This discrepancy among Rhenish geographers was not of long duration.
Simon Grynaeus, author of a collection of voyages, (Orbis Novus, Bâle, March, 1532,) in which he inserts the four voyages of Americus Vespucius and only the first of Columbus, does not hesitate in deciding their respective importance; witness the following words in a little treatise by Sebastian Munster, placed at the head of the collection: "There has been discovered in our own day in the Western ocean, by Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, what one may call a new world, and very correctly the fourth part of the globe, so that our earth no longer consists of three parts, but of four; because these Indian islands surpass Europe in size, especially the one which takes its name of America from Americus, who discovered it." The same Munster writes in his Cosmography: "What shall I say of these great islands America, of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, Yucatan?" And again, upon a map giving the southern part of the New World: "Atlantic Island, called Brazil and America."
The collection of Grynaeus was reprinted in Paris about the month of November, 1532, and several times afterward.
Apian and Phrisius, the same who worked upon the Ptolemaeus of 1522, say in their Cosmography: "America takes its name from Americus Vespucius, who discovered it: others call it Brazil. Is it a continent or an island? We do not yet know." Of Columbus not one word.
These references to Christopher Columbus, evoked à contretemps, are only exceptions of ever lessening frequency. The name of America in a few years had taken possession of maps and of science, and passed into a brilliant and resonant notoriety with the public. The erudite, those who controlled the printing press, and those who, in the centre of Europe, formed opinions almost uninfluenced by Spain, and whose admiration, more or less enlightened, created fame, were fairly dazzled by Americus Vespucius. Columbus, after being faintly discerned from time to time, at last disappeared, and was lost like a satellite in the nimbus of a principal star planet. No doubt he could lay claim to a few islands; but he who, unveiling the vast expanse of southern shores, had discovered a new world, was beyond dispute Americus Vespucius, the noble, the illustrious traveller par excellence—egregius et nobilissimus inventor, visitator et primus hospes.
IV.
But why this silence respecting Christopher Columbus? Whence this apparent conspiracy against a man who in our own day rears himself like a giant above all those who navigated the route opened by his genius? Where shall we seek the cause of the ingratitude no longer peculiar of Spain, but attributable to all Europe, that pains our hearts?
The truth must be told: he himself was one of its principal causes.
The illustrious Genoese never courted publicity. The only papers printed during his life, concerning his discoveries, were his first voyage, taken from his letter of March 14th, 1493, to the treasurer Sanchez; and his fourth, an account of which he addressed to the kings in a letter from Jamaica, (July 7th, 1503;) [Footnote 211] the one in Latin at Rome, (1493,) the other at Venice, translated into Italian, (1505.) The title of Lettera rarissima by which this last document is designated, shows plainly that it was not for general distribution. Of the writings of Columbus these are all that were published up to the close of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 212]
[Footnote 211: First voyage from August 3d, 1492, to March 15, 1493: discovery of the Bahama islands, and of Hayti. Fourth voyage from May 11th, 1502, to November 7th, 1504; discovery of the coast of the continent from Honduras to Puerto de Mosquitos, at the end of the Isthmus of Panama. First notion of the existence of another sea to the west.]