$Unique_ID{how01160} $Pretitle{} $Title{Discovery Of America Part VII} $Subtitle{} $Author{Fiske, John} $Affiliation{} $Subject{de coast vespucius voyage footnote cape letter degrees et first} $Date{1892} $Log{} Title: Discovery Of America Book: Chapter VII: Mundus Novus Author: Fiske, John Date: 1892 Part VII The fourth voyage of Columbus was not the first response made by Spain to the voyage of Gama. The first response was entrusted to Vicente Yanez Pinzon, the way having been indicated by the second voyage of Vespucius, in company with Ojeda and La Cosa, in the summer of 1499. The voyage of Ojeda was instigated by Bishop Fonseca, with some intention of taking out of the hands of Columbus the further exploration of the coast upon which valuable pearls had been found. The expedition sailed May 16, 1499, from Cadiz, ran down to the Cape Verde islands, crossed the equator, and sighted land on the coast of Brazil in latitude 4 Degrees or 5 Degrees S., somewhere near Aracati. Vespucius gives a good account of this half-drowned coast. ^1 Thence the ships ran a few leagues to the southeast, probably to see whether the shore seemed to be that of an island or a continent. Finding progress difficult against the equatorial current, they turned about and ran northwest as far as Cayenne, thence to Paria, and so on to Maracaibo and to Cape de la Vela. From this point Ojeda, with part of the little squadron, went over to Hispaniola, and arrived there on the 5th of September. Ojeda's visit to that island was made in no friendly spirit toward Columbus, but there is good reason for believing that the Admiral or some of his people learned the particulars of Ojeda's route across the ocean and his landfall. Early in October two caravels were sent from San Domingo to Spain, and probably carried such information as to determine the route to be taken by Pinzon. That gallant captain started in December, and followed in the track of Vespucius and Ojeda, but went a little farther to the south, losing sight of the pole-star and finally striking the coast of Brazil near the site of Pernambuco, in latitude 8 Degrees S. Our accounts of this voyage ^1 are meagre, and it does not appear just why Pinzon turned northward from that point. While crossing the equator from south to north, with no land in sight, he found the sea-water fresh enough to drink. Full of wonder at so strange a thing he turned in toward the coast and entered the mouth of the greatest river upon the earth, the Amazon, nearly a hundred miles wide and sending huge volumes of fresh water more than a hundred miles out into the sea. After proceeding as far as the Pearl Coast and Hispaniola, and losing two of his ships in a hurricane, Pinzon returned to Spain in September, 1500. When he arrived he found that his fellow-townsman Diego de Lepe had set sail just after him, in January, with two caravels, and had returned in June, after having doubled Cape San Roque and followed the Brazilian coast to latitude 10 Degrees S., or thereabouts, far enough to begin to recognize its southwesterly trend. ^1 [Footnote 1: The landfall on this voyage has been commonly placed on the coast of Surinam, about 600 miles eastward from Trinidad. This is because Ojeda, in his testimony in the Probanzas, did not allude to any place farther east than Surinam. But this negative evidence is here of small value. In a second voyage, in 1502, Ojeda had trespassed upon Portuguese territory, and had been censured and heavily fined for so doing (Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 430). Evidently in giving his testimony, in 1513, Ojeda thought it prudent to give the Portuguese a wide berth, and as there was no occasion for his saying that he had been on the coast of Brazil, he said nothing about it. The account of Vespucius is clear and straightforward. It is true that Mr. Hubert Bancroft says, "his account in the different forms in which it exists is so full of blunders that it could throw but little light upon the subject" (Central America, vol. i. p. 113). When Mr. Bancroft says this, he of course has in mind the spurious letter published in 1745 by Bandini, in which Vespucius is supposed to give to his friend Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici an account of his second voyage. The MS. of this letter which professes to be an original, and by which Bandini was deceived, is at Florence, in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS. No. 2112. Neither the paper nor the ink is older than the seventeenth century, the handwriting is not that of Vespucius, the language is a very different Italian from that which he used, and