[ [1] ] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." Published by Henry Holt & Co. The Cabots in 1497 discovered what came to be known afterward as the continent of North America, Columbus in 1492 having discovered only islands in the West Indies. The work of the Cabots in after years was a basis of English claims to the continent because of priority of discovery. It was not until his third expedition, fourteen months after the discovery made by the Cabots, that Columbus first saw the North American mainland.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MAINLAND BY THE CABOTS—
PETER MARTYR'S ACCOUNT
[ [1] ] Peter Martyr, a native of Milan, resided for some years at the Spanish court. The account he gives in this article of the voyage of the Cabots is based on information received by him directly from Sabastian Cabot, when Cabot was employed as pilot in the service of Spain. Martyr's account is the earliest complete narrative of this voyage now extant. It therefore takes high rank—in fact, is the corner-stone—among documents pertaining to steps by which English civilization became supreme in North America. The translation here given, made by Richard Eden, was published in London in 1555.
THE VOYAGES OF VESPUCIUS
[ [1] ] Americus Vespucius was born in Florence in 1452 and died in Seville in 1512. He was the son of a notary in Florence, was educated by a Dominican friar and became a clerk in one of the commercial houses of the Medici. By this house he was sent to Spain in 1490. He remained some years in Seville, where he became connected with the house which fitted out the second expedition of Columbus.
Vespucius claimed to have been four times in America, first in May, 1497; second, in May, 1499; third, in May, 1501; fourth, in June, 1503. In writing of the first expedition he says his ship reached a coast "which we thought to be that of the continent," giving date. If this assumption be correct, and the dates correct, they would show that he reached the continent of North America a week or two before the Cabots made their discovery farther north, but this contention has never been satisfactorily supported.
The letters of Vespucius describing his four voyages were published originally in Italian in Florence in 1505-6. The letter here in part given was addrest by Vespucius to Soderini, the Gonfalonier of Florence. The translation, by one "M.K.," was published by Mr. Quaritch, the London bookseller, in 1885, and has been printed as one of the "Old South Leaflets!" The letter is believed to have been composed by Vespucius within a month after his return from his second voyage.
Vespucius was a naval astronomer. He has been unjustly accused of appropriating to himself an honor which belonged to Columbus,—that of giving a name to the new continent. This injustice, however, was not due to Vespucius, but to a German schoolmaster named Hylacomylus, or "Miller of the Wood-pond," who published a book in 1507. The passage in Millers book in which he made a suggestion which the world has adopted is as follows:
"And the fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus, it may be called Amerige; that is, the land of Americus, or America. Now, truly sience these regions are more widely explored, and another fourth part is discovered by Americus Vespucius, I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to be named Amerige; that is, Americ's Land, after Americus, the discoverer, who is a man of sagacious mind; or call it America, since both Europe and Asia derived their names from women."
Vespucius, in spite of several voyages, discovered very little in America. The continent ought not to have been named alter him.