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Updated: June 2, 2025
After Vespucci had made three other voyages to the New World, he was given an important government position in Spain, which he held during the remainder of his life. You have heard many surprising things which the people of the fifteenth century believed. It seems almost impossible for us to think that those people really had faith in a Fountain of Youth; yet such is the case.
Vespucci found a harbor, but waited in vain for several days for the arrival of the ships. Standing out to sea, he met with a solitary vessel, and learnt that the ship of the commander had sunk, and the rest had proceeded onwards. In company with this vessel he stood for the Brazils, according to the command of the king, in case that any vessel should be parted from the fleet.
Such was the expedition which, by a singular train of circumstances, eventually gave the name of this Florentine merchant, Amerigo Vespucci, to the whole of the New World. This expedition had sailed in May, 1499. The adventurers had arrived on the southern continent, and ranged along its coast, from two hundred leagues east of the Oronoco, to the Gulf of Paria.
I once asked a fifth-year class in history, "Who discovered America?" when almost immediately came the response, "Vespucci sailed along the coast of South America and named the whole country!" Or they hold it in mind a moment, and then confuse it with other things, or let it go entirely.
As he sailed south Columbus caught sight of what was really the mainland of South America, but he thought it was another island, and called it Isla Santa, or "Holy Island." It might seem curious that as Columbus had discovered both North and South America, the continent was given the name of another man. As we have seen, its name was taken from that of another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.
While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512 discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time the existence of a new continent.
England, wishing to have a share in this world of wonders, sent a Venetian mariner, John Cabot; and he and his son sailed along our northern mainland in English ships. Columbus touched the coast of South America in 1498. A Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, was the first to cruise far along this southern coast, probably in 1499, and it was his name which Europe gave to the new lands.
Among the many who longed to sail the seas there was a man named Amerigo Vespucci. Like Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian. He was born in Florence and there for nearly forty years he lived quietly, earning his living as a clerk in the great merchant house of Medici.
He was the third of their sons, and received an excellent education under his uncle, Georgio Antonio Vespucci, a learned friar of the fraternity of San Marco, who was instructor to several illustrious personages of that period.
If then Vespucci, as is stated upon oath, really accompanied Ojeda in this voyage, the inference appears almost irresistible, that he had not made the previous voyage of 1497, for the fact would have been well known to Ojeda; he would have considered Vespucci as the original discoverer, and would have had no motive for depriving him of the merit of it, to give it to Columbus, with whom Ojeda was not upon friendly terms.
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