Chapter II: The Slaves' Feast (7)

And now the sad time came for our travellers to leave Seville. In fact, the exorbitant prices of everything at the hotel made a longer stay impossible, though it was difficult to say what it was that they paid for: certainly _not food_; for, excepting the chocolate and bread, which are invariably good throughout Spain, the dinners were uneatable, the oil rancid, the eggs stale; even "el cocido," the popular dish, was composed of indescribable articles, and of kids which seemed to have died a natural death. One of the party, a Belgian, exclaimed when her first dish of this so-called meat was given her at Easter: "Vraiment, je crois que nous autres nous n'avons pas tant perdu pendant le Carême!" An establishment has lately been started by an enterprising peasant to sell milk fresh from the cow, a great luxury in Spain, where goat's milk is the universal substitute; and four very pretty Alderneys are kept, stall-fed, in a nice little dairy, "à l'Anglaise," at one corner of the principal square, which is both clean and tempting to strangers. At every corner of the streets, water, in cool, porous jars, is offered to the passers by, mixed with a sugary substance looking like what is used by confectioners for "meringues," but which melts in the water and leaves no trace. This is the universal beverage of every class in Spain.

There is little to tempt foreigners in the shops of Seville, and, with the exception of photographs and fans, there is nothing to buy which has any particular character or "chique" about it. The fans are beautiful, and form, in fact, one of the staple trades of the place; there is also a sweet kind of incense manufactured of flowers, mixed with resinous gums, which resembles that made at Damascus. But the ordinary contents of the shops look like the sweepings-out of all the "quincaillerie" of the Faubourg St. Denis.

It was on a more lovely evening than usual that our travellers went, for the last time, to that glorious cathedral. The sorrow was even greater than what they had felt the year before in leaving St. Peter's: for Rome one lives in hopes of seeing again; Seville, in all human probability, never! The services were over, but the usual proportion of veiled figures knelt on the marble pavement, on which the light from those beautiful painted windows threw gorgeous colors. Never had that magnificent temple appeared more solemn or more worthy of its purpose; one realized as one had never done before one's own littleness and God's ineffable greatness, mercy, and love. Still they lingered, when the inexorable courier came to remind them that the train was on the point of starting, and with a last prayer, which was more like a sob, our travellers left the sacred building. At the station all their kind Seville friends had assembled to bid them once more good-by, and to re-echo kind hopes of a speedy return; and then the train started, and the last gleam of sunshine died out on the tower of the Giralda.

------

{608}

Original.

Il Duomo

A Vision.

IL DUOMO, being interpreted, signifies "The Cathedral," and the subject
of the following poem is the picturesque and beautiful cathedral of
Milan. This splendid building is adorned externally by nearly five
thousand white marble statues, life size, of knights, martyrs, monks,
etc. etc., the roof being ornamented also externally with sculptured
buds and flowers in great profusion. Upward of fifty massive pillars
support the roof internally, and over the grand altar is suspended a
casket containing a nail from the true cross, and other relics. On the
topmost pinnacle of the cathedral stands, serene and splendid, a
glittering, gilded statue of the Madonna, who, with her eighteen feet
of stature, towers nobly above her magnificent body-guard of saints,
knights, and martyrs.

Faint with the sunny splendors of the king of light,
Nature disrobes, and from her wearied shoulders casts
The oppressive mantle of the burning day;
Flings to the glowing west her regal diadem of fire;
Upon her drooping brow all gladly binds
The calm and holy moon;
And with a zone of stars loops round her languid form
The cool sweet robe of night:
The placid moonbeams, o'er that stately fane,
Pour the rich affluence of their silvery light,
And with a chaste soft lustre, tint
The graceful slender spires,
The marble phalanx of the white-robed saints,
The silent knights, the multitudinous flowers,
The mother of our Lord,
And all the wonders of that wondrous roof!
With hushed and reverent step, through the wide doors I passed!
Passed from the outer splendors to the inner mystic gloom
Of the majestic pile;
Through the emblazoned windows streams the tempered light,
Showing dimly forth the shrines of holy men,
The sacred emblems, and the fifty marvellous pillars,
Dumb stony giants, who, with patient strength,
Bear up the ponderous roof;
Upon the altar steps I bend me down, and, awe-struck, rest.
Suddenly, through the deep stillness
Breathed a solemn sound, as sweet as mournful;
A hand unseen ran o'er the organ's keys,
And o'er the broad, dark air the harmonious waves
Rolled grandly on!
Entranced I heard, and soon the subtle strains
Distilled within my soul a deep oblivion
Of things terrestrial.

