How much actual evidence he had of the existence of lands below the Atlantic horizon unknown to his countrymen can never probably be satisfactorily answered. The latest critical biographer of Columbus, the great Spanish liberal statesman Emilio Castelar, considers that he was led to his discoveries by little, if anything, outside of pure reasoning upon the rotundity of the earth and other scientific data, and dismisses as fables or things unknown to Columbus all the Scandinavian discoveries of Greenland and the rest, and other stories of men who, it is said, had already seen the transatlantic world he sought. We are told that he learned of woods and canes like none that grew in Africa, of strange carvings, and even of the dead bodies of men, resembling those of the far East, being cast upon the shores of Africa and the islands near it, especially the Azores. It seems impossible that when he was in Iceland and the other northern regions, a man of his inquiring mind should not have learned something of Greenland and the continental shores beyond, especially when one remembers that for centuries previous Catholic missionaries had been reporting progress to Rome from that distant but real field of labor. It is quite likely that some knowledge of these facts, which must have been known to the professors of the universities of Pavia and Barcelona, where Columbus studied, and to other intelligent men of Italy and Spain with whom he came in contact, had caused Columbus to go to the north, for we know of no other errand. Perhaps he had heard of the Zeni.
Especially to be noted is the allegation that Columbus possessed information as to the experience of a Frenchman named Jean Cousin,—a Dieppe sea-captain, who, it is asserted, discovered South America and the Amazon River in 1488. This claim has been lately reviewed (“Fortnightly Review,” January, 1894) by Captain Gambier of the British navy, and he decides that it is good; and that it was because Cousin’s first mate was one of the Pinçons that that firm was willing to assist Columbus, as a good investment.
Whatever he knew or did not know, and whatever may have been the difficulties in his way, Columbus spent many weary years in fruitless efforts to interest some government in his schemes. How finally he won Spain to his support, secured the aid of the Pinçons, merchant princes of Palos, and sailed from that port on August 3, 1492,—and it was Friday!—are details that need not be repeated. Equally well remembered are the story of his daring onward voyage, and of the glorious outcome when, on October 12, land was seen,—a new world found.
Expedition after expedition followed one another from Spain to the newly found possessions, some conducted by the earlier companions of Columbus, and all filled with adventurers who cared for nothing but plunder. One of these, led by an officer named Ojeda, reached the coast of Guiana in 1499, and coasted along the north shore of South America as far, probably, as Maracaibo. This was the first of the Spanish expeditions actually to set foot upon the mainland; and it would not have been mentioned out of its place (since Cabot, as we shall presently see, had landed on the continent nearly two years before) but for the fact that one of its members was that Amerigo Vespucci whose fortune it was to have his name attached to the continent.
Amerigo Vespucci (or Vespusze, as Columbus spells it) was a Florentine engaged in the shipping business who was attracted to Spain by the maritime activity there, and became interested in equipping the second flotilla of Columbus and in other similar enterprises for the government. The wealth and influence thus gained and his general abilities led him to join that expedition of Ojeda in 1499, and during the next four years he made three other voyages to Brazil, in which the bay of Rio Janeiro was entered (New Year’s day, 1501), and an exploration southward extended probably as far as South Georgia (Islands). Upon his return from this last voyage, in 1505, he publicly asserted that he had visited, in 1497, the coast of what is now the southern United States. It has lately been shown by Spanish records, however, that at that date he was busy in the government dockyards in Spain; therefore his assertion was false. It served, however, to deceive a forgetful public, and to procure for its author the coveted glory of being the first “discoverer” of the “New World,” as he first called it (though there is no evidence that he understood it to be a continent), and hence the one entitled to give it his name.
This bold claim achieved its purpose. The oldest known map of the whole world, dated A. D. 1500, said to have been drawn by the great artist Leonardo da Vinci, from data furnished by Juan de la Cosa, and hence known to historians as the “De la Cosa Mappimundi” (it is preserved in Madrid), bears the name “America” across the new countries for the first known time; but Juan de la Cosa was with Ojeda and Vespucci on the expedition of 1499, and doubtless Vespucci managed the naming. In 1507, only a year after the death of Columbus, there appeared in France the “Cosmographie Introductio” of Waldseemüller (also called Hylacomylus), which was regarded as the most complete and authentic geography of its time; and here the name of America was boldly written across “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found it.” The name (a Latin derivative) was novel, easy to pronounce, no one knew or cared as to the right of it, and so it stood.
THE “SANTA MARIA”—THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS’ FLEET.