II.
Thus lived Americus Vespucius, joining actively and honorably for the last twenty years of his life in the gigantic labors by which the mariners of Castile and Portugal wrenched one by one her secrets from the sea.
Valued and sought by kings as well as by the most illustrious men, a little vain himself, proud of the early education that had raised him above the generality of navigators, with a mind rather commonplace than brilliant, nowhere does he give evidence in his narratives of a dishonest leaning toward usurpation; nor does a single act accuse him of such desires.
And yet usurpation there was. Let us discover its source and the manner of its consummation.
The Italian friends with whom Americus was in correspondence probably took upon themselves to publish his letters. The first one put in print was the letter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, containing an account of his third voyage. Rich in curious details, and in vivid pictures of habits and manners, this little work was the more striking to imaginations already overwrought, that the narrator's explorations had embraced vast coast regions of southern latitudes. [Footnote 198]
[Footnote 198: The fact that these discoveries of Americus had taken place in southern regions added to their interest. Many persons still persisted in the error of ancient cosmography, that the two temperate zones, north and south of the equator, were alone habitable, and could never hold communication with each other because of the burning atmosphere of the torrid zone. We find a ludicrous and remarkable specimen of this blind spirit of conservatism in a certain Zachariah Sillus, who writes at Paris in 1515, that is to say, twenty-three years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and seventeen years after Vasco de Gama's expedition to the Indies: "Between the torrid zone and the glacial zones, two zones only are habitable. By whom is the one corresponding to our own inhabited? Macrobius affirms it; no one has ever known, no one ever will know. For the torrid zone placed between them interdicts all intercourse between the men of these two regions. The superior zone, then, only is inhabited, I mean the one lying between the northern and equatorial regions." (Bibliothèque Magazine, No. 16169.) Others understood no better the antipodes, the men of the opposite hemisphere standing head downward. The voyages of Vespucius contributed largely toward the solution of these problems.]
The first publication of this third voyage appears to have been made in Italy. The Latin language served it for a passport beyond the Alps, and furnished the type for numerous French and German translations. The first Latin edition known is without date, and bears the name of the publisher Lambert, in Paris. Afterward came those of Otmar, in Augsburg, 1504, published previously under the title of Mundus Nova, an expression used by Americus himself; and those of Strasburg, published by Hupfuff, in 1505; those of Leipzig, 1506.
Soon the Italians with their génie d'ensemble gather together into ever-increasing collections various narratives published separately. First appeared the "Book of all the Expeditions of the King of Spain among the newly discovered Islands and Mainlands," (printed in Venice, 1504, in quarto,) by Albertine Vercellese di Lisona. This collection comprises only the first three voyages of Christopher Columbus, with those of Pietro Alonzo, and of Pinzon. Three years later, the great collection of Vicenzo absorbs all these, adding to the voyages made by Spaniards those made by the Portuguese, and placing en vedette, as we say nowadays, the name of Americus Vespucius: Mondo Novo e Paesi Nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vespuxio, Florentine, 1507. The author, who writes anonymously, was Alessandro Zorzi.
This book was also translated into Latin at Milan, 1508; into German by Jobst Ruchamer, of Nuremberg, 1508; and into French, by Mathurin du Redouer, of Paris, without date. Of the French version, several editions followed each other in rapid succession about the year 1516.
Thus popularity became rapidly attached to the name of Americus Vespucius. These collections, disseminated through the learned nations of Europe, gave the Florentine the fame of having traversed a greater extent of newly discovered country than any other man, and predisposed public opinion to give him all the credit of the essential discovery.