Amerigo Vespucci, born at Florence fifteen years after Columbus, and the third son of a notary, appears to have been led by mercantile tastes to Spain in 1486, where he became a factor in a wealthy house at Seville. He abandoned the counter, however, for navigation and mathematics, and took to the sea for a livelihood. He was at first a practical astronomer, and finally a pilot-major. He went four times on expeditions to the New World, in 1499, 1500, 1501, 1502. During the first, he coasted along the land at the mouths of the Orinoco, which had been discovered by Columbus the preceding year. Even had he been the first to discover the mainland,—which he was not,—there would have been no merit in it, for he was merely a subordinate officer on board a ship following in the track of Columbus, seven years after the latter had traced it upon the ocean and the charts of the marine. He published an account of his voyage. But it does not appear that he ever claimed honor as the first discoverer, and the friendly relations he maintained with the family of Columbus after the death of the latter show that they did not consider him as attempting to obtain a distinction which did not belong to him. The error flowed from another and more distant source.
Columbus had died in 1506, and had been forgotten. In 1507, a Frenchman of St. Dié republished Vespucci's narrative, substituting the date of 1497 for that of 1499,—thus making it appear that Vespucci had preceded, instead of followed, Columbus in his discovery of the mainland. He did not once mention Columbus, and attributed the whole merit of the western voyages to Vespucci. He added that he did not see why from the name of Amerigo an appellation could not be derived for the continent he had discovered, and proposed that of America, as having a feminine termination like that of Europa, Asia, and Africa, and as possessing a musical sound likely to catch the public ear. This work was dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian, and passed rapidly through editions in various languages.
Thus far no specific name had been given to the continent. Its situation was sometimes indicated upon maps by a cross, and sometimes by the words Terra Sanctæ Crucis, sive Mundus Novus, often printed in red capitals. In 1522, for the first time, the name of America, under its French form of Amérique, was printed upon a map at Lyons. Germany followed, and the presses of Basle and Zurich aided the usurpation. Florence was but too eager to accept a name which flattered her vanity; and, as Genoa did not protest in the name of Columbus, Italy yielded to the current, and did a large share in the labor of injustice. In 1570, the name of America was for the first time engraved upon a metal globe, and from this time forward the spoliation may be regarded as accomplished. Columbus had been twice buried and twice forgotten; and now his very name was lost,—the continent he had found having been baptized in honor of another, and his race in the male line being extinct,—for Diego and Fernando had died without heirs.
In modern times, in our own day even, it has been a common practice to depreciate the services of Columbus, and eminent writers have thought it no disgrace to profess and testify ignorance of his history and life. Raynal, a French philosopher of distinction, declared, about the year 1760, that the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama was a greater achievement than the crossing of the Atlantic by Columbus. He offered a prize for disquisitions upon the question, "Has the discovery of America been useful or prejudicial to the human race?" Buffon seems, too, to have considered the discoveries of the Portuguese in the East as more important than those of Columbus in the West. Robertson, in his History of America, says that even without Columbus some happy accident would have discovered the New World a few years later. Fontenelle, and many others, attribute the first notice of the variation of the compass to Cabot in 1497, though Columbus distinctly mentions noticing it in his journal on the 13th of September, 1492. A late Spanish historian writes:—"Columbus made nothing but discoveries in these regions; conquest was reserved for Cortez and Pizarro." Lamartine makes an error of fifteen years in stating the period of the return of Columbus to Spain. Dumas asserts that Columbus passed "a portion of his life in prison,"—an expression he would not probably have used, knowingly, to designate a period of three months. Granier de Cassagnac places the last voyage of Columbus in 1493, instead of 1502. St. Hilaire makes the celebrated Las Casas cross the sea with Columbus nine years too soon. These mis-statements, though not resulting in distortion or misrepresentation of character, are the effects of that indifference which for centuries history has manifested towards the life, services, and death of Columbus.
