[453] The very name he bore had a divine significance, according to the fanciful interpretation of his son, Don Ferdinand Colon. For as the name Christopher, or Christophorus,—the Christ-bearer,—was bestowed upon the Saint who carried the Christ over deep waters at his own great peril, so had it fallen upon him, who was destined to discover a new world, “that those Indian nations might become citizens and inhabitants of the Church triumphant in heaven.” Nor less appropriate was the family name of Columbus, or Colomba,—a dove,—for him who showed “those people, who knew him not, which was God’s beloved Son, as the Holy Ghost did in the figure of a dove at Saint John’s baptism; and because he also carried the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the waters of the ocean like Noah’s dove, to denote the peace and union of these people with the Church, after they had been shut up in the ark of darkness and confusion.” Saint Christopher carrying Christ, appears as a vignette on Cosa’s chart.
[454] A Discourse of Sebastian Cabot touching his Discovery, etc. Translated from Ramusio (1550) by Hakluyt for his Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589, and in later editions.
[455] [See Vol. III. chap. i.—Ed.]
[456] For the distinction which possibly Cabot meant to convey between terra and insula, see Biddle’s Memoir of Sebastian Cabot (London 1831), p. 54.
[457] Humboldt (Examen critique, vol. iv.), supported by the authority of Professor Von der Hugen, of the University of Berlin, shows that the Italian name Amerigo is derived from the German Amalrich or Amelrich, which, under the various forms of Amalric, Amalrih, Amilrich, Amulrich, was spread through Europe by the Goths and other Northern invaders.
[458] [See Vol. III. p. 53.—Ed.]
[459] On the 20th of May, according to one edition of the letter,—that published by Hylacomylus at St-Dié.
[460] [After a picture in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Gallery (no. 253), which is a copy of the best-known portrait of Vespucius. It is claimed for it that it was painted from life by Bronzino, and that it had been preserved in the family of Vespucius till it was committed, in 1845, to Charles Edwards Lester, United States consul at Genoa. It is engraved in Lester and Foster’s Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius (New York, 1846), and described on p. 414 of that book. Cf. also Sparks’s statement in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., iv. 117. It has been also engraved in Canovai among the Italian authorities, and was first, I think, in this country, produced in Philadelphia, in 1815, in Delaplaine’s Repository of the Lives and Portraits of distinguished American characters, and later in various other places. The likeness of Vespucius in the Royal Gallery at Naples, painted by Parmigianino, is supposed to be the one originally in the possession of the Cardinal Alexander Farnese (Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, iii. 370, by Jomard). That artist was but eleven years old at the death of Vespucius, and could not have painted Vespucius from life. A copy in 1853 was placed in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society (Proceedings, April, 1853, p. 15; Paine’s Portraits and Busts, etc., no. 28). C. W. Peale’s copy of the likeness in the gallery of the Grand Duke of Tuscany is in the collection belonging to the Pennsylvania Historical Society (Catalogue, 1872, no. 148). There is also a portrait in the gallery of the New York Historical Society (Catalogue, no. 131), but the origin of it is not named. De Bry gives vignette portraits in parts iv., vi., and xii. of his Grands Voyages. See Bandini’s Vita e lettere di Vespucci, chap. vii. for an account of the various likenesses.—Ed.]
[461] “Et quoniam in meis hisce bis geminis navigationibus, tam varia diversaque, ac tam a nostris rebus, et modis differentia perspexi, idcirco libellum quempiam, quem Quatuor diætas sive quatuor navigationes appello, conscribere paravi, conscripsique; in quo maiorem rerum a me visarum partem distincte satis juxta ingenioi mei tenuitatem collegi: verumtamen non adhuc publicavi.” From the Cosmographiæ introductio of Hylacomylus (Martin Waldseemüller). St.-Dié, 1507. Repeated in essentially the same words in other editions of the letter.
[462] In the original: En este viage que este dicho testigo hizo trujo consigo a Juan de la Cosa, piloto, e Morigo Vespuche, e otros pilotos. The testimony of other pilots confirmed that of Ojeda. The records of this trial are preserved among the archives at Seville, and were examined by Muñoz, and also by Washington Irving in his studies for the Life of Columbus. See also ante, p. 88.