History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0116/01163.txt

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$Title{Discovery Of America
Part X}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fiske, John}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{vespucius
america
name
las
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columbus
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$Date{1892}
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Title:       Discovery Of America
Book:        Chapter VII: Mundus Novus
Author:      Fiske, John
Date:        1892

Part X

     By 1540 South America had been completely circumnavigated, and it was
possible to draw an outline map of its coast with a fair approach to accuracy.
It was thus beginning to be known as a distinct whole, and the name America
had gone far toward taking exclusive possession of it.  That continent was by
far the most imposing result of discovery in the western waters, and the next
step was for its name to spread beyond its natural limits so as to cover
adjacent and less known regions. ^1 Now by 1540 men were just beginning to
grasp the fact that the regions called New Spain, Terra Florida, and Baccalaos
were different parts of one continent that was distinct from Asia.  There was
as yet no steadiness of thought on the subject.  The wet theory, as shown in
Leonardo da Vinci's map, had long since separated North America from Asia, but
only by reducing it to a few islands.  The dry theory, as shown in the
Orontius globe, made it continental, but only by attaching it to Asia.  A
combination of wet and dry theorizing was needed to bring out the truth.  This
combination was for a moment realized in 1541 by a man who in such matters was
in advance of his age.  Gerard Kaufmann, better known by his latinized name
Mercator, was a native of East Flanders, born in 1512, the year in which
Vespucius died.  Mercator was an able geographer and mathematician.  He is now
remembered chiefly for the important method of map projection called by his
name, and for certain rules of navigation associated therewith and known as
"Mercator's sailing." But he should also be remembered as the first person who
indicated upon a map the existence of a distinct and integral western
hemisphere and called the whole by the name America. Upon the gores for a
globe which he made in 1541, Mercator represented the northern continent as
distinct from Asia, and arranged the name America in large letters so as to
cover both northern and southern continents, putting AME about on what we
should call the site of the Great Lakes and RICA just west of the river La
Plata. ^1 This was a stride, nay a leap beyond what had gone before.  We have
only to contrast Mercator, 1541, with Agnese, 1536, and with Gastaldi, 1548,
to realize what a startling innovation it was.  It was some time yet before
Mercator's ideas prevailed, but his map enables us to see how the recognition
of a western hemisphere emerged and during the latter half of the sixteenth
century became more and more distinct. ^1 As this process went on and the
ideas of the ancient geographers lapsed into oblivion, the old contrast
between north and south became superseded by the new contrast between east and
west.  Thus the names America and New World came to awaken associations of
ideas utterly different from those amid which they originated.  If
Waldseemuller had been told that a time would arrive when such places as
Baccalaos and his Cape-of-the-end-of-April would be said to be in the New
World, he would have asked, in great amazement, how could places in Asia and
wholly within the bounds of the ancient OEcumene have anything whatever to do
with the Quarta Pars!  That time, however, did arrive, and when it came the
name of America began to look like a standing denial of the just rights of
Columbus.  It looked as if at some time a question had arisen as to whose name
should be given to the western hemisphere, and as if for some reason Americus
was preferred to Columbus.  When such a notion had got into men's heads
Americus was sure to be attacked.  No charge is easier to make than that of
falsehood.  The sin of lying is common enough, and geography is not the
simplest of subjects.  Hence most great travellers, from Herodotus down, have
for one reason or another been ignorantly accused of lying.  Never was such an
accusation more completely the offspring of ignorance than in the case of
Vespucius.

[Footnote 1: Peter Bienewitz (called Apianus), in his celebrated book
published in 1524, clearly distinguishes Cuba, Hispaniola, etc., from America.
They are islands lying near America, and their inhabitants have customs and
ceremonies like those of the people of America: - "Habet autem America insulas
udiacentes [adjacentes] q plurimas vt Pariana Insulam, Isabellam quo Cuba
dicitur [sic] Spagnollam ... Accolae vero Spagnollae insulae loco panis
vescuntur serpentibus maximis et radicibus.  Ritus et cultus istarum
circumiacentium Insularum par est Americae accolarum cultui." Cosmographicus
Liber, Landshut, 1524, fol. 69.]

[Footnote 1: The sketch is reduced from Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii.
177.]

[Footnote 1: John Dee's map, 1580; but Michael Lok's map, 1582, shows in this
respect a less advanced stage of development than Mercator's.]