{609}

A vision came upon me, and I saw
The darkness melt, the shades opaque dissolve,
And the dull, sombre midnight change
To day bright lustre!
With soft and lambent flame the fifty columns glowed
From base to branching head,
And with supernal light pierced the thick denseness
Of the arched roof:
And I saw the innumerable leaves,
The sculptured garlands of fair buds and flowers--
Strewn with such lavish hand o'er all that broad parterre--
With life-renewing tints endowed:
The sacred vessels on the altar ranged,
The pious gifts of ages passed away,
And all the saintly relics of that holy place
Glittered with new effulgence!
Mine unused eyes drank in amazed the dazzling scene,
And now upon mine ears arose the clang of music,
And the sound of men rejoicing!
From their huge stanchions 'scaped the massy doors,
And through the enfranchised portal paced
A wondrous train!
A thousand mailèd knights, the Duomo's guards,
Strode proudly in!
As when in life they marched, so came they now;
No marble corslets still their lofty hearts,
Rich suits of Milan steel enclasp them round,
Through the gold helmets' bars their dark eyes flash,
Bright banners wave above them, and their hands
Clasp as of old the trenchant blade!
A stately white-robed troop, the Duomo's priests,
The pageant swells.
No rigid garb of stone impedes their solemn steps;
Girt round with high, ecclesial pomp,
The sacred aisles they pace,
The jewelled crosiers grasp, the censers swing,
And, as of yore, the glad "Hosannas" raise!
Again the clash of steel, the armed tread,
The banners' silken folds--
And twice five hundred warriors
Pass the gaping doors!
Hark! in the air, a choir angelic sings:

Wake, jubilant harps! peal, ye clarions of silver!
Swell, ye loud organs! for mighty's the theme!
Bend lowly the knee, ye saints, knights, and martyrs,
With offerings of gold let the high altar gleam!
Fill the gemmed censers with myrrh and with amber,
Deck the rich shrines with a splendor ne'er seen,
Raise high the song, the loud hymn of devotion,
Give homage to Mary, our lady, our queen!

{610}

Loud glorias peal, and with reverberant blast,
Throughout the illumined space,
The silver trumpets clang!
Doffed is the casque, the mitred head bent low,
The song subsides, and on that marvellous crowd
An awful silence dwells!
A Presence is among them--
A Being gracious as resplendent.
And the resuscitate host is filled with holy terror!
She smiles benignly on the kneeling throng,
And melts with heavenly look the still, deep fear!
Again the hymn breaks forth,
With heavenly, earthly voices join,
Monks, warriors, martyrs swell the raptured strain!

Lo! where she comes, all meek, yet all noble,
The glory celestial encircling her brows.
Fall prostrate, ye thousands, all lowly adore her;
Bare your swords, valiant knights, yet once make your vows;
Chant paeans, ye priests; let the harmonies roll
Till the gorgeous temple resounds to its veil.
Through our midst she is moving, the chosen, the holy:
Hail, Mary, Madonna, blest Virgin, all hail!

The voices ceased, the echoes died away,
The mighty pillars throbbed no more with flame;
The roof closed in, the pageant vanished,
And the darkness swathed once more
The sombre nave.
Still on the air the organ's notes float sad and wailing,
Still through the storied windows streams the moon's soft light,
Still rest the things of earth;
The mute Colossi yet bear up
The vaulted roof;
The shrines still glimmer in the dim night air,
The mystic glories of my vision
Gone!

Arthur Matthison.