the pages swarm with absurdities. (See Varnhagen's paper in Bulletin de la societe de geographie, avril, 1858.) Nothing except the blundering change of Lariab to Parias has done so much to bemuddle the story of Vespucius as this letter which some clever scamp was kind enough to write for him after he had been more than a hundred years under the sod. It is curious to see the elaborate arguments to which Humboldt was driven, in his Examen critique, tom. v., because he did not begin at the beginning, with textual criticism of sources, and so accepted this epistle as genuine. The account of Ojeda's voyage in the third volume of Irving's Columbus, from its mixing the first and second voyages of Vespucius, is so full of blunders as to be worse than worthless to the general reader.] [Footnote 1: Manuel de Valdovinos, one of the witnesses in the Probanzas, says that he went on this voyage with Pinzon the second time that he (Pinzon) went to make discoveries ("la segunda vez que fue a descubrir," Navarette, tom. iii. p. 552). This might mean that his first voyage was the one with Columbus in 1492, but in accordance with the general usage of these speakers, the phrase refers to him as for the second time in command, so that his first voyage must have been that of 1497-98.] [Footnote 1: From June, 1499, to April, 1500, Pero Alonso Nino and Cristoval Guerra made a voyage to the Pearl Coast and acquired much wealth, but as it contributed nothing to the progress of discovery I have not included it in my list. The voyage of Rodrigo de Bastidas, with La Cosa for pilot, from October, 1500, to September, 1502, was also in its main intent a voyage for pearls and gold, but it completed the discovery of the northern coast of what we now know to be South America, from Cape de la Vela to Puerto Bello on the isthmus of Darien.] Affairs now became curiously complicated. King Emanuel of Portugal intrusted to Pedro Alvarez de Cabral the command of a fleet for Hindustan, to follow up the work of Gama and establish a Portuguese centre of trade on the Malabar coast. This fleet of thirteen vessels, carrying about 1,200 men, sailed from Lisbon March 9, 1500. After passing the Cape Verde islands, March 22, for some reason not clearly known, whether driven by stormy weather or seeking to avoid the calms that were apt to be troublesome on the Guinea coast, Cabral took a somewhat more westerly course than he realized, and on April 22, after a weary progress averaging less than 60 miles per day, he found himself on the coast of Brazil not far beyond the limit reached by Lepe. It was easy enough thus to cross the ocean unintentionally, for in that latitude the Brazilian coast lies only ten degrees west of the meridian of the Cape Verde islands, and the southern equatorial current, unknown to Cabral, sets strongly toward the very spot whither he was driven. Approaching it in such a way Cabral felt sure that this coast must fall to the east of the papal meridian. Accordingly on May day, at Porto Seguro in latitude 16 Degrees 30 Minutes S., he took formal possession of the country for Portugal, and sent Gaspar de Lemos in one of his ships back to Lisbon with the news. ^1 On May 22 Cabral weighed anchor and stood for the Cape of Good Hope. As the fleet passed that famous headland the angry Genius of the Cape at last wreaked his vengeance upon the audacious captain who had dared to reveal his secret. In a frightful typhoon four ships were sunk, and in one of them the gallant Bartholomew Dias found a watery grave. [Footnote 1: See Gandavo, Historia da provincia Santa Cruz a vulgarmente chamamos Brazil, Lisbon, 1576, cap. i.; Riccioli, Geographia et Hydrographia, Venice, 1671, lib. iii. cap 22; Barros, Asia, dec. i. lib. v. cap. 2; Macedo, Nocoes de Corographia do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, 1873; Machado, Memoria sobre o descobrimento do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, 1855.] Cabral called the land he had found Vera Cruz, a name which presently became Santa Cruz; but when Lemos arrived in Lisbon with the news he had with him some gorgeous paroquets, and among the earliest names on old maps of the Brazilian coast we find "Land of Paroquets" and "Land of the Holy Cross." The land lay obviously so far to the east that Spain could not deny that at last there was something for Portugal out in the "ocean sea." Much interest was felt at Lisbon. King Emanuel began to prepare an expedition for exploring this new coast, and wished to secure the services of some eminent pilot and cosmographer familiar with the western waters. Overtures were made to Americus, a fact