But Columbus himself was not yet out of this "wearisome world," and was troubling his weary brain far too much about its petty details. From his fourth voyage he had returned much poorer than he ever expected to be at the end of his sea-going life. The little money he had been able to collect from his plantation in Espanola had been used to equip the ships that brought him home, and to pay his sailors; for this was a point on which he was always most scrupulous. When his ready money was thus used up, the good monks of Las Cuevas had to provide for his necessities until finally the banks advanced money on the strength of his claims against the Crown. After the death of Isabella these claims had small chance of being considered to his full satisfaction, for Ferdinand argued that the contract of Granada was, owing to the vast extent of the new lands, impossible for either the Crown on the one hand or Columbus on the other to fulfill. That rascally Porras, who had caused so much trouble during the Jamaica days, was at court, filling everybody's ears with slanderous stories about the Admiral during the days when the Admiral himself was wearying Ferdinand with a constant stream of letters. Every day that he was able to sit up he wrote long appeals for "his rights" and his property. Not only did he present his claims for recognition and reward, but he told how badly things had been going in San Domingo under Ovando; how the comendador was hated by all for his tyranny and for the favoritism he showed; and how things would soon come to a sorry pass in the colony unless a better governor were quickly appointed; and then, poor man, deluded with the idea that he could set things right, he asked to be reinstated as governor! Good Christopher! can you not realize that your work is done now, for better or worse? Can you not let others solve the great problems across the ocean? Can you not see that you have been greatest of them all, and that nothing more is required of you? And as for all the dignities and titles and properties that should be yours, according to the Granada contract, we know you want them only to pass them on to your boy, Diego; but never mind him; you are leaving him a name that will grow greater and greater through the coming ages; a name that is a magnificent inheritance for any child.
About this time the sick man received a visit which brightened him a great deal, a visit from the man who, never intending any harm, was destined to soon assume the greatest honor which the world could have given Columbus—the honor of naming the newly discovered lands Columbia, instead of America.
Americo Vespucci was an Italian from Florence who, in 1492 or 1493, came to Sevilla to carry on a commercial business. Here he learned of Columbus's first voyage and became eager to make a trip himself to the new lands. It was a Florentine friend of Americo's who fitted out Columbus's second expedition; but this Florentine died before the vessels were ready, and Americo continued the work. More than this; seeing, when the king canceled Columbus's monopoly, a chance for himself to win glory, he hastened off with one of the new expeditions. He claimed that they reached a continental coast on June 16, 1497, which was earlier than Columbus had reached Para, and eight days before Cabot touched at the northern edge of the new continent. We have only Americo's own account of the voyage, and his statements are so inaccurate that many students refuse to believe him the real discoverer of South America.
Of Americo's second voyage, however, we have reliable information, for it was made in the company of Alonzo de Ojeda, that one-time friend of Columbus who later rebelled against him at Espanola. Vespucci sent a letter to a friend in Florence describing his voyages and saying that the continent he had reached "ought to be considered a new world because it had never before been seen by European eyes." His second letter, written from Portugal in September, 1504, to another friend, was used by Martin Waldseemuller, a German professor who was then collecting all the information he could gather to make up a book on geography.
Martin Waldseemuller divided the globe into four large parts or continents—Europe, Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered fourth part, which he suggested "ought to be called America, because Americus discovered it." This professor, like most learned men of his time, wrote in Latin; and in Latin the Italian name Americo is Americus; the feminine form of Americus is America, which was used because it was customary to christen countries with feminine names. As nobody else had yet suggested a name for the vast new lands in the west, the German's christening of 1507 was adopted for the country which should have been called Columbia, in justice to the man who first had the splendid courage to sail to it across the untraveled waters and reveal its existence to Europe. Had Columbus lived to know that this was going to happen, it would have been one more grievance and one more act of ingratitude added to his already long list; but at the time that Americo Vespucci visited his countryman who lay ill in Sevilla, neither one of them was thinking about a name for the far-away lands. They merely talked over their voyages as any two sailors might. As Vespucci was now looked up to as a practical, new-world traveler and trader, and the Admiral was lonely and forgotten, it shows a kind feeling on the visitor's part to have looked him up. When Americo left to go to court, Columbus gave him this letter to carry to Diego, who was still in the royal service:—
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My dear son:
Within two days I have talked with Vespucci. He has always manifested a friendly disposition towards me. Fortune has not always favored him and in this he is not different from many others. He left me full of kindest purposes towards me and will do anything he can (at court). I did not know what to tell him to do to help me, because I knew not why he had been called there.
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In February, 1505, a royal order was issued to the effect that Don Cristobal Colon be furnished with a mule to ride to court, then being held in Segovia. To ride a mule in those days necessitated a royal permit, for every Spaniard preferred mules to horses. The government hoped that horses would be in more general use if the use of mules was restricted.