to the full page. There are copies in the Lenox and Harvard College libraries.[516] The _Serapeum_ for January, 1861, describes a _Mundus novus_ as preserved in the Mercantile Library at Hamburg,—a plaquette of four leaves, with forty-five lines to the page,—which seems to differ from all others.[517] Later, in his _Additions_ (1872), Harrisse described other issues of the _Novus mundus_ which do not seem to be identical with those mentioned in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_. One of these—_Mūdus novus_, printed in a very small gothic letter, four leaves—he found in the Biblioteca Cosatenense at Rome.[518] The other has for the leading title, _Epistola Albericii: de novo mundo_,—a plaquette of four leaves, forty-eight lines to the page, with map and woodcut.[519]

This letter of Vespucius was again issued at Strasburg in 1505, with the title _Be [De] ora antarctica_, as shown in the annexed fac-simile; and joined with this text, in the little six-leaved tract, was a letter of Philesius to Bruno, and some Latin verses by Philesius; and in this form we have it probably for the last time in that language.[520] This Philesius we shall encounter again later.

It was this Latin rendering by Giocondo, the architect, as Harrisse thinks,[521] upon which the Italian text of the _Paesi novamente_ was founded. Varnhagen in his _Amerigo Vespucci, son caractère_ (p. 13), prints side by side this Italian and the Latin text, marking different readings in the latter. In this same year (1505) the first German edition was issued at Nuremberg, though it is undated: _Von der new gefundē Region die wol ein welt genennt mag werden durch den cristenlichen Künig von Portugall wunnderbarlich erfunden_.[522] The colophon shows that this German version was made from a copy of the Latin text brought from Paris in May, 1505: _Ausz latein ist dist missiue in Teütsch gezogē ausz dem exemplar das von Parisz kam ym maien monet nach Christi geburt, Funfftzenhundert vnnd Fünffjar. Gedruckt yn Nüremburg durch Wolffgang Hueber_. The full page of this edition has thirty-seven lines.

This follows the fac-simile given in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 333, of an edition in the Royal Library at Dresden.]

Another edition, issued the same year (1505), shows a slight change in the title, _Von der neü gefunden Region so wol ein welt genempt mag werden, durch den Christēlichen künig, von Portigal wunderbarlich erfunden_. This is followed by the same cut of the King, and has a similar colophon. Its full page contains thirty-three lines.[523]

Still another edition of the same year and publisher shows thirty-five lines to the page, and above the same cut the title reads: _Von der neu gefunden Region die wol ein welt genent mag werden durch den Cristenlichen künig von portigal wunderbarlich erfunden_.

This follows the fac-simile given in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 334, of the reverse of title of a copy preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden.]

This is the copy described in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ (vol. i. no. 26), and seems to correspond to the copy in the Dresden Library, of which fac-similes of the title and its reverse are given herewith.[524]

Harrisse[525] cites a copy in the British Museum (Grenville), which has thirty-five lines to the page, with the title: _Vonderneüw gefunden Region_, etc. It is without date and place; but Harrisse sets it under 1505, as he does another issue, _Von der Neüwen gefundē Region_, of which he found a copy in the Royal Library at Munich,[526] and still another, _Von den Nawen Insulen unnd Landen_, printed at Leipsic.[527]

In 1506 there were two editions,—one published at Strasburg,[528] _Von den Nüwe Insulē und landen_ (eight leaves); and the other at Leipsic, _Von den newen Insulen und Landen_ (six leaves).[529]