which proves that he had already won a high reputation. The overtures were accepted, for what reason we do not know, and soon after his return from the voyage with Ojeda, probably in the autumn of 1500, Americus passed from the service of Spain into that of Portugal. The remark was made long ago by Dr. Robertson, that if Columbus had never lived, and the chain of causes and effects at work independently of him had remained unchanged, the discovery of America would not long have been postponed. ^1 It would have been discovered by accident on April 22, 1500, the day when Cabral first saw the coast of Brazil. All other navigators to the western shores of the Atlantic since 1492 were successors of Columbus; not so Cabral. In the line of causal sequence he was the successor of Gama and Dias, of Lancarote and Gil Eannes, and the freak of wind and wave that carried him to Porto Seguro had no connection with the scientific triumph of the great Genoese. [Footnote 1: Robertson, History of America, book ii. Harrisse makes a similar remark in the preface to his Christophe Colomb.] This adventure of Cabral's had interesting consequences. It set in motion the train of events which ended after some years in placing the name "America" upon the map. On May 14, 1501, Vespucius, who was evidently principal pilot and guiding spirit in this voyage under unknown skies, set sail from Lisbon with three caravels. It is not quite clear who was chief captain, but M. Varnhagen has found reasons for believing that it was a certain Don Nuno Manuel. ^1 The first halt was made on the African coast at Cape Verde, the first week in June; and there the explorers met Cabral on his way back from Hindustan. According to the letter attributed to Vespucius and published in 1827 by Baldelli, ^2 the wealth stowed away in Cabral's ships was quite startling. "He says there was an immense quantity of cinnamon, green and dry ginger, pepper, cloves, nutmegs, mace, musk, civet, storax, benzoin, porcelain, cassia, mastic, incense, myrrh, red and white sandalwood, aloes, camphor, amber," Indian hemp and cypress, as well as opium and other drugs too numerous to mention. "Of jewels he saw many diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and one ruby of a most beautiful colour weighed seven carats and a half, but he did not see all." ^3 Verily, he says, God has prospered King Emanuel. [Footnote 1: Varnhagen, Nouvelles recherches sur les derniers voyages du Navigateur Florentin, Vienna, 1869, p. 9.] [Footnote 2: If not itself genuine, it is very likely based on genuine memoranda.] [Footnote 3: Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 412; see the document in Varnhagen, Amerigo Vespucci, p. 81.] After leaving Cape Verde the little fleet had to struggle through the belt of calms, amid a perpetual sultry drizzle with fierce thunder and lightning. After sixty-seven days of "the vilest weather ever seen by man" they reached the coast of Brazil in latitude about 5 Degrees S., on the evening of the 16th of August, the festival-day of San Roque, whose name was accordingly given to the cape before which they dropped anchor. From this point they slowly followed the coast to the southward, stopping now and then to examine the country. In some places the inhabitants were ferocious Indians, who received them with showers of arrows, but fled in terror from firearms. ^1 In other places they found the natives disposed to be friendly, but "wicked and licentious in their manner of living, more like the style of the Epicureans than that of the Stoics. All their women are in common, and they have neither kings nor temples nor idols. Neither have they commerce or money; but they have strife among them and fight most cruelly and without any order. They also feed on human flesh. I saw one very wicked wretch who boasted, as if it were no small honour to himself, that he had eaten three hundred men. I saw also a certain town, in which I staid about twenty-seven days, where salted human flesh was suspended from the roofs of the houses, even as we suspend the flesh of the wild boar from the beams of the kitchen, after drying and smoking it, or as we hang up strings of sausages. They were astonished to hear that we did not eat our enemies, whose flesh they say is very appetizing, with dainty flavour and wondrous relish." ^1 The climate and landscape pleased Americus much better than the people. He marvelled at the temperate and balmy atmosphere, the brilliant plumage of the birds, of the enormous trees, and the aromatic herbs, endowed by fancy with such hygienic virtues that the people, as he understood them to say, lived to