YALt

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
of the
ANN S. FARNAM FUND

QuaritcJts Translations of Rare Books.

I. Vespucci (Amerigo) Letter concerning
THE Isles newly discovered in
HIS Four Voyages.
{Florence, 1505.]

LONDON: BERNARD QUARITCH,
15 PICCADILLY. 1885.

THE FIRST FOUR
VOYAGES

OF

AMERIGO VESPUCCI.

TRANSLATED

From the rare original edition {Florence, 1 505-6) ;
with some Preliminary Notices,
By M. K.

LONDON :
BERNARD QUARITCH,
15 PICCADILLY. 1885.

Y A L E

(Pe0pucci*0 TI?otfi0«

Le QuaTTRO Giornate. Diary and Common-place Book, written
during the course of his first four voyages, and contain
ing astronomical diagrams and drawings of remarkable
objects.
Now lost, and only known by his references to it in the Lettera.
Epistles to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici.
All now lost The one usually considered to be an account of his third
voyage (but which also contains a short summary of various observations made in
his first three voyages), written probably about the end of 1502, was saved from
the complete destruction which has been the fate of the others, by being translated
into Latin by " Jocundus interpres ut latini omnes intelligant." This translator
was the celebrated Fra Giovanni del Giocondo, of Verona, then resident in Paris.
The original was presumably in bastard-Italmn, like the Lettera to Soderini,
but it cannot have been ever prinleH^ since the Italian or Venetian form of it,
which appeared (for the first time) in the Pctesi of 1 507, is merely a retranslation
from the Latin. The Latin translation and the Italian retranslation were printed
several times between 1503 or 1504 and 1521 ; and were substantially reproduced
in the compilations of Grynaeus and Ramusio.
Lettera delle isole nuouamente trouate. Written at
Lisbon in 1504, and printed at Florence probably in
1505, for Pietro Pacini, of Pescia.
This is the work now produced in facsimile, and is apparently the only narrative
by Vespucci of which the original text has survived. (The other three Letters
attributed to him, and printed in the last and the present century, are decidedly
supposititious.) It was translated into French, probably in 1505 or 1506, we know
not by whom, and from this lost French translation, a Latin version (generally
a

vi Vespucci's Works.
accurate enough, but comprising several significant errors, and mistranslations) was
made, and printed for the first time in 1507 as a supplement to Waldseemiiller's
CosmograpJiicB Introductio, and frequently afterwards. It is said in the Speculi
orbis declaratio of Gualterius Ludd (printed, like the CosmograpMa, at St. Di^, in
Lorraine, 1 507) that the Latin translation was made by Jean Basin de Senda-
cour. It might seem more likely that he made the French version, and that
Waldseemiiller was responsible for the Latin one ; but to whomsoever we may
ascribe the latter text, it is from this that Europe for more than three centuries
derived its knowledge of Vespucci's voyages, and to this that we may trace the
origin of the name America, bestowed by Waldseemiiller, and sanctioned by
many other scholars of France and Germany.
In the various editions of the Novus Orbis which is known under the name
of Grynseus, the account of the four voyages was reproduced in Latin from the
CosmograpMa; and Ramusio has given an abridgment in Italian of the third and
fourth voyages only (his attention being chiefly directed to the results of southern
and African explorations).
Note. — Pietro Pacini, of Pescia, was not a printer, but a publisher at Florence.
Varnhagen has erroneously supposed that he printed the Lettera of Vespucci,
because he was able to identify the type in which it is set up with that which was
used in certain books published in 1505 for Pacini. Many books were printed ad
instantia or alle spese of Pietro Pacini, some with dates and some without them.
The earliest dated book on which his name thus appears was printed for him by
Lorenzo Morgiani et Giovanni di Maganza, in 1495 [Bernardo (SJ, Sermoni,
4to.] ; the second by Frandscus Bonaccursius, in 1496 [LiLlO (Zach.), De origine et
laudibus scientiarum, &c., 4to.J j and the latest by Gian Stefano di Carlo di Pavia,
in 15 13 [PoLiziANO, La Giostra di Giuliano dei Medici, 4to.]. In 1505 he produced
three books [D. Lahertio {i.e., Diogenes Laeriius), Vita di Philosophi, 4to.;
Augustino (S.), Sermoni, 4to.; Gersone, Imitazione di Cristo, 4to.], in which
only his own name appears, that of the actual printer not being given. The type
in these three books, in the Lettera now reprinted, and in the Lettera di
CORSALI printed by Gian Stefano di Carlo di Pavia, in 1516, has been ascertained
to be identical ; and we may therefore assume that Gian Stefano was working for
Pacini in 1 505, but only as a new printer of small standing, and therefore ignored
in the colophons of Pacini's publications. By 1513, Gian Stefano had acquired
sufficient importance to be mentioned in connexion with Pacini, and in 15 16 he
was printer and publisher on his own account [Corsali]. It is probable con
sequently that Pacini died between 15 13 and 1516, and that the unsold copies of
his books remained in the hands of Gian Stefano. This would account for the
circumstance that in two instances the Corsali letter was found bound in a single
volume with the Vespucci Lettera,—^ combination which has misguided Brunei
and other bibliographers, leading to the supposition that the latter was printed in
the same year as the former. From the foregoing facts, it might be thought