In 1508 there was, according to Brunet,[530] a Strasburg edition, _Von den Neüwen Insulen und Landen_. There was also a Dutch edition, _Van der nieuwer werelt_, etc., printed at Antwerp by Jan van Doesborgh, which was first made known by Muller, of Amsterdam, through his _Books on America_ (1872, no. 24). It is a little quarto tract of eight leaves, without date, printed in gothic type, thirty and thirty-one lines to the page, with various woodcuts. It came from an “insignificant library,”—that of the architect Bosschaert,[531]—sold in 1871 in Antwerp, and was bound up with three other tracts of the first ten years of the sixteenth century. It cost Muller 830 florins, and subsequently passed into the Carter-Brown Library, and still remains unique. Muller had placed it between 1506 and 1509; but Mr. Bartlett, in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ (vol. i. no. 38), assigns it to 1508. Muller had also given a fac-simile of the first page; but only the cut on that page is reproduced in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ (i. 46), as well as a cut showing a group of four Indians, which is on the reverse of the last leaf. Mr. Carter-Brown printed a fac-simile edition (twenty-five copies) in 1874 for private distribution.[532]

That portion of the Latin letter which Vespucius addressed to Soderini on his four voyages differs from the text connected with Giocondo’s name, and will be found in the various versions of the _Paesi novamente_ and in Grynæus, as well as in Ramusio (i. 128), Bandini (p. 100), and Canovai in Italian, and in English in Kerr’s _Voyages_ (vol. iii., 1812, p. 342) and in Lester (p. 223). There are also German versions in Voss, _Allerälteste Nachricht von den neuen Welt_ (Berlin, 1722), and in Spanish in Navarrete’s Coleccion (iii. 190).

There is another text, the “Relazione,” published by Francesco Bartolozzi in 1789,[533] after it had long remained in manuscript; it also is addressed to the same Lorenzo.[534] If the original account as written by Vespucius himself was in Portuguese and addressed to King Manoel, it is lost.[535]

* * * * *

Of the Vespucius-Coelho voyage we have only the account which is given in connection with the other three, in which Vespucius gives May 10 as the date of sailing; but Coelho is known to have started June 10, with six ships. Varnhagen has identified the harbor, where he left the shipwrecked crew, with Port Frio.[536] Returning, they reached Lisbon June 18 (or 28), and on the 4th of the following September Vespucius dated his account.[537]

* * * * *

If we draw a line from Nancy to Strasburg as the longer side of a triangle, its apex to the south will fall among the Vosges, where in a secluded valley lies the town of St.-Dié. What we see there to-day of man’s work is scarcely a century and a half old; for the place was burned in 1756, and shortly after rebuilt. In the early part of the sixteenth century St.-Dié was in the dominion of Duke René of Lorraine. It had its cathedral and a seminary of learning (under the patronage of the Duke), and a printing-press had been set up there. The reigning prince, as an enlightened friend of erudition, had drawn to his college a number of learned men; and Pico de Mirandola, in addressing a letter to the editor of the Ptolemy of 1513, expressed surprise that so scholarly a body of men existed in so obscure a place. Who were these scholars?

The chief agent of the Duke in the matter seems to have been his secretary, Walter Lud or Ludd, or Gualterus Ludovicus, as his name was latinized. The preceding narrative has indicated his position in this learned community,[538] and has cited the little tractate of four leaves by him, the importance of which was first discovered, about twenty years ago, by Henry Stevens,[539] and of which the only copies at present known are in the British Museum and the Imperial Library at Vienna.[540] From this tiny _Speculum_, as we shall see, we learn some important particulars. Just over the line of Lorraine, and within the limits of Alsace, there was born and had lived a certain Mathias Ringmann or Ringman. In these early years of the century (1504) he was a student in Paris among the pupils of a certain Dr. John Faber,—to be in other ways, as we shall see, connected with the development of the little story now in progress. In Paris at the same time, and engaged in building the Notre Dame bridge, was the Veronese architect Fra Giovanni Giocondo. Major thinks there is great reason for believing that the young Alsatian student formed the acquaintance of the Italian architect, and was thus brought to entertain that enthusiasm for Vespucius which Giocondo, as a countryman of the navigator, seems to have imparted to his young friend. At least the little that is known positively seems to indicate this transmission of admiration.