------

{611}

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]

[Footnote 187: M. Alexander Von Humboldt, Critical Examination of the
History and Geography of the New World. Vols. iii. and iv. are entirely
devoted to an examination of this problem. We merely offer here an
abstract of this work, which is little known, and, while exceedingly
interesting, demands a very attentive perusal. See also Washington
Irving, History of Christopher Columbus, vol. iv. app. 9, Americus
Vespucius.]

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.

{612}

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.

[Footnote 188: "Juxta ingenioli mel tenuitatem." Crit. Exam, vol. iv.
p. 170, n. 1.]

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]

[Footnote 189: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 267, 268. This third voyage
took place from May 30th. 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]

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.

[Footnote 190: M. Von Humboldt supposes him to have been the astronomer
of the expedition. Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 189, and following. In
several instances the other mariners failed to mention the name of
their captains.]

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]

[Footnote 191: He states that on this voyage (May 20th, 1499, to June,
1500) he took with him Juan de la Cosa, pilot, Morigo Vespuche, and
other pilots. (Crit. Ex; vol. iv. p. 188.)]

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]

[Footnote 192: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 195-200.]

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]

[Footnote 193: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 290.]

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

[Footnote 194: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 293-316; vol. v. pp. 61-69,
212-213. M. Von Humboldt shows that the circumstances of each of the
two first voyages of Vespucius bear too distinctive a character to
render admissible the idea that they were but one voyage, that is, the
voyage which the Florentine is accused of calling the second, while its
elements, divided by him with more or less art, furnished fallaciously
the material for a first supposed voyage, bearing the false date of
1497. The first voyage was confined entirely in the northern
hemisphere, the second extended to southern regions.]

{613}

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]

[Footnote 195: Letter dated at Cape Verd, June 4th, 1501.]

[Footnote 196: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 69-107 and 213-215.]

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]

[Footnote 197: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 167, 168.]

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.

{614}

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]

[Footnote 198: The fact that these discoveries of Americus had taken
place in southern regions added to their interest. Many persons still
persisted in the error of ancient cosmography, that the two temperate
zones, north and south of the equator, were alone habitable, and could
never hold communication with each other because of the burning
atmosphere of the torrid zone. We find a ludicrous and remarkable
specimen of this blind spirit of conservatism in a certain Zachariah
Sillus, who writes at Paris in 1515, that is to say, twenty-three years
after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and seventeen years
after Vasco de Gama's expedition to the Indies: "Between the torrid
zone and the glacial zones, two zones only are habitable. By whom is
the one corresponding to our own inhabited? Macrobius affirms it; no
one has ever known, no one ever will know. For the torrid zone placed
between them interdicts all intercourse between the men of these two
regions. The superior zone, then, only is inhabited, I mean the one
lying between the northern and equatorial regions." (Bibliothèque
Magazine, No. 16169.) Others understood no better the antipodes, the
men of the opposite hemisphere standing head downward. The voyages of
Vespucius contributed largely toward the solution of these problems.]

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.

{615}

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._)

[Footnote 199: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 99 and following. See the
positive and sagacious researches which led M. Von Humboldt to discover
the true name of Hylacomylus. The passage is of great interest, not
only on account of the problem whose solution it presents, but as
showing with what persevering ardor the illustrious author devoted
himself to the elucidation of the truth.]

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."

[Footnote 200: "Pari modo dicendum est de eis quae sunt ultra
sequinoctialem ad austrum quorum sex contraria nomina habentia sunt
lustrata: et dici possunt antidia Meroes, antidia Alexandrias, antidia
Rhodon, antidia Rhomes, (sic,) antidia Borischener, (sic,) a graeca
particula antiquae oppositum vel contra denotat."-Ch. vii.]

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. {616} 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]

[Footnote 201: The poetical part of the Cosmographiae Introductio is by
Philesius, (Ringmann,) a friend of the editor.]

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.

[Footnote 202: Hylacomylus complains of this in a letter to Philesius,
dated 1509.]

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]

[Footnote 203: Crit. Exam, vol iv. pp. 140-142. Letters of the
Benedictine Trithemius, Aug. 12th, 1507. Humboldt shows that this
letter is often dated incorrectly 1510. Trithemius makes Vespucius a
Spaniard.]

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.

