[Footnote 224: Sinus Magnus. Ptolemaeus took the Indian ocean for a sea, bounded on the north by Asia, and on the south by Africa, the latter continent widening from west to east, to form the southern barrier of the Indian ocean.]
[Footnote 225: "Discoprendo infinitissima terra de l'Asia e gran copia d'isole."—Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 299 and note, et passim.]
The conviction of these two men decided general opinion, as is attested by the name of the Indies applied to the western lands. Both had passed away before Balboa's march to the great ocean (1513) and Magellan's voyage unsealed all eyes and dissipated the dreams of Ptolemaeus.
Now, since it is an indisputable fact that Christopher Columbus and Americus Vespucius never had an intuition of their veritable discovery, and that for the rest of their lives both of them firmly believed that they had reached the extreme end of the continent of Asia, how could the one have planned to frustrate the other of the glory of having revealed a new world whose existence they neither of them suspected? How could Vespucius undertake to slip surreptitiously into history, and impose a contraband name upon a continent that only seemed to him susceptible of bearing the name of Asia? Moreover, what personal advantage could he hope to reap from fraudulently dating his arrival at Paria during his first expedition, 1497, when the discovery of Oriental Asia was looked upon as accomplished by Christopher Columbus five years before?
Let us also take these expressions of fourth part of the world and new world according to their original sense, and not with the absolute signification attached to them at the present day. In the mouth of Americus Vespucius, the former meant simply that he had passed over, between Lisbon and the extreme point of his explorations, an arc of 90°, whether the quarter of a grand circle or of the terrestrial circumference from one pole to the other. As to the latter, it was quite natural that the extraordinary and unexpected extent of the Asiatic lands, contemplated for the first time, and the aspect of a nature of which nothing European could give an idea, with inhabitants of a strange color and of cannibal habits; it was quite natural, we repeat, that the navigator should exclaim that before him lay a new world.
Cosmographers in their turn were struck by the interminable succession of shores, whose development south of the equator resolved, contrary to old prejudices, the problems so long agitated concerning the torrid zone and the second temperate zone, and the question whether or not the sun enlightened the southern hemisphere in the same manner as the northern. Such a theatre suddenly thrown open to geographic science appeared to them worthy to rival Europe by its gigantic proportions, and to be accounted a new part of the world. And yet it was not considered the New World, as we understand it, until the time when, explorations being completed, it was known to have nothing in common with the continent or the archipelagoes of Asia. If precaution had been taken to disengage this idea, the accusation against Americus Vespucius would have died a natural death in the beginning.
But we are told that he abused his office of piloto mayor, and his right of rectifying the maps by inserting his own name upon them.
This assertion is not sustained by the shadow of a proof. Mariners were not in the habit of giving their own names to the lands they discovered, whether Americus Vespucius, Columbus, Balboa, or Magellan. Had he done so, it would have had only the very restricted and allowable signification of a name applied to one of the numerous islands near Asia that seemed to spring from the sea on all sides to greet the eyes of navigators. The scholars of Lorraine and Alsace had no other view in selecting for this destiny the largest southern country. They treated as coequals in importance the great island of America and the islands of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Yucatan. [Footnote 226] Finally, the name of America, applied to the whole of the New World, resulted from the mistake by which the island (Cuba) was taken for the mainland, and the mainland (Paria) for the island. When with time the first error was recognized, they extended to the whole the appellation given to what had proved to be the principal part.
[Footnote 226: Cosmography of Munster, quoted above.]