It was discovered, less than half a century ago, through the diligent researches of Humboldt, that this professor of geography at St.-Dié, Hylacomylus, was thus the inventor, so to speak, of this word America. That it came at last to be received as the designation of the western continent was due, perhaps, very much to the absence of any suggestion of any other distinctive name that seemed appropriate and was generally acceptable. Rare as the little work, the Cosmographiæ introductio, now is, it was probably well known at the time of the publication of its several editions; as the central position of St.-Dié—between France, Germany, and Italy—gave to the book, as Humboldt thought, a wide circulation, impressing the word America upon the learned world. The name, however, came very slowly into use, appearing only occasionally in some book, till in 1522 it gained a more permanent place on a mappemonde in the Geographia of Ptolemy. From that time it appeared frequently upon other maps, and by the middle of the century became generally recognized outside of Spain, at least, as the established continental name. But the effect of its suggestion was more immediate upon the fame of Vespucci. While the learned understood that the great captain of that time was Christopher Columbus, the name of Amerigo was often united with his as deserving of at least the second place, and sometimes even of the first. The celebrity which Hylacomylus bestowed upon him was accepted for performance by those who were ignorant of the exact truth; and those who knew better did not give themselves the trouble to correct the error.
In each of Vespucci’s voyages he probably held a subordinate position. His place may sometimes have been that of a pilot,[467] or as the commander of a single ship, or attached to the fleet, as Herrera[468] says he was in Ojeda’s expedition (1499), “as merchant, being skilful in cosmography and navigation.” Vespucci himself does not in so many words assert that he was in command of the expeditions upon which he sailed, while he occasionally alludes, though usually in terms of contempt, to those whose authority was above his own. Once he speaks of Columbus, and then almost parenthetically, as the discoverer merely of the Island of Hispaniola; but of other of his achievements, or of those of other eminent navigators, he has nothing to say. In reply to such criticisms of his letters it has been urged on his behalf that they were written for intimate friends, as familiar narratives of personal experiences, and not meant to be, in any broad sense, historical. But the deception was as absolute as if it had been deliberately contrived; and, whether intentional or not, was never by act or word corrected, though Vespucci lived for five years after the appearance of the letters from the St.-Dié press.
But whatever can be or may be said in extenuation of Vespucci, or however strong the reasons for supposing that for whatever was reprehensible in the matter he was innocent and the St.-Dié professors alone responsible, there nevertheless remains the one thing unexplained and inexplicable,—his own repeated assertion that he made four voyages. Humboldt supposes that the narrative of the first, so called, of these four voyages, beginning in May, 1497, was made up of that on which Vespucci certainly sailed with Ojeda, starting in May, 1499. The points of resemblance are so many and so striking as to seem not only conclusive, but to preclude any other theory. If this be true, then it follows that the narrative of the voyage of 1497 was simply a forgery, whosoever was responsible for it; and if a forgery, then Vespucci was not the discoverer of the western continent, and an historical renown was given to his name to which he was not entitled.
The second of the assumed four voyages Humboldt supposes to be the first voyage of Vincente Yañez Pinzon,—hesitating, however, between that and the voyage of Diego de Lepe: the former sailing with four ships in December, 1499, and returning in September, 1500; the latter with two ships, in January, 1500, and returning in June. Vespucci says that he had two ships; that he sailed in May, 1499, and returned in June or September of the next year. It is of the first voyage of 1497 that he says he had four ships. As on that assumed voyage there are many incidents identical with those related of Ojeda’s voyage of 1499, so here there are strong points of resemblance between Vespucci’s supposed second voyage and that of Pinzon. In both cases, however, there are irreconcilable differences, which Humboldt does not attempt to disguise; while at the same time they indicate either dishonesty on the part of Vespucci in his letters, or that those letters were tampered with by others, either ignorantly or with dishonest intent, to which Vespucci afterward tacitly assented.
It would be hypercritical to insist upon a strict adherence to the dates of the several voyages, and then to decide that the voyages were impossible because the dates are irreconcilable. The figures are sometimes obviously mere blunders; as, for example, the assertion in the St.-Dié edition that the second voyage was begun in May, 1489, when it had been already said that the first voyage was made in 1497. But there are statements of facts, nevertheless, which it is necessary to reconcile with dates; and when this is impossible, a doubt of truthfulness is so far justifiable. Thus in the relation of the second voyage Vespucci asserts, or is made to assert, that on the 23d of August, 1499, he saw while at sea a conjunction of Mars and the Moon. That phenomenon did occur at that time, as Humboldt learned from the Ephemeris; and if it was observed by Vespucci at sea, that could not have been upon a voyage with Pinzon, who did not sail till (December, 1499) four months after the conjunction of the planets. But here, moreover, arises another difficulty: Vespucci’s second voyage, in which he observed this conjunction, could not have been made with Ojeda, and must have been made with Pinzon, if on other points the narrative be accepted; for it was upon that voyage that Vespucci says he sailed several degrees south of the equinoctial line to the mouth of the Amazon,—which Pinzon did do, and Ojeda did not. These and other similar discrepancies have led naturally to the suspicion that the incidents of more than one expedition were used, with more or less discrimination, but with little regard to chronology, for the composition of a plausible narrative of two voyages made in the service of Spain. One blunder, detected by Navarrete in this so-called second voyage, it is quite incredible that Vespucci could have committed; for according to the course pursued and the distance sailed, his ships would have been navigated over nearly three hundred leagues of dry land into the interior of the continent. No critical temerity is required to see in such a blunder the carelessness of a copyist or a compositor.