* * * * *

We must next revert to what Vespucius himself was doing to afford material for this increase of his fame. On his return from his last voyage he had prepared an account at full length of his experiences in the New World, “that coming generations might remember him.” No such ample document, however, is now known. There was at this time (1504) living in Florence a man of fifty-four, Piero Soderini, who two years before, had been made perpetual Gonfaloniere of the city. He had been a schoolmate of Vespucius; and to him, dating from Lisbon, Sept. 4, 1504, the navigator addressed an account of what he called his four voyages, abstracted as is supposed from the larger narrative. The original text of this abstract is also missing, unless we believe, with Varnhagen, that the text which he gives in his _Amerigo Vespucci, son caractère_, etc. (p. 34), printed at Lima in 1865, is such, which he supposes to have been published at Florence in 1505-1506, since a printed copy of an Italian text, undated, had been bought by him in Havana (1863) in the same covers with another tract of 1506.[541] Other commentators have not placed this Italian tract so early. It has not usually been placed before 1510.[542] Dr. Court put it before 1512. Harrisse gave it the date of 1516 because he had found it bound with another tract of that date; but in his _Additions_, p. xxv, he acknowledges the reasons inconclusive. Major contends that there is no reason to believe that any known Italian text antedates the Latin, yet to be mentioned. This Italian text is called _Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi ... Data in Lisbona a di 4 di Septembre, 1504_. It is a small quarto of sixteen leaves.[543]

Varnhagen does not question that the early Italian print is the better text, differing as it does from Bassin’s Latin; and he follows it by preference in all his arguments. He complains that Bandini and Canovai reprinted it with many errors.

Ramusio in his first volume had reprinted that part of it which covers the third and fourth voyage; and it had also been given in French in the collection of Jean Temporal at Lyons in 1556, known otherwise as Jean Leon’s (Leo Africanus) _Historiale description de l’Afrique_, with a preface by Ramusio.[544]

It is Major’s belief that the original text of the abstract intended for Soderini was written in a sort of composite Spanish-Italian dialect, such as an Italian long in the service of the Iberian nations might acquire,[545] and that a copy of it coming into the possession of Vespucius’ countryman, Giocondo, in Paris, it was by that architect translated into French, and at Ringmann’s suggestion addressed to René and intrusted to Ringmann to convey to the Duke, of whom the Alsatian felt proud, as an enlightened sovereign whose dominions were within easy reach of his own home. Major also suggests that the preliminary parts of the narrative, referring to the school-day acquaintance of Vespucius with the person whom he addressed, while it was true of Soderini,[546] was not so of René; but, being retained, has given rise to confusion.[547] Lud tells us only that the letters were sent from Portugal to René in French, and Waldseemüller says that they were translated from the Italian to the French, but without telling us whence they came.

We know, at all events, that Ringmann returned to the Vosges country, and was invited to become professor of Latin in the new college, where he taught thereafter, and that he had become known, as was the fashion, under the Latin name of Philesius, whose verses have already been referred to. The narrative of Vespucius, whether Ringmann brought it from Paris, or however it came, was not turned from the French into Latin by him,[548] but, as Lud informs us, by another canon of the Cathedral, Jean Bassin de Sandacourt, or Johannes Basinus Sandacurius, as he appears in Lud’s Latin.

Just before this, in 1504, there had joined the college, as teacher of geography, another young man who had classicized his name, and was known as Hylacomylus. It was left, as has been mentioned, for Humboldt (_Examen critique_, iv. 99) to identify him as Martin Waltzemüller,—who however preferred to write it Waldseemüller.

It was a project among this St.-Dié coterie to edit Ptolemy,[549] and illustrate his cosmographical views, just as another coterie at Vienna were engaged then and later in studying the complemental theories of Pomponius Mela. Waldseemüller, as the teacher of geography, naturally assumed control of this undertaking; and the Duke himself so far encouraged the scheme as to order the engraving of a map to accompany the exposition of the new discoveries,—the same which is now known as the Admiral’s map.[550]

In pursuance of these studies Waldseemüller had prepared a little cosmographical treatise, and this it was now determined to print at the College Press at St.-Dié. Nothing could better accompany it than the Latin translation of the Four Voyages of Vespucius and some verses by Philesius; for Ringmann, as we have seen, was a verse-maker, and had a local fame as a Latin poet. Accordingly, unless Varnhagen’s theory is true, which most critics are not inclined to accept, these letters of Vespucius first got into print, not in their original Italian, but in a little Latin quarto of Waldseemüller, printed in this obscure nook of the Vosges. Under the title of _Cosmographiæ introductio_, this appeared twice, if not oftener, in 1507.[551]

