The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci, and Other Documents Illustrative of His Career. Bartolomé de las Casas
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arguments for this alteration of eleven years in the date of a voyage of discovery are slight indeed. Oviedo, in his History of the Indies, wrote that the pilots Pinzon, Solis, and Ledesma discovered the Honduras coast with three vessels, before Pinzon was off the mouth of the Amazon, which was in 1499; and Gomara has the following passage: "but some say that Pinzon and Solis had been on the Honduras coast three years before Columbus." These writers were unscrupulous, and hostile to Columbus. It requires somewhat bold assurance to give the date of 1497 to the Pinzon and Solis voyages on the strength of these passages. Oviedo indeed puts Vespucci out of court at once, for he says that Pinzon, Solis, and Ledesma sailed with three vessels; while Vespucci asserts that in his first voyage there were four vessels. Moreover, Ledesma, who was pilot and captain of one of the vessels, was a lad of 21 in 1497, and could not have been in such a position; but in 1508, when the Pinzon and Solis expedition really sailed, he was of a suitable age. 44
Although the expedition of Pinzon, Solis, and Ledesma certainly did not take place in 1497, there has always been some obscurity attending its history, which has only recently been cleared up through the able researches of Mr. Harrisse. 45 The confusion has arisen from discrepancies between the evidence given by Pinzon and Ledesma in the Columbus lawsuit. Pinzon said that he reached the island of Guanaja in the Gulf of Honduras, and then followed the coast east as far as the provinces of Chabaca and Pintigron, and the mountains of Caria (Paria?). But Ledesma said that they went north from the island of Guanaja, came to Chabaca and Pintigron, and reached a point as far north as 23½°. Here there is clearly a mistake, one going east and the other north, yet both coming to Chabaca and Pintigron. It can only be decided whether the mistake is in the evidence of Pinzon or of Ledesma by ascertaining the positions of Chabaca and Pintigron; and the explanation is afforded by Peter Martyr in his second Decade. 46 He there says that Pinzon turned his course to the east ("towards the left hand") towards Paria, where princes came to him named Chiauaccha 47 and Pintiguanus. Ledesma's northerly course was either a falsehood, as Mr. Harrisse rather hastily assumes, or a clerical or printer's error. The only voyage of Pinzon and Solis took place in 1508, 48 and was from the Gulf of Honduras eastward to Paria.
There was no voyage of discovery sent by the King in 1497. When Diego Columbus instituted the lawsuit to recover his father's rights, the Crown lawyers turned every stone for evidence that others made discoveries besides the Admiral. The lawsuit lasted from 1508 to 1527. If an expedition sent by the King in 1497 had discovered 870 leagues of new coast-line, it is incredible that the proofs would not then have been forthcoming, when many of those who took part in the expedition must have been alive, and there was not only no reason for secrecy, but the strongest motive for publicity.
When the evidence respecting Pinzon and Solis was taken in 1516, Vespucci had been dead some years. He had never ventured to publish his letter in Spain; but Fernando Columbus purchased a copy at Rome and added it to his library at Seville in 1515, three years after Vespucci's death. If the first voyage had not been known to be a fabrication, the letter would have been eagerly brought forward as evidence of extensive discoveries not made by the Admiral. For by that time other copies, besides the one in Fernando's library, had probably reached Spain.
Then there is the negative evidence of maps. Juan de la Cosa drew his famous map of the world in 1500, after serving in the voyage of Hojeda, in company with Vespucci. He placed flags on the discovered parts, and one on each of the farthest known points. There is a Spanish flag at Cabo de la Vela, the extreme point then known in South America, another at the extreme point reached by Columbus on the north coast of Cuba, and an English flag at the extreme point reached by Cabot. A conjectural line runs round from the last English to the first Spanish flag, and there is no sign of the alleged Vespucci discoveries. If it is suggested that the Florentine himself kept them secret, without any conceivable object for doing so, there were all his companions to proclaim them, and there must have been an official report. If those 870 leagues of coast had been discovered, the discovery must have been shown on the map of Juan de la Cosa.