     It was that precious blunder of "Parias" for "Lariab" that started the
business, and it was aided by a slipshod expression of the Nuremberg
professor, Johann Schoner.  In a little tract published in 1515, probably as
an accompaniment to his globe made in that year, Schoner alludes to "America,
a new world and fourth part of the globe, named after its discoverer, Americus
Vespucius, a man of sagacious mind, who found it in the year 1497." ^1 This
confusing the first voyage with the third was not ignorance, but downright
carelessness, for inasmuch as on his globes Schoner placed "Parias" in Mexico
and identified America with Brazil, he knew well enough that it was not in
1497, but in 1501 that Vespucius visited the Fourth Part.  Eighteen years
afterward Schoner made another bad slip when he said, though here again he
knew better, that "Americus appointed a part of Upper India, which he supposed
to be an island, to be called by his name." ^2 There is nothing in the remark
which implies censure, ^1 but it was probably this that led Las Casas, after
1552, to say that Americus had been accused of putting his name on the map,
"thus sinfully failing toward the Admiral." Las Casas had finally come back
from America in 1547, and by 1552 had settled down quietly at Valladolid to
work upon his great history.  He was vexed at seeing the name America so
commonly used, ^2 since by that time it had come to cover much ground that
belonged especially to Columbus.  Indeed there can be no doubt that by 1550
the greater exploit of having sailed west in order to get to the east was
somewhat overshadowed by the lesser exploit of having revealed the continental
dimensions of a mass of antipodal land unknown to the ancients.  Vespucius was
more talked about than Columbus.  This aroused the generous indignation of Las
Casas.  A wrong seemed to have been done, and somebody must have been to
blame.  Las Casas read the Latin version of the letter to Soderini, appended
to Waldseemuller's book, and could not imagine why Americus should write such
a letter to Duke Rene or why he should address him as an old friend and
schoolmate.  But when he came to the place where Vespucius seemed to be
speaking of Paria his wrath was kindled.  Las Casas quotes the guilty
sentence, and exclaims, "Americus tells us that he went to Paria on his first
voyage, saying: And that province is called by the people themselves Parias;
and then he made his second voyage with Ojeda," also to Paria. ^1 The clause
which I have italicized is the very clause in which the Latin version
ignorantly substitutes Parias for the Lariab of the original text; and the
passage in which Las Casas quotes it is the documentary evidence upon which I
am content to rest the statement with which I opened this long discussion,
that it was this miserable alteration that made all the trouble.  It at once
riveted the attention of Las Casas upon the Pearl Coast, in spite of the
explicit statement, on the same page and only nine lines above the name
"Parias," that it was "under the tropic of Cancer, in latitude 23 degrees N."
Las Casas understood Vespucius to say that he had been at Paria in 1497, and
found no difficulty in proving that this could not be true.  Could it be that
Americus intended to usurp honours which he knew to belong to the Admiral?  If
so, it was a great piece of wickedness, says Las Casas; still he admits that
the fault may lie with the persons who printed the account of the four
voyages. ^1 For a while his strong love of fairness restrains the pen of Las
Casas, but when at length he loses all patience with "these foreigners" who
make maps and put the name America where they ought to put "Columba" [sic], he
hastily includes Vespucius in his condemnation, and adds that he cannot
conceive why Ferdinand Columbus, whom he knows to have had the book of the
Vespucius voyages in his possession, did not take notice of this "theft and
usurpation" by Americus of what belonged to his illustrious. ^1 If Las Casas
had closely watched the gradual development of the affair he would have
understood Ferdinand's silence, but as for half a century he had been mostly
in America, absorbed in very different matters, the exaltation of Vespucius
took him by surprise and he was unable to comprehend it.

[Footnote 1: "America siue Amerigen nouus mundus: & quarta orbis pars: dieta
ab eius inuetore Americo Vesputio viro sagacis ingenii: qui eam reperit Anno
domini.  1497.  In ea sunt homines brutales," etc.  Schoner, Luculentissima
quceda terroe totius descriptio, Nuremberg, 1515.  For an account of this very
rare book see Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vetust., No. 80.]