be a hundred and fifty years old. His thoughts were of Eden, like those of Columbus on the Pearl Coast. If the terrestrial paradise is anywhere to be found on the earth, said Vespucius, it cannot be far from this region. [Footnote 1: "There were two in the shippe which toke vpon them to vewe the lande, and learne what spyces and other commodities might be had therein. They were appoynted to returne within the space of fiue daies at the vttermost. But when eyght dayes were now paste, they whiche remayned in the shippes heard yet nothing of theyr returne: wher as in the meane time great multitudes of other people of the same lande resorted to the Sea syde, but could by no meanes be allured to communicacion. Yet at the length they broughte certaine women, which shewed themselues familier towarde the Spaniardes [i.e. Portuguese]. Wherupon they sent forth a young man, beyng very strong and quicke, at whom as the women wondered, and stode gazing on him and feling his apparell, there came sodenynly a woman downe from a mountayne, bringing with her secretely a great stake, with which she gaue him such a stroke behynde that he fell dead on the earth. The other womenne foorthwith toke hym by the legges, and drewe him to the mountayne, whyle in the mean tyme the men of the countreye came foorth with bowes and arrowes, and shot at oure men. But the [Portuguese] dischargeing foure pieces of ordenaunce agaynst them, droue them to flighte. The women also which had slayne the yong man, cut hym in pieces euen in the sight of the [Portuguese], shewing them the pieces, and rosting them at a greate fyre. The men also made certayn tokens, wherby they declared that not past viii. daies before they had in lyke maner serued other christian men. Wherfore ye [Portuguese] hauinge thus sustayned so greuous iniuries vnreuenged, departed with euil wyl." Eden's Treatise of the Newe India, London, 1553.] [Footnote 1: See the letter of Madici, in Varnhagen, Amerigo Vespucci, p. 19.] So much time was given to inspecting the country and its inhabitants that the progress of the ships was slow. It was not until All Saints Day, the first of November, that they reached the bay in latitude 13 Degrees S., which is still known by the name which they gave it, Bahia de Todos Santos. ^1 On New Year's day, 1502, they arrived at the noble bay where fifty-four years later the chief city of Brazil was founded. They would seem to have mistaken it for the mouth of another huge river, like some that had already been seen in this strange world; for they called it Rio de Janeiro (river of January). ^2 Thence by February 15 they had passed Cape Santa Maria, when they left the coast and took a southeasterly course out into the ocean. Americus gives no satisfactory reason for this change of direction; such points were probably reserved for his book. Perhaps he may have looked into the mouth of the river La Plata, which is a bay more than a hundred miles wide; and the sudden westward trend of the shore may have led him to suppose that he had reached the end of the continent. At any rate, he was now in longitude more than twenty degrees west of the meridian of Cape San Roque, and therefore unquestionably out of Portuguese waters. Clearly there was no use in going on and discovering lands which could belong only to Spain. This may account, I think, for the change of direction. New lands revealed toward the southeast might perhaps come on the Portuguese side of the line. Americus was already somewhat farther south than the Cape of Good Hope, and nearer the antarctic pole than any civilized man had ever been before, except Bartholomew Dias. Possibly he may also have had some private notion of putting Ptolemy's theory of antarctic land to the test. On the part of officers and crews there seems to have been ready acquiescence in the change of course. It was voted that for the rest of the voyage Americus should assume the full responsibility and exercise the chief command; and so, after laying in food and fresh water enough to last six months, they started for realms unknown. [Footnote 1: The misreading of this name, in which the h was changed into d, gave rise to one of the funniest absurdities known to geography. A Bahia de Todos Santos became La Badia de Todos Santos (Latin, Abbatia Omnium Sanctorum); so the Bay became an Abbey, supposed to exist on that barbarous coast!! The reader may see this name, given very distinctly, upon the Ruysch map, and also (if his eyes are sharp) on the Tabula Terre Nove. Mr. Winsor (Narr. and Crit. Hist., viii. 373) attributes the discovery of the Bahia de Todos Santos to Christovao Jaques in 