To establish the sequence of the editions of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_ in 1507[552] is a bibliographical task of some difficulty, and experts are at variance. D’Avezac (_Waltzemüller_, p. 112) makes four editions in 1507, and establishes a test for distinguishing them by taking the first line of the title, together with the date of the colophon; those of May corresponding to the 25th of April, and those of September to the 29th of August:—

1. _Cosmographiæ introdu—vij kl’ Maij._

2. _Cosmographiæ introductio—vij kl’ Maij._

3. _Cosmographiæ—iiij kl’ Septembris._

4. _Cosmographiæ introdu—iiij kl’ Septembris._

(_Reduced after map in Bunbury’s Ancient Geography, London_, 1879, _vol._ ii.)]

The late Henry C. Murphy[553] maintained that nos. 1 and 4 in this enumeration are simply made up from nos. 2 and 3 (the original May and September editions), to which a new title,—the same in each case,—with the substitution of other leaves for the originals of leaves 1, 2, 5, and 6,—also the same in each case,—was given. Harrisse, however, dissents, and thinks D’Avezac’s no. 1 a genuine first edition. The only copy of it known[554] was picked up on a Paris quay for a franc by the geographer Eyriès, which was sold at his death, in 1846, for 160 francs, and again at the Nicholas Yéméniz sale (Lyons, no. 2,676), in 1867, for 2,000 francs. It is now in the Lenox Library.[555]

Of the second of D’Avezac’s types there are several copies known. Harrisse[556] names the copies in the Lenox, Murphy,[557] and Carter-Brown[558] collections. There is a record of other copies in the National Library at Rio Janeiro,[559] in the Royal Library at Berlin,[560] in the Huth Collection[561] in London, and in the Mazarine Library in Paris,—a copy which D’Avezac[562] calls “irréprochable.” Tross held a copy in 1872 for 1,500 francs. Waldseemüller’s name does not appear in these early May issues, which are little quartos of fifty-two leaves, twenty-seven lines to the full page, with an inscription of twelve lines, in Roman type, on the back of the folding sheet of a skeleton globe.[563]

On the 29th of August (iiij kl’ Septembris) it was reissued, still without Waldseemüller’s name, of the same size, and fifty-two leaves; but the folding sheet bears on the reverse an inscription in fifteen lines. The ordinary title is D’Avezac’s no. 3. Harrisse[564] mentions the Lenox and Carter-Brown[565] copies; but there are others in Harvard College Library (formerly the Cooke copy, no. 625, besides an imperfect copy which belonged to Charles Sumner), in Charles Deane’s Collection, and in the Barlow Library. The Murphy Library had a copy (no. 680) in its catalogue, and the house of John Wiley’s Sons advertised a copy in New York in 1883 for $350.

There are records of copies in Europe,—in the Imperial Library at Vienna, in the National Library at Paris, and in the Huth Collection (_Catalogue_, i. 356) in London. D’Avezac (_Waltzemüller_, pp. 54, 55) describes a copy which belonged to Yéméniz, of Lyons. Brockhaus advertised one in 1861 (Trömel, no. 1). Another was sold in Paris for 2,000 francs in 1867. There was another in the Sobolewski sale (no. 3,769), and one in the Court Catalogue (no. 92). Leclerc, 1878 (no. 599), has advertised one for 500 francs, Harrassowitz, 1881, (no. 309) one for 1,000 marks, and Rosenthal, of Munich, in 1884 (no. 30) held one at 3,000 marks. One is also shown in the _Catalogue of the Reserved and Most Valuable Portion of the Libri Collection_ (no. 15).

