SCHÖNER GLOBE, 1515.
FRIESS (Frisius), IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1522.
There is one significant fact concerning the conflict of the Crown with the heirs of Columbus, which followed upon the Admiral's death, and in which the advocates of the government sought to prove that the claim of Columbus to have discovered the continental shore about the Gulf of Paria in 1498 was not to be sustained in view of visits by others at an earlier date. This significant fact is that Vespucius is not once mentioned during the litigation. It is of course possible, and perhaps probable, that it was for the interests of both parties to keep out of view a servant of Portugal trenching upon what was believed to be Spanish territories. The same impulse could hardly have influenced Ferdinand Columbus in the silent acquiescence which, as a contemporary informs us, was his attitude towards the action of the St. Dié professors. There seems little doubt of his acceptance of a view, then undoubtedly common, that there was no conflict of the claims of the respective navigators, because their different fields of exploration had not brought such claims in juxtaposition.
Who first landed on the southern main?
Vespucius's maps.
Vespucius not privy to the naming.
Following, however, upon the assertion of Waldseemüller, that Vespucius had "found" this continental tract needing a name, there grew up a belief in some quarters, and deducible from the very obscure chronology of his narrative, which formulated itself in a statement that Vespucius had really been the first to set foot on any part of this extended main. It was here that very soon the jealousy of those who had the good name of Columbus in their keeping began to manifest itself, and some time after 1527,—if we accept that year as the date of his beginning work on the Historie,—Las Casas, who had had some intimate relations with Columbus, tells us that the report was rife of Vespucius himself being privy to such pretensions. Unless Las Casas, or the reporters to whom he referred, had material of which no one now has knowledge, it is certain that there is no evidence connecting Vespucius with the St. Dié proposition, and it is equally certain that evidence fails to establish beyond doubt the publication of any map bearing the name America while Vespucius lived. He had been made pilot major of Spain March 22, 1508, and had died February 22, 1512. We have no chart made by Vespucius himself, though it is known that in 1518 such a chart was in the possession of Ferdinand, brother of Charles the Fifth. The recovery of this chart would doubtless render a signal service in illuminating this and other questions of early American cartography. It might show us how far, if at all, Vespucius "sinfully failed towards the Admiral," as Las Casas reports of him, and adds: "If Vespucius purposely gave currency to this belief of his first setting foot on the main, it was a great wickedness; and if it was not done intentionally, it looks like it." With all this predisposition, however, towards an implication of Vespucius, Las Casas was cautious enough to consider that, after all, it may have been the St. Dié coterie who were alone responsible for starting the rumor.