1503. But that is impossible, for the name occurs in that place on the Cantino map. Vespucius arrived in Lisbon September 7, 1502; so that I believe we can fix the date of that map at between September 7 and November 19, 1502.] [Footnote 2: Varnhagen, p. 110; the name is sometimes attributed to Martino de Sousa, 1531, but that is improbable. See Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., viii. 390.] The nights grew longer and longer until by April 3 they covered fifteen hours. On that day the astrolabe showed a southern latitude of 52 Degrees. Before night a frightful storm overtook our navigators, and after four days of scudding under bare poles, land hove in sight, but no words of welcome greeted it. In that rough sea the danger on such a coast was appalling, all the more so because of the fog and sleet. It was the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 Degrees S., and about 1,200 miles east from Tierra del Fuego. Captain Cook, who rediscovered it in January (midsummer), 1775, called it the most wretched place he had ever seen on the globe. In comparison with this scarped and craggy island, covered down to the water's edge with glaciers, Cook called the savage wastes of Tierra del Fuego balmy and hospitable. Struggling gusts lash the waves into perpetual fury, and at intervals in the blinding snow-flurries, alternated with freezing rains, one catches ominous glimpses of tumbling ice-floes and deadly ledges of rock. For a day and a night while the Portuguese ships were driven along within sight of this dreadful coast, the sailors, with blood half frozen in their veins, prayed to their patron saints and made vows of pilgrimage. As soon as the three ships succeeded in exchanging signals, it was decided to make for home. Vespucius then headed straight N. N. E., through the huge ocean, for Sierra Leone, and the distance of more than 4,000 miles was made - with wonderful accuracy, though Vespucius says nothing about that - in thirty-three days. At Sierra Leone one of the caravels, no longer seaworthy, was abandoned and burned; after a fortnight's rest ashore, the party went on in the other two ships to the Azores, and thence after some further delay to Lisbon, where they arrived on the 7th of September, 1502. When we remember how only sixty-seven years before this date the dauntless Gil Eannes sailed into the harbour of Lisbon amid deafening plaudits over the proud news that in a coasting voyage he had passed beyond Cape Bojador, there is something positively startling in the progress that had been achieved. Among all the voyages made during that eventful period there was none that as a feat of navigation surpassed this third of Vespucius, and there was none, except the first of Columbus, that outranked it in historical importance. For it was not only a voyage into the remotest stretches of the Sea of Darkness, but it was preeminently an incursion into the antipodal world of the southern hemisphere. Antarctic cold was now a matter of positive experience, no less than arctic cold. ^1 Still more remarkable was the change in the aspect of the starry heavens. Voyages upon the African coast had indeed already familiarized Portuguese sailors with the disappearance of the pole-star below the northern horizon, and some time before reaching the equator one could see the majestic Southern Cross. ^2 But in this course from Lisbon to South Georgia Vespucius sailed over an arc of 93 Degrees, or more than one fourth the circumference of the globe. Not only the pole-star, but the Great Bear, the Swan, and the larger part of the constellations visible from Lisbon sank out of sight; Castor and Pollux, Arcturus and the Pleiades, were still visible, but in strange places, while over all the sky ahead twinkled unknown stars, the Milky Way changed its shape, and the mysterious Coalsacks seemed to beckon the voyager onward into realms of eternal sleet and frost. Our Florentine navigator was powerfully affected by these sights. The strange coast, too, which he had proved to extend at least as far south as the Cape of Good Hope, arrested his attention in a very different way from the coasts of Honduras and Florida. In these there was nothing to startle one out of the natural belief that they must be parts of Asia, but with the Brazilian shore it was otherwise. A coast of continental extent, beginning so near the meridian of the Cape Verde islands and running southwesterly to latitude 35 Degrees S. and perhaps beyond, did not fit into anybody's scheme of things. None of the ancient geographers had alluded to such a coast, unless it might be supposed to be connected with