The latter portion of the book, embracing the _Quattuor Americi Vesputii navigationes_, seems to have been issued also separately, and is still occasionally found.[566]

What seems to have been a composite edition, corresponding to D’Avezac’s fourth, made up, as Harrisse thinks (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 47), of the introductory part of D’Avezac’s first and the voyages of his third edition, is also found, though very rarely. There is a copy in the Lenox Library of this description, and another, described by Harrisse, in the Mazarine Library in Paris.[567]

* * * * *

It was in this precious little quarto of 1507, whose complicated issues we have endeavored to trace, that, in the introductory portion, Waldseemüller, anonymously to the world, but doubtless with the privity of his fellow-collegians, proposed in two passages, already quoted, but here presented in fac-simile, to stand sponsor for the new-named western world; and with what result we shall see.

This is the third edition of D’Avezac’s enumeration.]

It was a strange sensation to name a new continent, or even a hitherto unknown part of an old one. There was again the same uncertainty of continental lines as when Europe had been named[568] by the ancients, for there was now only the vaguest notion of what there was to be named. Columbus had already died in the belief that he had only touched the eastern limits of Asia. There is no good reason to believe that Vespucius himself was of a different mind.[569] So insignificant a gain to Europe had men come to believe these new islands, compared with the regions of wealth and spices with which Vasco da Gama and Cabral had opened trade by the African route, that the advocate and deluded finder of the western route had died obscurely, with scarcely a record being made of his departure. A few islands and their savage inhabitants had scarcely answered the expectation of those who had pictured from Marco Polo the golden glories of Cathay.

That part of the page (sig. C) of the September edition (1507) which has the reference to America and Vespucius.]

That part of the page of the 1507 (September) edition in which the name of America is proposed for the New World.]

To Columbus himself the new-found regions were only “insulæ Indiæ super Gangem,”—India east of the Ganges; and the “Indies” which he supposed he had found, and for whose native races the Asiatic name was borrowed and continues to abide, remained the Spanish designation of their possessions therein, though distinguished in time by the expletive _West_ Indies.[570] It never occurred to the discoverers themselves to give a new name to regions which they sometimes designated generically as _Mundus Novus_ or _Alter Orbis_; but it is doubtful as Humboldt says, if they intended by such designation any further description than that the parts discovered were newly found, just as Strabo, Mela, Cadamosto and others had used similar designations.[571] It was at a much later day, and when the continental character of the New World was long established, that some Spaniard suggested _Colonia_, or _Columbiana_; and another, anxious to commemorate the sovereigns of Castile and Leon, futilely coined the cumbrous designation of _Fer-Isabelica_.[572] When Columbus and others had followed a long stretch of the northern coast of South America without finding a break, and when the volume of water pouring through the mouths of the Orinoco betokened to his mind a vast interior, it began to be suspected that the main coast of Asia had been found; and the designation of _Tierra firme_ was naturally attached to the whole region, of which Paria and the Pearl coast were distinguishable parts. This designation of Firm Land was gradually localized as explorations extended, and covered what later was known as Castilla del Oro; and began to comprehend in the time of Purchas,[573] for instance, all that extent of coast from Paria to Costa Rica.[574]

When Cabral in 1500 sighted the shores of Brazil, he gave the name of _Terra Sanctæ Crucis_ to the new-found region,—the land of the Holy Cross; and this name continued for some time to mark as much as was then known of what we now call South America, and we find it in such early delineations as the Lenox globe and the map of Sylvanus in 1511.[575] It will be remembered that in 1502, after what is called his third voyage, Vespucius had simply named the same region _Mundus Novus_.

Thus in 1507 there was no general concurrence in the designations which had been bestowed on these new islands and coasts; and the only unbroken line which had then been discovered was that stretching from Honduras well down the eastern coast of South America, if Vespucius’ statement of having gone to the thirty-second degree of southern latitude was to be believed. After the exploration of this coast,—thanks to the skill of Vespucius in sounding his own exploits and giving them an attractive setting out,[576] aided, probably, by that fortuitous dispensation of fortune which sometimes awards fame where it is hardly deserved,—it had come to pass that the name of Vespucius had, in common report, become better associated than that of Columbus with the magnitude of the new discoveries. It was not so strange then as it appears now that the Florentine, rather than the Genoese, was selected for such continental commemoration. All this happened to some degree irrespective of the question of priority in touching Tierra Firme, as turning upon the truth or falsity of the date 1497 assigned to the first of the voyages of Vespucius.

