AUTOGRAPH OF VESPUCIUS, 1508.
[This is the conclusion of a letter of Vespucius, printed and given in fac-simile in the Cartas de Indias.—Ed.]
Nevertheless, the fact of the obscurity of Vespucci at that period is not without great weight, though Santarem fails in his attempt to prove too much by it. Columbus believed when, on his second voyage, he coasted the southern shore of Cuba, that he had touched the continent of Asia. The extension of that continent he supposed, from indications given by the natives, and accepted by him as confirming a foregone conclusion, would be found farther south; and for that reason he took that course on his third voyage. “The land where the spices grow” was now the aim of all Spanish energy and enterprise; and it is not likely that this theory of the Admiral was not well understood among the merchants and navigators who took an intelligent as well as an intense interest in all that he had done and in all that he said.
VESPUCIUS.[460]
Is it probable, then, that nobody should know of the sailing of four ships from Cadiz for farther and more important discoveries in the direction pointed out by Columbus? Or, if their departure was secret, can there be a rational doubt that the return, with intelligence so important and generally interesting, would have been talked about in all the ports of Spain, and the man who brought it have become instantly famous?
VESPUCIUS.
[A sketch of an old engraving as given in the Allgem. geog. Ephemeriden (Weimar, 1807), vol. xxiii. There are other engravings of it in Jules Verne’s Découverte de la terre, and elsewhere.—Ed.]