the Taprobane end of Mela's Antichthones, or with Ptolemy's Terra Incognita far to the east and southeast of Cattigara. In any case it was land unknown to the ancients, and Vespucius was right in saying that he had beheld there things by the thousand which Pliny had never mentioned. ^1 It was not strange that he should call it a New World, and in meeting with this phrase, on this first occasion in which it appears in any document with reference to any part of what we now call America, the reader must be careful not to clothe it with the meaning which it wears in our modern eyes. In using the expression "New World" Vespucius was not thinking of the Florida coast which he had visited on a former voyage, nor of the "islands of India" discovered by Columbus, nor even of the Pearl Coast which he had followed after the Admiral in exploring. The expression occurs in his letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, written from Lisbon in March or April, 1503, relating solely to this third voyage. The letter begins as follows: - [Footnote 1: Vespucius might well have said, in the words of the great Spanish epic: - Climas passe, mude constelaciones, Golfos inavegables navigando, Estendiendo, Senor, vuestra corona Hasta la austral frigida zona. Ercilla, Araucana, xxxvii.] [Footnote 2: In Ptolemy's time the Southern Cross passed the meridian of Alexandria at an altitude of 6 Degrees 54 Minutes above the horizon; to-day, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, it is 3 Degrees below the horizon in that place. See Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. iv. p. 321. The sight of it was familiar to Christian anchorites in Egypt in the days of St. Athanasius, and to Arab sailors in the Red Sea in the Middle Ages, whence Dante may have got his knowledge of it. It finally passed out of sight at Alexandria about A.D. 1340. Cadamosto observed it in 1454 from the river Gambia.] [Footnote 1: "Et certe credo quod Plinius noster millesimam partem non attigerit generis psitacorum reliquarumque auium, necnon & animalium que in iisdem regionibus sunt, cum tanta facierum atque colorum diuersitate quod consumate picture artifex Policletus in pingendis illis deficeret. Omnes arbores ibi sunt odorate: et singule ex se ginnum vel oleum liquorem emittunt. Quorum proprietates si nobis note essent non dubito quin humanis corporis saluti forent, & certe si paradisus terrestris in aliqua sit terre parte, non longe ab illis regionibus distare existimo." Varnhagen, p. 21. In this charming passage the great sailor, by a slip of the memory, got one of his names wrong. It was not the sculptor Polycetus, but the painter Polygnotus that he really had in mind.] "I have formerly written to you at sufficient length ^1 about my return from those new countries which in the ships and at the expense and command of the most gracious King of Portugal we have sought and found. It is proper to call them a new world." [Footnote 1: Several allusions in the letter indicate that Vespucius had written to Lorenzo soon after his return, announcing that fact and promising to send him his journal of the voyage. He was unable to fulfil this promise because the King of Portugal kept the journal and Vespucius felt delicate about asking him for it. At last, in the spring of 1503, before starting on another long voyage, our navigator wrote this brief letter to his old friend, giving him "just the main points," though he had not yet recovered his journal.] Observe that it is only the new countries visited on this third voyage, the countries from Cape San Roque southward, that Vespucius thinks it proper to call a new world, and here is his reason for so calling them: - "Since among our ancestors there was no knowledge of them, and to all who hear of the affair it is most novel. For it transcends the ideas of the ancients; since most of them say that beyond the equator to the south there is no continent, but only the sea which they called Atlantic, and if any of them asserted the existence of a continent there, they found many reasons for refusing to consider it a habitable country. But this last voyage of mine has proved that this opinion of theirs was erroneous and in every way contrary to the facts, since in those southern regions I have found a continent more thickly inhabited by peoples and animals than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and moreover a climate more temperate and agreeable than in any other region known to us; as you will understand below when I write you briefly just the main points, and [describe] the most remarkable things that were seen or heard by me in