Americus, when about forty years of age, left Italy for Spain, and entered the flourishing commercial house founded at Seville by his countrymen the Berardi. At this period a large number of Italians established themselves in Spain, in Portugal, and even in England. Some became promoters of the commerce fed by Portuguese discoveries, (the Marchioni at Lisbon;) others (Cadomosto, the Corte reali) traced out a route along the African coast or explored the icy barrier that guards the north-west passage; while others again, (Christopher Columbus, John and Sebastian Cabot,) crossed the Atlantic ocean, bringing back a wondrous discovery. This was one of the glories of Italy, so rich in all glory during the fifteenth century.
At first a clerk, and in 1496 the general accountant of the Berardi, Americus Vespucius listened with passionate interest to narrations uttered by the lips of Christopher Columbus himself. He studied astronomy and the science of navigation, and made four voyages; the first two under protection of the Spanish flag, the last two under that of Portugal.
He naturally drew up an account of these expeditions. Like Columbus he related his foreign experiences to friends and patrons; first, in three successive letters, describing his first three voyages, written to the Florentine, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici; and later, after his fourth expedition, in a single narrative, containing a résumé of all his travels, addressed simultaneously, but not in the same form, to another countryman, the gonfalonniere Piero Soderini, and to the Duke of Lorraine, René II. This last was similar in tenor to a narrative sent by him a short time before to Ferdinand the Catholic.
These four voyages, so soon made famous, are extracts, varied by Vespucius according to the correspondents for whom they were destined. He drew them from a complete and detailed account, written according "to the weakness of his puny talent," [Footnote 188] as his overstrained modesty expresses it; a work executed with assiduous care, "in order that coming generations might remember him," but which he never published. It has not yet been brought to light.
[Footnote 188: "Juxta ingenioli mel tenuitatem." Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 170, n. 1.]
It is, then, only by those of his printed letters that have come down to us—and they are not all preserved—that we know the dates and circumstances of his voyages.
In the first voyage, which took place between May 20th, 1497, and October 15th, 1499, he recognized the coasts of Surinam and of Paria, at the mouth of the Orinoco. In the second, dated from May 6th, 1499, to September 8th, 1500, he crossed the equator and saw Cape St. Augustine off Brazil; and from there sailed north to Paria and Hispaniola. The dates of these two expeditions contradict each other; for, according to them, his second voyage must have begun five months before the first ended. Moreover, the date 1497 for the beginning of the first voyage is inadmissible. The registers of the Spanish administration (La Casa de Contratacion at Seville) prove that, from April, 1497, to May, 1498, Americus Vespucius was detained at Seville and San Lucar, occupied with preparations for the third voyage of Christopher Columbus. [Footnote 189]
[Footnote 189: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 267, 268. This third voyage took place from May 30th. 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]
For this reason the Florentine has been accused of fabricating this pretended voyage by disguising a few incidents drawn from the second; and of having antedated his departure from Spain, in order at one stroke to earn the credit of first touching terra firma at Paria, and deprive Christopher Columbus of that honor. We shall discuss this question later.