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$Unique_ID{how01163} $Pretitle{} $Title{Discovery Of America Part X} $Subtitle{} $Author{Fiske, John} $Affiliation{} $Subject{vespucius america name las casas columbus voyage footnote voyages americus} $Date{1892} $Log{} 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.]