[Footnote 2: "Americus Vesputius maritima loca Indiae superioris ex Hispaniis
navigio ad occidentem perlustrans, eam partem quae superioris Indiae est,
credidit esse Insulam quam a suo nomine vocari instituit." Schoner, Opusculum
geographicum, Nuremberg, 1533.  Inasmuch as Schoner knew the Cosmographice
Introductio he knew that it was Waldseemuller and not Vespucius who
"instituit," etc.  But he was evidently a man of slovenly speech.]

[Footnote 1: It is commonly spoken of as a "charge" against Vespucius.
Harrisse calls it "the first attempt to tarnish the reputation of the
Florentine cosmographer" (Bibl. Amer. Vetust., p. 65).  Here again comes the
fallacy of reading our modern ideas into the old texts.  There is nothing
whatever in Schoner's context to suggest that he attached any blame to
Vespucius or saw any impropriety in the name.  Indeed he had himself put it on
his globes in 1515 and 1520, and done as much as anybody to give it currency.]

[Footnote 2: The suggestion of Waldseemuller as to the name America seems to
have been first adopted in the anonymous Globus Mint, Strasburg, 1509. The
name was used by Joachim Watt (called Vadianus) in his letter to Rudolphus
Agricola, Vienna, 1515, reprinted in his edition of Mela, Vienna, 1518.  I
have already alluded to its adoption by Leonardo da Vinci and Schoner and
Fries.  Peter Bienewitz (called Apianus) put the name America on his map
published in 1520 (given in Winsor, ii. 183) and adopted it in his
Cosmographicus Liber, Landshut, 1524; an abridgment of this book was published
by Gemma Frisius at Ingoldstadt, 1529.  Heinrich Loritz (called Glareanus)
used the name in his De geographia liber unus, Basel, 1527; Sebastian Munster
gave it further currency in his essay in Grynaeus, Novus Orbis, Paris, 1532;
and so again did Honter in his Rudimenta Cosmographica, Zurich, 1542.  All
these were very popular books and were many times reprinted; being in Latin
they reached educated people everywhere, and some of them were translated into
Spanish, Italian, German, Bohemian, English, French, etc.  Sir Thomas More in
his Utopia speaks of the voyages of Vespucius as "nowe in printe and abrode in
euery mannes handes." See Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vetust., under the different
years; Winsor, Narr, and Crit. Hist., ii. 180-186; Varnhagen, Nouvelles
recherches, pp. 19-24.]

[Footnote 1: "De haber llegado a Paria el Americo en este su primer viaje, el
mismo lo confiesa en su primera navegacion, diciendo: Et provincia ipsa Parias
ab ipsis nuncupata est. Despues hizo tambien con el mismo Hojeda la segunda
navegacion," etc. Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, tom. ii. p. 273.]

[Footnote 1: "Y es bien aqui de considerar la injusticia y agravio que aquel
Americo Vespucio parece haber hecho al Almirante, o los que imprimieron sus
cuatro navegaciones, atribuyendo a si o no nombrando sino a si solo, el
descubrimiento desta tierra firme," etc.  Op. cit. tom. ii. p. 268.]

[Footnote 1: "Y maravillome yo de D. Hernando Colon, hijo del misma Almirante,
que siendo persona de muy bien ingenio y prudencia, y teniendo en su poder las
mismas nauegaciones de Americo, como lo se yo, no advirtio en este hurto y
usurpacion que Americo Vespucio hizo a su muy ilustre padre." Op. cit. tom.
ii. p. 396.  This reference to Ferdinand's book seems to prove that the
remarks of Las Casas about Americus were written as late as 1552, or later.
Las Casas seems to have begun work on his history at the Dominican monastery
in San Domingo, somewhere between the dates 1522 and 1530.  He took it up
again at Valladolid in 1552 and worked on it until 1561.  His allusion to
Ferdinand Columbus was clearly made after the death of the latter in 1539, so
that this part of the book was doubtless written somewhere between 1552 and
1561.]