this new world, - as will appear below." ^1 [Footnote 1: I give here two of the earliest texts of this very interesting and important paragraph: - Latin text of 1504. "Superioribus diebus satis ample tibi scripsi de reditu meo ab novis illis regionibus quas et classe et impensis et mandato istius serenissimi Portugalio Regis perquisivimus & invenimus. Quasque novum mundum appelare licet. Quando apud maiores nostros nulla de ipsis fuerit habita cognitio & audientibus omnibus sit nouissima res. Et enim hec opinionem nostrorum antiquorum excedit: cum illorum maior pars dicat vltra lineam equinotialem et versus meridiem non esse continentem, sed mare tantum quod Atlanticum vocauere et si qui eorum continentem ibi esse affirmauerunt,eam esse terram habitabilem multis rationibus negaverunt. Sed hanc eorum opinionem esse falsam et veritati omnino contrariam, hec mea ultima navigatio declarauit, cum in partibus illis meridianis continentem invenerim frequentioribus populis & animalibus habitatam quam nostram Europam, seu Asiam, vel Africam, et insuper aerem magis temperatum et amenum quam in quauis alia regione a nobis cognita: prout inferius intelliges vbi succincte tantum rerum capita scribemus, et res digniores annotatione et memoria que a me vel vise vel audite in hoc nouo mundo fuere: vt infra patebit." Italian version in Venetian dialect, Vicenza, 1507. "Li passati zorni assai amplame'te te scrissi de la mia retornata de q, lli noui paese: iquali & cu' larmata & cu' lespese & coma'dame'to de q,sto Serenissimo Re de portogallo hauemo cercato & retrouato: i q,li nouo mondo chiamare ne sta licito p, ch' ap,sso de imazori n,ri niuna de q,lli estata hauta cognitio'e: & a tuti q,lli che aldira'no sera nouissime cose: imperoche q,sto la oppinione de li n,ri antiq, excede: co'cio sia che d' q,lli la mazor p,te dica ultra lalinea eq,notiale: & uerso el mezo zorno no' esser co'tinente: Ma el mare solame'te: elqual Atala'tico ha'no chiamato: E si qual che uno de q,lle co'tinente li esser ha'no affirmato: q,lla esser terra habitabile per molte rasione ha'no negato. Ma questa sie oppinione esser falsa & alauerita ogni modo co'traria: Questa ultima nauigatione he dechiarato: co' ciosia che in quelle parte meridionale el co'tinente io habia retrouato: de piu frequenti populi & a'i'ali habitata de la n,ra Europa: o uero Asia: o uero Affrica: & ancora laere piu temperato & ameno: che in que banda altra regione de nui cognosciute: come de sotto intenderai: Doue breuamente solamente de la cose icapiscriueamo: & le cose piu degnede annotatio'e & de memoria: le qual da mi: o uero uiste: o uero audite in questo nouo mo'- do foreno: como de sotto sera'no manifeste."] This expression "Novus Mundus," thus occurring in a private letter, had a remarkable career. Early in June, 1503, about the time when Americus was starting on his fourth voyage, Lorenzo died. By the beginning of 1504, a Latin version of the letter was printed and published, with the title "Mundus Novus." It is a small quarto of only four leaves, with no indication of place or date; but on the verso of the last leaf we are informed that "The interpreter Giocondo translated this letter from the Italian into the Latin language, that all who are versed in the Latin language, that all who are versed in the Latin may learn how many wonderful things are being discovered every day, and that the temerity of those who want to probe the Heavens and their Majesty, and to know more than is allowed to know, be confounded; as notwithstanding the long time since the world began to exist, the vastness of the earth and what it contains is still unknown." ^1 This rebuke to some of the audacious speculators of the time is quite in the clerical vein, and we are not surprised to learn that "the interpreter Giocondo" ^2 was a Dominican friar. He was Giovanni Giocondo, of Verona, the eminent mathematician, the scholar who first edited Vitruvius, and himself an architect famous enough to be intrusted with the building of the dome of St. Peter's during part of the interval between Bramante and Michael Angelo. ^3 From 1499 to 1507 Giocondo was living in Paris, engaged in building the bridge of Notre Dame, which is still standing. ^1 Of all the thousands who pass over it from day to day, how many have ever dreamed of associating it with the naming of America? This Giocondo, who is now positively known to have been the one that translated the letter of Vespucius, ^2 was on terms of intimacy with the Medici family at Florence and also with Soderini. There would be nothing strange, therefore, in a manuscript copy of a brief but intensely interesting letter