Estévan Gomez was a Portuguese and an experienced navigator. He had entered the service of Spain a few years before this time, having received the appointment of pilot in 1518 at the same time that Sebastian Cabot was created “pilot major.” He had sailed with Magellan on his great voyage as pilot of the “San Antonio,” but had joined the crew of that vessel in their mutiny against her captain, Alvaro de Mesquita, at the strait. He thus deserted Magellan, and brought the ship home. In 1521 he was ordered to serve with the fleet which was then preparing to sail against the French corsairs. He obtained a concession from the Emperor, dated March 27, 1523, by which he was to have a small vessel for an expedition to the northwest, armed and provisioned for one year. Although this grant, like that made soon afterward to De Ayllon, contained a proviso that the expedition should carefully avoid trespassing upon the King of Portugal’s possessions in the New World, that Power seems to have raised objections to the voyage. The following year a council was convened at the small town of Badajos for the settlement of the rival claims of Spain and Portugal, and Gomez was sent with Cabot, Juan Vespucius, and others to this council,—not as members, but in the capacity of specialists or experts, to give opinions on questions of navigation and cosmography. The congress accomplished nothing in the way of an agreement between the rival Powers, and after its adjournment the Council for the Indies decided to allow the voyage proposed by Gomez.
Gomez sailed from Corunna, a port in the north of Spain, to which the “Casa de Contratacion,” or India House, had been removed from Seville, some time in February of the following year (1525), and was absent about ten months. We have unfortunately no detailed account of his voyage, and it does not now seem possible to say with certainty even in which direction he explored the American coast. The accounts given by the Spanish historians are very meagre. They seem to have paid little attention to the voyage, except to record its failure to discover the desired northern strait. The Spanish maps, however, show plain traces of the voyage, in the Tierra de Estévan Gomez, the name applied by Ribero and others to the large tract of country between Cape Breton and Florida. Gomara, one of the earliest and best authorities on American matters, heads the chapter which he devotes to Gomez, “Rio de San Antonio,” which name is supposed to be the one given in Spanish maps to the Hudson River. Gomez is said to have visited the country at latitudes 40° and 41° north, and to have coasted a great extent of land never before explored by the Spaniards. It is related also that he visited the Island of Cuba, and refitted his vessel there. This would be presumably on the homeward voyage. Failing to obtain the rich cargo of spices which he had expected to bring home, he loaded his vessel with kidnapped savages of both sexes, and with this freight reached Corunna again in November, 1525.
All historians of the voyage made by Gomez have told the story about the mistake of a zealous newsmonger in reference to the nature of the cargo thus brought home. Peter Martyr is the first to tell it, in the final chapter of his last decade, inscribed to Pope Clement VII., written in 1526. In answer to a question as to what he had brought, Gomez was understood to reply “cloves” (clavos), when he really said “slaves” (esclavos). The eager friend hastened to Court with the news that the shorter strait had been discovered, thinking to obtain some reward for his intelligence. The favorers of Gomez’ project (in regard to which there appears to have been some difference of opinion) greeted the news with applause, but were covered with ridicule when the true story of the results of the voyage was published. Martyr quaintly says: “If they hadd learned that the influence of the heauens could bee noe where infused into terrestriall matters prepared to receiue that aromaticall spirit, saue from the Æquinoctiall sunne, or next vnto it, they woulde haue knowne that in the space of tenn moneths (wherein hee performed his voyage) aromaticall Cloues could not bee founde.”[16]
It does not fall within the limits of this chapter to relate the story of the early attempts of the French Huguenots to plant colonies in this country.[17] But I may refer very briefly to the first of these,—the expedition sent by Admiral Coligny to Brazil under the command of Villegagnon, in 1555; as a Franciscan monk, André Thevet, who accompanied it, claims to have coasted the continent of North America on his return voyage to France the next year.
Thevet says of himself that he had spent the early years of his life in travel, and that he had already made a voyage to the East, of which voyage, and of his skill in navigation, his friend Villegagnon was well aware when he asked him to join the proposed expedition to South America,—an offer which he (Thevet) was very ready to accept. The start, he says, was made from Havre, May 6, 1555, and the voyage across the ocean was long and tedious. It was not until the last day of October that, about nine o’clock in the morning, their vessel came within sight of the high mountains of Croistmourou. These were within the limits of a country whose inhabitants were friends of the Portuguese, and the French therefore decided to avoid landing there. They continued the voyage, and seventeen days later cast anchor at the River Ganabara (Rio Janeiro), where they were received in a friendly manner by the natives, and decided to make their settlement.
Thevet remained with the colony only about ten weeks, leaving on his homeward voyage, Jan. 31, 1556. He says that the commander of the vessel decided to return by a more northern passage than that by which he had crossed from France; and goes on to describe at some length their voyage along the coast, and to give many particulars of the countries and natives, most of which he must have obtained from other travellers’ books and histories after his return. The progress was slow. At the Cape of St. Augustine the vessel was delayed, he says, two months in the attempt to round that promontory. The equinoctial line was not crossed until about the middle of April; and after leaving Espagnola a contrary wind blew them in toward the coast.
Thevet claims to have coasted the entire shore of the United States, and gives occasional accounts of what he saw, and of intercourse with the natives. But his details are always uncertain, and the places he professes to have visited cannot be identified. No satisfactory information can be obtained from his story; and indeed his reputation for truth-telling is so poor that many historians are inclined to reject altogether his recital of the voyage along our coast. It may well be that Thevet invented the whole of it as a thread upon which to hang the particulars about Florida, Norumbega, and other countries which he gathered from books. After his return to France he was made aumonier to Catherine de Medicis, and also royal historiographer and cosmographer.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
THE earliest mention in print of the Cortereal voyages is found in a small collection of travels (one of the very earliest collections made), entitled Paesi novamente retrovati. This was published at Vicenza, in Italy, as the colophon states, Nov. 3, 1507, and is supposed to have been compiled by Fracanzio da Montalboddo, or by Alessandro Zorzi.[18] The account of Gaspar Cortereal is contained (book vi. chap. cxxv) in a letter written from Lisbon, Oct. 19, 1501 (eleven days only after the return of the first vessel which succeeded in getting home from the second voyage), by the Venetian ambassador in Portugal, Pietro Pasqualigo, to his brothers. This is, of course, an authority of great value. The writer gives a brief account of the voyage, speaks of the customs of the inhabitants of the new country, and describes the captives which the ship had brought. He says that the other vessel is expected immediately. Pasqualigo mentions, however, only one voyage, and has apparently confused it with the earlier one; for he says that the expedition sailed “lāno passato” (that is 1500), and writes of the failure to reach a country discovered “lanno passato.” Perhaps he received some account of both voyages from the mariners, and in preparing his letter failed to preserve the distinction between them. French versions of the letter appeared in Paris in 1517 and 1522. An English translation of the interesting portions of this letter is given in Biddle’s Cabot, at pp. 239, 240.