     As the history of Las Casas remained in manuscript, it produced no
immediate effect upon the public mind.  There were people still living between
1552 and 1561, as for example Ramusio and Benzoni, ^2 who were probably
competent to set Las Casas right.  But in 1601 all such people had passed
away, and then the charge against Vespucius was for the first time published
by Herrera, the historiographer of Spain, who had used the manuscript of Las.
^1 Herrera flatly accused Vespucius of purposely antedating his voyage of 1499
with Ojeda to Paria, in order to make it appear that he had found Terra Firma
before Columbus.  Then Herrera assumed that Vespucius again accompanied Ojeda
to Paria on the second voyage of that cavalier, which began in January, 1502.
This assumption displaced the third voyage of Vespucius, who, it will be
remembered, was in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro on that New Year's day.  A
doubt was thus raised as to whether the third voyage was not a lie, and so the
tangle went on until one might well wonder whether any of these voyages ever
were made at all!  Surely no poor fellow was ever so victimized by editors and
commentators as this honest Florentine sailor!  From the dire confusion into
which Herrera contrived to throw the subject it was no easy task for scholars
to emerge.  Where was the Ariadne who could furnish a clue to such a
labyrinth?  For two centuries and a half the assertion that Vespucius had
somehow contrived to cheat the people into the belief that he was the
discoverer of the western hemisphere was repeated by historians, proclaimed in
cyclopaedias, preached about by moralists, and taught to children in their
school-books.  In the queer lumber-garret of half-formed notions which for the
majority of mankind does duty as history this particular misty notion was, and
is still, pretty sure to be found. Until the nineteenth century scarcely
anybody had a good word for the great navigator except Bandini, Canovai, and
other Florentine writers. But inasmuch as most of these defenders simply stood
by their fellow-countryman from the same kind of so-called "patriotic"
motives that impel Scandinavian writers to attack Columbus, their arguments
produced little impression; and being quite as much in the dark as their
adversaries, they were apt to overdo the business and hurt their case by
trying to prove too much.  Until the middle of the present century the renewal
of assaults upon Vespucius used to come in periodic spasms, like the cholera
or the fashion of poke bonnets. ^1 Early in this century the publication of
many original documents seemed at first only to enhance the confusion, for it
took time and patient thinking to get so many new facts into the right
connections.

[Footnote 2: At the end of the fifth chapter of his Historia del Mondo Nuovo,
Venice, 1565, Benzoni enumerates various men for whom claims had been made
that conflicted with the priority of Columbus in his discovery; he does not
include Vespucius in the number.  See the excellent remarks of Humboldt on
Benzoni and Ramusio, in his Examen critique, tom. iv. pp. 146-152.]

[Footnote 1: Herrera, Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Madrid, 1601, tom.
i. pp. 125-128, 131, 148, 224,230.]

[Footnote 1: The latest and fiercest of these assaults was the little book of
the Viscount de Santarem, Recherches historiques, critiques, et
bibliographiques sur Americ Vespuce et ses voyages, Paris, 1842.  For perverse
ingenuity in creating difficulties where none exist, this book is a curiosity
in the literature of morbid psychology.  From long staring into mare's nests
the author had acquired a chronic twist in his vision. What else can be said
of a man who wastes four pages (pp. 53-56) in proving that Vespucius could not
have been a schoolmate of the first Rene of Lorraine, who was born in 1410?
and who is, or affects to be, so grossly ignorant of Florentine history as to
find it strange that Vespucius should have been on friendly terms at once with
Soderini and with a Medici of the younger branch?  M. de Santarem's methods
would have been highly valued by such sharp practitioners as Messrs. Dodson
and Fogg: - "Chops!  Gracious heavens!  and tomato sauce!!  Gentlemen, is the
happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away by such
shallow artifices as these?" With arguments of this character M. de Santarem
contrived to abolish all the voyages of Vespucius except the one with Ojeda.
The only interest that can be felt to-day in this worthless book lies in the
fact that an English translation of it was published in Boston in 1850, and is
to be held responsible for the following outburst, at which no one would have
been so shocked as the illustrious author, if he had been properly informed: -
"Strange that broad America must wear the name of a thief.  Amerigo Vespucci,
the pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda,
and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an expedition that never
sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize half the
earth with his own dishonest name." Emerson, English Traits, Boston, 1856 (p.
148 of the Riverside edition, 1883).