The proposing of a name was easy; the acceptance of it was not so certain. The little tract had appeared without any responsible voucher. The press-mark of St.-Dié was not a powerful stamp. The community was obscure, and it had been invested with what influence it possessed by the association of Duke René with it.

This did not last long. The Duke died in 1508, and his death put a stop to the projected edition of Ptolemy and broke up the little press; so that next year (1509), when Waldseemüller planned a new edition of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_, it was necessary to commit it to Grüninger in Strasburg to print. In this edition Waldseemüller first signed his own name to the preface. Copies of this issue are somewhat less rare than those of 1507. It is a little tract of thirty-two leaves, some copies having fourteen, others fifteen, lines on the back of the folding sheet.[577] The Lenox Library has examples of each.

A section of the drawing given by Dr. De Costa in his monograph on the globe, showing the American parts reduced to a plane projection, and presenting the name of _Terra Sanctæ Crucis_. There is another sketch on p. 123.]

There are other copies in the Carter-Brown (_Catalogue_, vol. i. no. 40), Barlow, and Harvard College libraries. Another is in the Force Collection, Library of Congress, and one was sold in the Murphy sale (no. 681). The copy which belonged to Ferdinand Columbus is still preserved in Seville; but its annotations do not signify that the statements in it respecting Vespucius’ discoveries attracted his attention.[578] It was this edition which Navarrete used when he made a Spanish version for his _Coleccion_ (iii. 183) D’Avezac used a copy in the Mazarine Library; and other copies are noted in the Huth (i. 356) and Sunderland (_Catalogue_, vol. v. no. 12,920) collections. The account of the voyages in this edition was also printed separately in German as _Diss buchlin saget wie die zwē ... herrē_, etc.[579]

* * * * *

While the Strasburg press was emitting this 1509 edition it was also printing the sheets of another little tract, the anonymous _Globus mundi_,[580] of which a fac-simile of the title is annexed, in which it will be perceived the bit of the New World shown is called “Newe welt,” and not America, though “America lately discovered” is the designation given in the text. The credit of the discovery is given unreservedly to Vespucius, and Columbus is not mentioned.[581]

The breaking up of the press was a serious blow to the little community at St.-Dié. Ringmann, in the full faith of completing the edition of Ptolemy which they had in view, had brought from Italy a Greek manuscript of the old geographer; but the poet was soon to follow his patron, for, having retired to Schlestadt, his native town, he died there in 1511 at the early age of twenty-nine. The Ptolemy project, however, did not fail. Its production was transferred to Strasburg; and there, in 1513, it appeared, including the series of maps associated ever since with the name of Hylacomylus, and showing evidences in the text of the use which had been made of Ringmann’s Greek manuscript.

We look to this book in vain for any attempt to follow up the conferring of the name of Vespucius on the New World. The two maps which it contains, showing the recent discoveries, are given in fac-simile on pages 111 and 112. In one the large region which stands for South America has no designation; in the other there is supposed to be some relation to Columbus’ own map, while it bears a legend which gives to Columbus unequivocally the credit of the discovery of the New World. It has been contended of late that the earliest cartographical application of the name is on two globes preserved in the collection of the Freiherr von Hauslab, in Vienna, one of which (printed) Varnhagen in his paper on Apianus and Schöner puts under 1509, and the other (manuscript) under 1513. Weiser in his _Magalhâes-Strasse_ (p. 27) doubts these dates.[582] The application of the new name, America, we also find not far from this time, say between 1512 and 1515, in a manuscript mappemonde (see p. 125) which Major, when he described it in the _Archæologia_ (xl. p. 1), unhesitatingly ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, thinking that he could trace certain relations between Da Vinci and Vespucius. This map bears distinctly the name _America_ on the South American continent. Its connection with Da Vinci is now denied.

