History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0116/01160.txt

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$Title{Discovery Of America
Part VII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fiske, John}
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$Subject{de
coast
vespucius
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$Date{1892}
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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.