     Closely connected with these recurrent assaults have been more or less
serious proposals from time to time to change the name of America, or of North
America, or of the United States.  In point of euphony the names suggested
would hardly be an improvement, and they have often been of dubious historical
propriety; e.g. Cabotia; or even Sebastiana, which would be honouring the son
at the expense of the father; or Alleghania, but why should the Tallegwi
monopolize it?  I suppose Mr. Lewis Morgan might have approved of Ganowania,
or perhaps Hodenosaunia, "country of the Long House." Early in the seventeenth
century Pizarro y Orellana (Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1639, p.
51) expressed his disgust at the name of America, not because it was an
injustice to Columbus, but because it was not aristocratic enough; the New
World ought not to be named after anybody lower than royalty, and so he
proposed to call it Fer-Isabelica!  That would have been a nice name!  Gentle
reader, how would you like to be a Fer-Isabelican?  Another sage Spaniard
would have enshrined the memory of Charles V. in such an epithet as Orbis
Carolinus. See Solorzano Pereyra, De Indiarum Jure, Leyden, 1672, lib. i. cap.
2. Late in the sixteenth century a learned Portuguese writer characterized the
New World as Golden India, while he distinguished the eastern possessions of
his nation as Aromatic India.  See Gaspar Fructuoso, Saudades da Terra,
Lisbon, 1590.

     Speaking of Alleghania reminds me of the droll conceit of Professor Jules
Marcou that the name America after all was not taken from Vespucius, but from
a mountain range in Nicaragua, the Indian name of which was Amerrique or
Americ, and which he imagines (without a morsel of documentary evidence) that
Columbus must have heard on his fourth voyage! (See Atlantic Monthly, March,
1875, vol. xxxv. pp. 291-296.) According to this fancy, the name America
should have been first applied to Nicaragua, whereas it was really first
applied to Brazil and had been used for many a year before it extended across
the isthmus of Darien.  Speculation a priori is of little use in history, and
a great many things that must have happened never did happen.  If I were not
afraid of starting off some venturesome spirit on a fresh wildgoose-chase, I
would - well, I will take the risk and mention the elfish coincidence that,
whereas Brazil, the original America, received its name from its dye-wood like
that of the East Indies, there was a kind of this brazil-wood in Sumatra which
the fourteenth century traveller Pegolotti calls Ameri, and along with it
another and somewhat better kind which he calls Colombino!!!  See Yule's Marco
Polo, vol. ii. p. 315.]

     At length the gigantic learning of Alexander von Humboldt was brought to
bear on the subject, and enough was accomplished to vindicate forever the
character of Americus.  But owing to inadequate textual criticism, much still
remained to be cleared up.  Proceeding from the Latin text of 1507, and
accepting the Bandini letter as genuine, Humboldt naturally failed to unravel
the snarl of the first two voyages.  Then came Varnhagen, who for the first
time began at the very beginning by establishing the primitive and genuine
texts from which to work.  This at once carried the first voyage far away from
Paria, and then everything began to become intelligible.  Though scholars are
not as yet agreed as to all of Varnhagen's conclusions, yet no shade of doubt
is left upon the integrity of Vespucius. ^1 So truth is strong and prevails at
last.

[Footnote 1: No competent scholar anywhere will now be found to dissent from
the emphatic statement of M. Harrisse: - "After a diligent study of all the
original documents, we feel constrained to say that there is not a particle of
evidence, direct or indirect, implicating Americus Vespucius in an attempt to
foist his name on this continent." Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, New
York, 1566, p. 65.]

     One thing more was needed, and that was to make a comprehensive statement
of the case entirely freed from "bondage to the modern map," - a statement
interpreting the facts as they appeared in the first half of the sixteenth
century to students of Ptolemy and Mela, and rigorously avoiding the error of
projecting our modern knowledge into the past.  I sincerely hope that in the
present chapter I have kept clear of that error.

     It has not been merely through a desire to do justice to the memory of a
great navigator and worthy man that I have devoted so much space to this
subject and made such large demands upon the reader's patience.  It will at
once be recognized, I think, that through such a discussion, more than through
any mere narrative, are we made to realize what a gradual process of evolution
the Discovery of America really was.  We have now to follow that process into
its next stage of advancement, and see how men came to the knowledge of a vast
ocean to the west of Mundus Novus.  We have here fortunately arrived at a
region where the air is comparatively clear of controversial mists, and
although we have to describe the crowning achievement in the records of
maritime discovery, the story need not long detain us.