Columbia is the poetic and symbolical name of America, occurring in the National Anthem and in numerous effusions of patriotic verse. An effort to avenge the memory of the discoverer was made by giving his name, officially, to a tract borrowed from Virginia and Maryland, and measuring one hundred miles square,—the seat of the American Government. So far from this tardy acknowledgment being a reparation, however, it is probable that the spirit of the departed benefactor, if summoned to speak, would declare it the last, and by no means the least, of the long line of insults that an ungrateful posterity had heaped upon his memory.
It will be proper to add to this view of the voyages of Columbus a brief account of those effected immediately afterwards by John and Sebastian Cabot, and by Vincent Yanez Pinzon.
In the year 1496, Henry VII. of England, stimulated by the success of Columbus, granted a patent to one Giovanni Gabotto, a Venetian dwelling in Bristol, to go in search of unknown lands. Little is known of this person, whose name has been Anglicized into John Cabot, except that he was a wealthy and intelligent merchant and fond of maritime discovery. He had three sons, one of whom, named Sebastian, was nineteen years old at the time of the voyage, upon which, with his brothers, he accompanied his father. They sailed in a ship named the Matthew, and on the 24th of June, 1497, discovered the mainland of America, eighteen months before Columbus set foot upon it at the mouths of the Orinoco. For a long time it was supposed that Cabot had landed upon Newfoundland, but it is now considered settled that Labrador was the portion of the continent first discovered by a European. No account of the further prosecution of the voyage has reached us, and the only official record of Cabot's return is an entry in the privy-purse expenses of Henry, 10th August, 1497:-"To hym that found the New Isle, 10l." Thus, fifty days had not elapsed between the discovery and its recompense in England,—a fact which shows that Cabot returned home at once. He is supposed to have died about the year 1499.
Sebastian Cabot, the second son, who is regarded as by far the most scientific navigator of this family of seamen, appears to have lived in complete obscurity during the following twelve years. Disgusted, however, by the want of consideration of the English authorities towards him, he accepted an invitation from King Ferdinand to visit Spain in 1512. Here, for several years, he was employed in revising maps and charts, and, with the title of Captain and a liberal salary, held the honorable position of Member of the Council of the Indies. The death of Ferdinand and the intrigues of the enemies of Columbus induced him to return to England in 1517. He was employed by Henry VIII., in connection with one Sir Thomas Perte, to make an attempt at a Northwest passage. On this voyage he is said to have gained Hudson's Bay, and to have given English names to sundry places there. So few details of the expedition have been preserved, that the latitude reached (67 1/2 degrees) is referred by different authorities both to the north and the south. The malice or cowardice of Sir Thomas Perte compelled Cabot to return without accomplishing any thing worthy of being recorded. It was often said afterwards, that if the New World could not be called Columbia, it would be better to name it Cabotiana than America.
Vincent Yanez Pinzon, the youngest of the three brothers who had accompanied Columbus upon his first voyage, determined, upon hearing, in 1499, that the continent was discovered, on trying his fortunes at the head of an expedition, instead of in a subordinate position. He found no difficulty in equipping four caravels, and in inducing several of those who had seen the coast of Paria to embark with him as pilots. He sailed from Palos in December, 1499, and proceeded directly to the southwest. During a storm which obscured the heavens he crossed the equator, and on the disappearance of the clouds no longer recognised the constellations, changed as they were from those of the Northern to those of the Southern hemisphere. Pinzon was thus the first European who crossed the line in the Atlantic. The sailors, unacquainted with the Southern sky, and dismayed at the absence of the polar star, were for a time filled with superstitious terrors. Pinzon, however, persisted, and, on the 20th of January, 1500, discovered land in eight degrees of south latitude. He took possession for the Crown of Spain, and named it Santa Maria de la Consolaçion. We shall soon have occasion to mention why this name was superseded by that of Brazil.
Pinzon explored with amazement the huge mouths of the Amazon, whose immense torrents, as they emptied into the sea, freshened its waters for many leagues from the land. Sailing to the north, he followed the coast for four hundred leagues, and then returned to Palos, carrying with him three thousand pounds' weight of dye-woods and the first opossum ever seen in Europe.