Not far from the same time a certain undated edition of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_ appeared at Lyons, though no place is given. Of this edition there are two copies in the British Museum, and others in the Lenox and Barlow collections; but they all lack a map,[583] which is found in a copy first brought to public attention by the bookseller Tross, of Paris, in 1881,[584] and which is now owned by Mr. C. H. Kalbfleisch, of New York. Its date is uncertain. Harrisse (_Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 63) placed it first in 1510, but later (_Cabots_, p. 182) he dated it about 1514, as Tross had already done. D’Avezac (_Waltzemüller_, p. 123) thinks it could not have been earlier than 1517.[585]

The chief interest of this map to us is the fact that it bears the words “America noviter reperta” on what stands for South America; and there is fair ground for supposing that it antedates all other printed maps yet known which bear this name.

At not far from the same time, fixed in this instance certainly in 1515, we find _America_ on the earliest known globe of Schöner.[586] Probably printed to accompany this globe, is a rare little tract, issued the same year (1515) at Nuremberg, under the title of _Luculentissima quædā terræ totius descriptio_. In this Schöner speaks of a “fourth part of the globe, named after its discoverer, Americus Vespucius, a man of sagacious mind, who found it in 1497,” adopting the controverted date.[587]

Meanwhile the fame of Vespucius was prospering with the Vienna coterie. One of them, Georg Tanstetter, sometimes called Collimitius, was editing the _De natura locorum librum_ of Albertus Magnus; and apparently after the book was printed he made with type a marginal note, to cite the profession of Vespucius that he had reached to fifty degrees south, as showing that there was habitable land so far towards the Southern Pole.[588]

Joachim Watt, or Vadianus, as he was called in his editorial Latin, had in 1515 adopted the new name of America, and repeated it in 1518, when he reproduced his letter in his edition of Pomponius Mela, as explained on another page.[589] Apian had been employed to make the mappemonde for it, which was to show the new discoveries. The map seems not to have been finished in time; but when it appeared, two years later (1520), in the new edition of Solinus, by Camers, though it bore the name of America on the southern main, it still preserved the legend in connection therewith which awarded the discovery to Columbus.[590] Watt now quarrelled with Camers, for they had worked jointly, and their two books are usually found in one cover, with Apian’s map between them. Returning to St. Gall, Vadianus practised there as a physician, and reissued his Mela at Basle in 1522, dedicating it to that Dr. Faber who had been the teacher of Ringmann in Paris eighteen years before.[591]

In 1522 Lorenz Friess, or Laurentius Phrysius, another of Duke René’s coterie, a correspondent of Vespucius, published a new edition of Ptolemy at the Grüninger press in Strasburg, in which the fame of Columbus and Vespucius is kept up in the usual equalizing way. The preface, by Thomas Ancuparius, sounds the praises of the Florentine, ascribing to him the discovery “of what we to-day call America;” the Admiral’s map, _Tabula Terre Nove_,[592] which Waldseemüller had published in the 1513 edition, is once more reproduced, with other of the maps of that edition, re-engraved on a reduced scale. The usual legend, crediting the discovery to Columbus, is shown in a section of the map, which is given in another place.[593] Phrysius acknowledges that the maps are essentially Waldseemüller’s, though they have some changes and additions; but he adds a new mappemonde of his own, putting the name America on the great southern main,—the first time of its appearing in any map of the Ptolemy series. A fac-simile is annexed.

* * * * *

There is thus far absolutely no proof that any one disputed the essential facts of the discovery by Columbus of the outlying islands of Asia, as the belief went, or denied him the credit of giving a new world to the crowns of Aragon and Castile, whether that were Asia or not. The maps which have come down to us, so far as they record anything, invariably give Columbus the credit. The detractors and panegyrists of Vespucius have asserted in turn that he was privy to the doings at St.-Dié and Strasburg, and that he was not; but proof is lacking for either proposition. No one can dispute, however, that he was dead before his name was applied to the new discoveries on any published map.