It was of the first voyage from Lisbon—the third of the Quatuor navigationes—that, as has been already said, a narrative was first published in a letter addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici. This was illustrated with diagrams of some of the constellations of the southern hemisphere; and the repute it gave to the writer led the way to his subsequent fame. What Vespucci’s position was in the expedition is not known; but that it was still a subordinate one is evident from his own words, as he speaks of a commander, though only to find fault with him, and without giving his name. The object of the expedition was to discover the western passage to the Spice Islands of the East (Melcha, Melacca, Malaccha, according to the varying texts of different editions of the letter); and though the passage was not found, the voyage was, like Cabot’s, one of the boldest and most important of the age. But it is also, of all Vespucci’s voyages, real or assumed, that which has been most disputed. Navarrete, however, after a careful examination of all the evidence that touches the question, comes to the conclusion that such an expedition, on which Vespucci may have gone in some subordinate position, was really sent out in 1501 by the King of Portugal; and Humboldt concurs in this opinion.
The Terra de Vera Cruz, or Brazil, as it was afterward named, was visited successively for the first time, from January to April, 1500, by Pinzon, De Lepe, De Mendoza, and Cabral. But the expedition to which Vespucci was attached explored the coast from the fifth parallel of southern latitude, three degrees north of Cape St. Augustin,—first discovered and so named by Pinzon,—as far south, perhaps, as about the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. They had sailed along the coast for about seven hundred leagues; and so beautiful was the country, so luxuriant its vegetation, so salubrious its climate, where men did not die till they were a hundred and fifty years old, that Vespucci was persuaded—as Columbus, only three years before, had said of the region drained by the Orinoco—that the earthly Paradise was not far off. Gold, the natives said, was abundant in the interior; but as the visitors found none, it was determined at last to continue the voyage in another direction, leaving behind them this coast, of what seemed to Vespucci a continent, along which they had sailed from the middle of August to the middle of February. Starting now on the 15th of February from the mainland, they steered southeast, till they reached, on the 3d of April, the fifty-second degree of latitude. They had sailed through stormy seas, driven by violent gales, running away from daylight into nights of fifteen hours in length, and encountering a severity of cold unknown in Southern Europe, and quite beyond their power of endurance. A new land at length was seen; but it only needed a few hours of observation of its dangerous, rocky, and ice-bound coast to satisfy them that it was a barren, uninhabited, and uninhabitable region. This, Varnhagen suggests most reasonably, was the Island of Georgia, rediscovered by Captain Cook nearly three centuries afterward.
The return to Lisbon was in September, 1502. By order of the King, Vespucci sailed again in May, 1503, from Lisbon on a second voyage,—the fourth of his Quatuor navigationes. The object, as before, was to find a western passage to the Moluccas; for it was the trade of India, not new discoveries in the western continent, upon which the mind of the King was bent. There were six ships in this new expedition; and it is generally agreed that as Gonzalo Coelho sailed from Lisbon in May, 1503, by order of Emanuel, in command of six ships, Vespucci probably held a subordinate position in that fleet. He does not name Coelho, but he refers to a superior officer as an obstinate and presumptuous man, who by his bad management wrecked the flagship. Vespucci may have been put in command of two of the ships by the King; with two, at any rate, he became separated, in the course of the voyage, from his commodore, and with them returned to Lisbon in June of the next year. The rest of the fleet Vespucci reported as lost through the pride and folly of the commander; and it was thus, he said, that God punished arrogance. But Vespucci either misunderstood the divine will or misjudged his commander, for the other ships soon after returned in safety.
The southernmost point reached by him on this voyage was the eighteenth degree of southern latitude. At this point, somewhere about Cape Frio, he built a fort, and left in it the crew of one of the two vessels which had been shipwrecked. The precise spot of this settlement is uncertain; but as it was planted by Vespucci, and as it was the first colony of Europeans in that part of the New World, there was an evident and just propriety in bestowing the derivative—America—of his name upon the country, which at first was known as “The Land of the True Cross,” and afterward as “Brazil.” The name of Brazil was retained when the wider application—America—was given to the whole continent.
Soon after his return from this, the last of the Navigationes of which he himself, so far as is known, gave any account, he went back, in 1505, to Spain. It is conjectured that he made other voyages; but whether he did or did not, no absolute evidence has ever been found.[469] We know almost nothing of him up to that time except what is told by himself. When he ceased writing of his own exploits, then also the exploits ceased so far as can be learned from contemporary authors, who hitherto also had been silent about him. In 1508 (March 22) Ferdinand of Spain appointed him pilot-major of the kingdom,[470]—an office of dignity and importance, which probably he retained till he died (Feb. 22, 1512). His fame was largely posthumous; but a hemisphere is his monument. If not among the greatest of the world’s great men, he is among the happiest of those on whom good fortune has bestowed renown.