Instead, I believe that the islands visited by Vespucci on the return voyage were the northern part of the Bahama group. Without going so far from the coast and its inlets as to incur much danger of storms, or to completely lose the course and the reckoning in cloudy weather, canoe expeditions from the Bahamas could come frequently, as the narrative says, to attack the Indians in the region of Pamlico Sound. These Indians, too, sometimes pursuing their enemies homeward, might learn the situation of their islands, and would thus be able to pilot the way for Vespucci’s ships. According to this view, they sailed south from Pamlico Sound to the Bahamas. The direction of east-northeast, given in the narrative, must be a mistake, being applicable instead for the course taken from the Bahamas to Spain. The larger islands of this very extensive group had many inhabitants when discovered by Columbus; but they were afterward wholly depopulated by the unspeakable cruelties of slave-traders.
The journal and letters of Columbus show that the native people of the Bahamas suffered much from the attacks of the man-eating Caribs, whom they greatly feared but often doubtless bravely repelled. We have also evidence from Vespucci that the Caribs advanced much farther north for war and rapine, boldly navigating the sea in their great canoes, to Pamlico Sound. Whether they had a permanent settlement on the northwestern islands of the Bahama group, can probably never be known; but I believe that either they or the more peaceable Bahama islanders there were attacked, defeated, and many of them captured and sold into slavery, by this Spanish expedition.
This discussion or explanation, though not directly relating to the discovery of the Mississippi river, seems to me needful to set forth my reasons for thinking that Vespucci’s narrative of his first voyage is a true account, excepting mistakes of his memory or writing or of later copying.
WARREN UPHAM.
ST. PAUL, MINN.
(To be continued.)
BETWEEN TWO FLAGS.
I.
“To-morrow is Valentine’s Day. You are mine. I have chose you out among the rest, the reason is I love you best—so, my Dear, God bless you. I wish you Health and Happiness.”—Isabella Cleghorn to Capt. Joseph Hynson, in a letter from London dated the 13th of February, 1777, intercepted in the general post-office by the British Secret Service, and now preserved among the Auckland MSS. in King’s College, Cambridge.
Isabella Cleghorn? Who was she that her valentine fancies should weigh with nations and be treasured in the archives of a State? A factor in the birth of the American republic? Let those so minded review the evidence and construct an answer to suit themselves.