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Updated: June 3, 2025
In 1507 a German writer published an account of the discovery, in which he called the new country America, in honor of Americus Vespucius, the discoverer. This land was not connected in any way with the discovery of Columbus, for he was supposed to have found Asia.
The letter here in part given was addrest by Vespucius to Soderini, the Gonfalonier of Florence. The translation, by one "M.K.," was published by Mr. Quaritch, the London bookseller, in 1885, and has been printed as one of the "Old South Leaflets!" The letter is believed to have been composed by Vespucius within a month after his return from his second voyage. Vespucius was a naval astronomer.
Many tribes came to see us, and wondered at our faces and our whiteness: and they asked us whence we came: and we gave them to understand that we had come from heaven, and that we were going to see the world, and they believed it. Americus Vespucius was born in Florence in 1452 and died in Seville in 1512.
This ungenerous manner of recognizing his services wounded the navigator, and decided him to accept the offers which had been made to him on different occasions, to enter the Spanish service. From the death of Vespucius, which happened in 1512, Cabot was the navigator held in most renown.
This was an utterly unfounded accusation, for Vespucius was both loved and esteemed by Columbus and his contemporaries, and there is nothing in his writings to justify this calumnious assertion.
The fourth voyage of Vespucius was marked by the wreck of the flag-ship off the Island of Fernando de Noronha, which prevented the other vessels from continuing their voyage towards Malacca by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and obliged the crews to land at All Saints' Bay, in Brazil.
We have given an account of Hojeda's first voyage, which coincides with that of Vespucius according to Humboldt, who has compared the principal incidents of the two narratives.
Upon a small lake, which he named Lake Julia, he conferred the honor of being the head of the great river, while it seemed to him that the "shades of Marco Polo, of Columbus, of Americus Vespucius, of the Cabots, of Verazani, of the Zenos, and various others, appeared present, and joyfully assisting at this high and solemn ceremony". After a journey of great suffering he was welcomed at Fort Snelling wearing a hat made of the bark of a tree, and clothes of skins.
This fourth voyage was unquestionably made with Gonzalo Coelho, but we are quite ignorant as to who was in command on the third voyage. These various expeditions had not tended to enrich Vespucius, while his position at the Portuguese court was so far from satisfactory that he determined to re-enter the service of the King of Spain. By him he was made Piloto Mayor on the 22nd of March, 1508.
Its principal contents, besides those translated for the present chapter, are the voyages of Cada Mosto, already given; the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, which will form the first article in our subsequent volume; the voyages of Vincent Alonzo Pinzon, and of Americus Vespucius, which will be attended to hereafter; and the travels of Marco Polo, which have been already given at full length from a better source.
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