{617}

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]

[Footnote 204: Newe Welt. The indications on this map of the Globus are
in German.]

[Footnote 205: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 255; vol. v. pp. 174, 188.]

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]

[Footnote 206: We find in a treatise of 1511, composed of a tract chart
of Europe by Hylacomylus, with a description of the same continent by
his friend Philesius, an interesting tribute to the memory of René II.
Hylacomylus dedicates this map, of which he is very proud, to Duke
Antony, René's son and successor. He observes that the late duke was
"the first among the first of princes to favor the liberal arts, full
of the love of letters and of lettered men. We ourselves remember the
indulgent ear, the smiling countenance, and the good grace with which
he received the general description of the globe, and other monuments
of our literary labors offered by us to him." This book (Biblio.
Magazine, No. 16169) is entitled: Instructio manuductionem praestans in
cartam itinerariam Martini Hilacomile, cum luculentiori ipsius Europae
enarratione à Ringmanno Philesio conscripta. Strasbourg Imprimerie
Grieninger, April, 1511.]

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.

[Footnote 207: On the contrary, we find this inscription: _Haec terra
cum adjacentibua insulis inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex mandate
Regis Castellae._ Elsewhere the preface of the supplement contains
this singular phrase _à propos_ of the map of the world: "Charta
autem marina quam hydrographiam vocant per admiralem quondam
serenissimum _Portugaliae regis Ferdinandi_ caeteros denique
lustratores verissimis peragrationibus lustrata." (Folio, Imperial
Lib., G. 10.) How place Ferdinand on the Portuguese throne then
occupied by Emmanuel? Who is this admiral? Remark that the names of
locality on the second map are Spanish. This extraordinary confusion of
names of kings will serve to explain other errors in after times.]

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]

[Footnote 208: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 116.]

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. {618} 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]

[Footnote 209: We have not been fortunate enough to find the Ptolemaeus
of 1522. But there exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève (G. 8)
an edition of 1525, made by Bilinald Pirckeymer, at Grieninger, in
Strasburg. The atlas, in the second part of the volume, evidently
repeats in a smaller form that of 1513. The maps are identical. Now,
the last Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem
exactissime depicta bears, with the sacramental date of 1522, the name
of America upon the great tract of country in the south-western part of
the Western ocean. This, then, is the first document. After the date
come the initials L. P. (Laurentius Frisius. Frisius, another form of
Phrisius.)]

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]

[Footnote 210: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 144. Columbus discovered the
terra firma of the delta of the Orinoco, (Isla Santa,) August 1st,
1498. The third voyage lasted from May 30th, 1498, to November 25th,
1500.]

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. {619} 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]

[Footnote 211: First voyage from August 3d, 1492, to March 15, 1493:
discovery of the Bahama islands, and of Hayti. Fourth voyage from May
11th, 1502, to November 7th, 1504; discovery of the coast of the
continent from Honduras to Puerto de Mosquitos, at the end of the
Isthmus of Panama. First notion of the existence of another sea to the
west.]

[Footnote 212: Crit. Exam. vol. ii. p. 330; vol. iv. p. 72 and note.]

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.

[Footnote 213: Crit. Exam. vol. iii. p. 340. We hear of a chart given
at Rome, in 1505, by Bartholemew Columbus, the admiral's brother, to a
canon of St. John of Lateran, and given by him to Alessandro Zozi,
author of the collection of 1507. Its fate is unknown. Crit. Exam. vol.
iv. p. 80, note. This does not look like publicity.]

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. {620} 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."

[Footnote 214: Naucierus insignia ac mediocriter cosmographia peritus,
p. 167, Biblioth Magazine, 15824.]

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]

[Footnote 215: It was between the years 1510 and 1514 that Pierre
Martyr thought proper to remember the great man's death.]

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.

[Footnote 216: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 24, 124.]

{621}

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.

[Footnote 217: Remember that Columbus touched terra firma at the delta
of the Orinoco, August 1st, 1498.]

[Footnote 218: The edition of Hylacomylus bears date 1489, a printer's
error.]

[Footnote 219: These registers bear their testimony at the present day.
We had occasion to refer to them in the first part of this article.]