But there is another silence more decisive. Two years after the death of Christopher Columbus, that is to say in 1508, Don Diego, his eldest son, brought a lawsuit against the crown before the council of the Indies, to recover dignities and privileges that had been guaranteed to the admiral in the treaties acceded to by Ferdinand and Isabella. It was essentially important to the fiscal to prove that Columbus had been anticipated by some one else in Paria, in order to deprive the heirs of all claim to the revenues drawn from that country at least. Nor, although in this debate efforts were made to draw from the seamen testimony inimical to Columbus, and although the fiscal disdained to use no rumor, however vague or futile it might be—descending to every refinement of deceit and fraud, and pushing the hostility of the investigation even to extravagance, according to Las Casas; yet neither Americus Vespucius, who was still alive during the first four years, nor John Vespucius, his nephew, a renowned pilot, ever brought forward any claim to priority in the discovery. They were not called up as witnesses; the cosmographies printed in other countries in his honor were not mentioned; [Footnote 231] and the lawsuit came to an end in 1527, after nineteen mortal years, without the name of Vespucius having been brought forward in opposition to the great victim of injustice.
[Footnote 231: It is quite possible that they had not been seen in Seville. This furnishes a strong though indirect proof that Vespucius did not know of their existence.]
About the year 1513, Fernando Columbus, the admiral's second son, put the last touches to the history of his father. An openly expressed and pious indignation animated him against those who had embittered with so many mortifications that illustrious career. He leaves the memory of Americus Vespucius in peaceful repose. Evidently there was nothing to avenge in that quarter.
Sole and last of his contemporaries, finishing in extreme old age, at eighty-five, in the year 1559, a general history of the Indies, Las Casas accuses Vespucius of having falsified the date of his first voyage, and given the number 1497 to the editors of Lorraine, with the premeditated design of robbing Christopher Columbus of a glory so dearly acquired. [Footnote 232] Nevertheless, he does not prove this, nor try to do so. Las Casas was in fact mistaken. Americus Vespucius was a posthumous usurper, and absolutely irresponsible.
[Footnote 232: Humboldt shows that mistakes in dates occur in Las Casas as in all the works of that day. Vol. iv. p. 139; vol. v. p. 191. Charlevoix (History of St. Domingo,) says that Diego Columbus, in gaining the suit raised by the fiscal, condemned Vespucius. Diego simply proved that the admiral was the first to touch the coast of Paria, 1498. He never thought of condemning Vespucius, who did not appear in the case. The records of the lawsuit were not printed before 1829. Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 204, and note 2.]
But a reaction came to the public conscience in favor of Christopher Columbus. To ingratitude, to the base passions and mean motives so cruelly leagued against him, there succeeded a more sound appreciation, in proportion as, further removed by time, perspective views re-established matters in their true position. He, who in 1492, had found the small island of San Salvador in the little group of the Bahamas, was not known to have that day discovered the New World. And yet it was another man's name that his discovery was destined to immortalize! Then opinion, deceived in the first instance about Christopher Columbus, erred in regard to Americus Vespucius. The latter had to bear the weight of an error he had not provoked, and, condemned without a hearing by a sort of universal consent, to incur the sad celebrity of imposture unveiled.
But to-day, we believe, a more enlightened judgment has acquitted him. His fame is pure. Christopher Columbus does not accuse one who was his friend. One glory does not mar another. It is sweet to have at least one injustice less to inscribe in the martyrology of great initiators.