finding its way into his hands from this quarter. I can find no indication that any printed Italian text preceded this Latin version, and am disposed to believe that Giocondo made it directly from a manuscript copy of the original letter. The first edition of Giocondo's version was clearly one of those that were published in Paris late in 1503 or early in 1504. At that time Vespucius, on the coast of Brazil, and Columbus, on the coast of Brazil, and Columbus, on the coast of Jamaica, were alike contending against the buffets of adverse fortune. People in Europe, except the few persons directly concerned with their enterprises, took little heed of either of these mariners. The learned Giocondo, if interrogated about their doings, would probably have replied that Columbus had arrived at the eastern coast of Asia by sailing westward, and that Vespucius had disclosed the existence of an Inhabited World in the south temperate zone and in a new and untried direction. It surely would not have occurred to Giocondo that the latter achievement came into competition with the former or tended in any way to discredit it. [Footnote 1: For an account of this and the other early editions of Mundus Novus, see Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, pp. 55-88, and Additions, pp. 16-21, 26.] [Footnote 2: "Iocudus interpres" becomes, in the hands of the Venetian translator of 1507, "el iocondo interprete," anglice "the jocund interpreter"!!] [Footnote 3: Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. p. 429, vol. iii. p. 91.] [Footnote 1: Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquites de Paris, Paris, Paris, 1724, tom. i. p. 230; Tiraboschi, Letteratura italiana, Florence, 1809, tom. vi. pp. 128, 203, 1144-1150.] [Footnote 2: Walter Lud, Speculum Orbis, Strasburg, 1507, fol. iii. This little tract, of only four leaves folio, has been of priceless value in clearing up many of the unjust and absurd aspersions against Vespucius. One of the only two copies known to be now in existence was discovered in 1862 by my old and much esteemed friend Henry Stevens, who was the first to point out its importance. After trying in vain to place it in some American library, Mr. Stevens showed it to Mr. Major, and it found a place in that greatest of all treasure-houses for the materials of American history, the British Museum. It is one of the most precious documents in the world. See Stevens, Historical and Geographical Notes, p. 35; Avezac, Martin Waltzemuller, pp. 60-67; Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, No. 49. The other copy is in the Imperial library at Vienna.] The little four-leaved tract, "Mundus Novus," turned out to be the great literary success of the day. M. Harrisse has described at least eleven Latin editions probably published in the course of 1504, and by 1506 not less than eight editions of German versions had been issued. Intense curiosity was aroused by this announcement of the existence of a populous land beyond the equator and Unknown (could such a thing be possible?) To The Ancients!! One of the early Latin editions calls for especial mention, by reason of its title and its editor. Instead of the ordinary "Mundus Novus" we find, as an equivalent, the significant title "De Ora Antarctica," concerning the Antarctic Coast lately discovered by the King of Portugal. This edition, published at Strasburg in 1505, was edited by "Master Ringmann Philesius, a somewhat pale and slender youth of two-and-twenty, who is a personage of much importance in our narrative. He was a young man of remarkable promise, a native of Schlestadt, a little town on the eastern slope of the Vosges mountains in Alsace. His name was Matthias Ringmann, but in accordance with the prevailing fashion he was more commonly known by a dog-Latin epithet, Philesius Vogesigena, in allusion to his birth-place. He acquired an early reputation by his graceful Latin verses, which sparkled with wit and could sting if the occasion required it. In 1504 Ringmann was in Paris, studying at the college of Cardinal Lemoine, and there he seems to have become acquainted with Fra Giocondo and with the letter of Vespucius, a new edition of which he presently brought out at Strasburg. Thus in its zigzag career the Italian letter sent by its writer from Lisbon to Florence was first turned into Latin and printed at Paris, with its phrase "New World" lifted up from the text and turned into a catching title, by the friar Giocondo, and thereupon a friend of this accomplished friar sent it into Alsace, and into a neighbourhood where the affair was soon to enter into a new stage of development.