The Cantino map furnishes additional evidence against Vespucci of an interesting kind. This map of the world was compiled for the Duke of Ferrara by order of Alberto Cantino, to illustrate the voyages of Corte Real. It was drawn by a Portuguese draughtsman at Lisbon, and was finished in the autumn of 1502, having been paid for in November of that year. On the Cantino map, the coast-line discovered by Hojeda in 1499 is shown. It is not copied from the map of Juan de la Cosa, for most of the names are different 49; but the information must have been supplied by some one who was in Hojeda's expedition. Vespucci was in Lisbon in the autumn of 1502; it is, therefore, almost certain that this coast-line was laid down from information supplied by Vespucci. 50 If Vespucci, in 1497, had discovered a coast-line between 16° and 23° N., and another coast-line extending from 23° N. for 870 leagues N. W., these marvellous discoveries would also appear on the Cantino map. But there is not a sign of them. We may conclude from this that Vespucci had not yet conceived the idea of the fictitious voyage of 1497, when he assisted Cantino's draughtsman in the autumn of 1502. The imposture is first hinted at some six months afterwards in the Medici letter of March 1503. Peter Martyr gives corroborative evidence that Vespucci assisted the Portuguese cartographer. He says that he visited Bishop Fonseca, and was shown "many of those mappes which are commonly called the shipman cardes, or cardes of the sea: of the which, one was drawen by the Portugales, wherunto Americus Vesputius is said to have put his hande, beinge a man experte in this facultie, and a Florentine borne." 51
Further evidence against Vespucci is furnished by the map which was prepared in 1511 to illustrate Peter Martyr's Decades. This author was personally acquainted with Vespucci, who was then chief pilot of Spain, and was intimate with his nephew Giovanni. Yet there is not a sign of Vespucci's alleged discoveries in 1497 on the map of 1511. There was no motive for secrecy on the part of Vespucci, or on the part of the captains and pilots of the four ships; on the contrary, their interest was to make the discoveries public and get credit for them. Bermuda appears for the first time on the map of 1511, having been discovered by Juan Bermudez. But there is no mention of Iti. In this same year, Ponce de Leon obtained a concession for the discovery of that very coast of Florida which, according to Varnhagen, had been discovered in its whole extent by Vespucci fourteen years before. The concession was actually made on the condition that the coast had not been discovered before, and Vespucci was then chief pilot. It is incredible that Vespucci and all his companions should have combined to conceal their wonderful discoveries without any conceivable reason, their silence being most injurious to themselves. It is still more incredible that the King should have put such a condition into the concession to Ponce de Leon, if it was true that the coast in question had been discovered fourteen years before by an expedition despatched by himself.
The evidence against Vespucci is cumulative and quite conclusive. His first voyage is a fabrication. He cannot be acquitted of the intention of appropriating for himself the glory of having first discovered the mainland. The impartial and upright Las Casas, after carefully weighing the evidence, found him guilty. This verdict has been, and will continue to be, confirmed by posterity. He wished to glorify himself in his own country, whither he intended to retire, and throughout Europe. But he did not dare to publish his fiction in Spain, and, so far as we know, it did not reach Spain in print until after his death. He wrote well, and his stories about a new world excited the enthusiasm of those who read them. His Latin editor suggested that his new world should be called America, and the name was adopted by map-makers. It was euphonious and convenient, and, in spite of the protests of Las Casas and Herrera, it eventually became general, and Vespucci usurped the honours that rightly belonged to Columbus. Vespucci may be acquitted of having contemplated so great an injustice. It is possible that he never intended that his letters should be published. He may only have desired to increase his consequence among his own countrymen. But whatever his intention may have been, he committed a fraud with a dishonest purpose, and it is no extenuation that he did not contemplate the full extent of the injustice it has caused.
The investigation of Vespucci's statements contained in the first and second voyages destroys all confidence in his unsupported word, when we proceed to examine his account of the voyages alleged to have been made by him in Portuguese ships.
There is no mention either of Vespucci or