     We may properly start by indicating the purpose of the fourth voyage of
Americus; and here we shall be helped by a tabular view showing its position
in the group of voyages to which it belonged.  The third voyage of Columbus,
in which he skirted the Pearl Coast for a short distance, had revealed land
which he had correctly interpreted as continental, and it was land in an
unexpected position.  His letter describing this voyage did not obtain a wide
circulation, and there is no reason for supposing that it would have aroused
public attention to any great extent if it had. People's ideas as to
"continents" and "islands" in these remote parts were, as we have seen, very
hazy; and there was nothing in this new land north of the equator to suggest
the idea of Quarta Pars or Mundus Novus. But this voyage was followed up next
year by that of Ojeda with La Cosa and Vespucius, and it was proved that the
Pearl Coast opposed quite a long barrier to voyages in this direction into the
Indian ocean.  The triumphant return of Gama from Hindustan in midsummer of
1499 turned all eyes toward that country.  Cathay and Cipango suffered
temporary eclipse. The problem for Spain was to find a route into the Indian
ocean, either to the west or to the east of the Pearl Coast.  Thus she might
hope to find riches in the same quarter of the globe where Portugal had found
them.  As the Spanish search went on, it became in a new and unexpected way
complicated with Portuguese interests through the discovery of a stretch of
Brazilian coast lying east of the papal meridian.  Bearing these points in
mind, the reader will be helped by the following diagram in which some of the
voyages already discussed are grouped with those which we are now about to
consider.  The numbers refer back to the numbers in my fuller table of voyages
(Chapter VII, Part IV, Table 1), and here as there the Portuguese voyages are
distinguished by italics.

                          5.  Columbus III.                4.  {Gama.}
                                                                  |
                6.  Ojeda, La Cosa, Vespucius II.                 |
                          |     |                                 |
                         |         |                              |
                        |             |                           |
     10.  Bastidas, La Cosa.             7.  Pinzon.              |
     12.  Columbus IV.                   8.  Lepe                 |
                                                                  |
                                                         9.  {Cabral.}
                                                        11.  {Vespucius III.}
     15.  La Cosa, Vespucius V.                         13.  {Vespucius IV.}
     17.  La Cosa, Vespucius VI.                        14.  {Jaques.}

                                         18.  Pinzon, Solis.
     |                          |        23.  Solis.                       |
       |                      |          28.  MAGELLAN.                |
         |                  |             |                        |
        West of Pearl Coast.                East of Pearl Coast.

     While the voyages of Bastidas and Columbus between the Pearl Coast and
Cape Honduras revealed no passage into the Indian ocean, the voyages of
Pinzon, Lepe, and Vespucius proved that from Paria to Cape San Roque, and
thence southerly and southwesterly there extended a continuous coast as far as
the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope.  If this was Catigara land, or part of
Ptolemy's southern Terra Incognita, might it be possible to sail around it and
enter the Indian ocean?  Or might some passage be found connecting the waters
on its opposite sides?  If such a passage should be found, of course much
interest would attach to its position, whether east or west of the papal
meridian.  It was to determine such points as these that two expeditions
sailed from Portugal in 1503, the one commanded by Goncalo Coelho, the other
by Christovao Jaques. ^1 Coelho's fleet consisted of six ships, one of which
was commanded by Vespucius. From Hindustan had come reports of the great
wealth and commanding situation of the city of Malacca, a most important
gateway and warehouse for the Gangetic sea, and much farther east and south
than Calcutta.  The purpose of Coelho and Jaques was to investigate the
relations of the Brazilian coast to this rich gateway of the East.  Of
Jaques's voyage we know little except that he seems to have skirted the coast
of Patagonia as far as 52 degrees S., and may have caught a glimpse of the
opening which Magellan afterward (by sailing through it) proved to be a
strait.  Why he should have turned and gone home, without verifying this
point, is a question which will naturally occur to the reader who allows
himself for a moment to forget the terrible hardships that were apt to beset
these mariners and frustrate their plans.  We shall have no difficulty in
understanding it when we come to see how the crews of Magellan felt about
entering this strait.

[Footnote 1: The date 1503 for the Jacques voyage has been doubted (Varnhagen,
Primeiras negociaves diplomaticas respectivas ao Brazil, Rio Janiero, 1843).
I here follow the more generally received opinion.  For the French voyage of
Gonneville in 1504 on the Brazilian coast as far as 26 degrees S., see Avezae,
"Campagne du navire l'Espoir de Honfluer," in Annales des voyages, juin et
juillet, 1869; Gaffarel, Histoire du Bresil Francais au seizieme siecle,
Paris, 1878.]