Vespucci's Works. vii
unnecessary to couple Pacini's name with Vespucci, since we know who was the
actual printer, and there is nothing in the book to show that it was produced for
Pacini, rather than some other publisher. This would hardly be correct, as the
Huus volume produced in 1496 for him contains a slight reference to the
recent discoveries in the West, which seems to have initiated a connexion between
Pacini and the literature of navigation. He published the Sfera of Gregorio Dati
in 1513, — ^a cosmographical poem, the mention of which brings the Lettera dell
Isole of Giuliano Dati immediately to mind. The latter piece— a reduction to verse
of Columbus's first letter — was perhaps printed for Pietro Pacini in 1493, when it
first appeared. The design which is seen in the woodcut on the first leaf of Giuliano
Dati's Lettera is identical with that on the title-page of Vespucci's Lettera, save
that the figures are reversed in the latter, as though the old block had been worn
out and a new one engraved from it. Pacini published opuscules of Lorenzo dei
Medici, Luca Pulci, and Polizian ; none of his books printed during Soderini's
rule in Florence make any reference to the Gonfaloniere, as was frequently done in
the books published by the Giimti : we may therefore safely conclude that he was
a Medici partisan, and so discover the reason why the name of Soderini is entirely
omitted in Vespucci's Lettera. This omission led to a misconception on the
part of the French and of the Latin translator {Cosmogr. Introd., 1507) who
im^;ined that 'Vostra Mag. meant 'Your Majesty, and referred to Rend, Duke of
Lorraine, King of Jerusalem. The blunder was all the more ludicrous as the very
opening sentences of the Lettera show that the person to whom it was addressed
had been an old schoolfellow of Vespucci, a fact so far as Soderini was concerned,
but which no one could have supposed to be true with regard to King Rene.
This is not the only blunder in the Latin translation (there being many other errors
in its various editions which have tended to discredit Vespucci), but it is useful
now as showing, to any one who needed such proof, that the text of the Lettera
was printed in Florence before, not after, the second-hand Latin translation which
was published in 1507 at St. Did.

(JXoUb on t^t ;6ife of ©nterijo (^t^puccu
{Chiefly extracted from tlie Works of Varnhagen!)

HE was the third son of Ser Nastagio [Anastasio] Vespucci,
notary at Florence, and was born on March 9, 1451.
As he states in the Lettera, he was educated by his uncle, the
learned Dominican (and friend of Savonarola), Giorgio Antonio
Vespucci ; but, according to his own ingenuous admission, he did
not make great progress in study, and a letter written by him in
Latin to his father, in 1476, exhibits at once the extent and the
limits of his erudition. He was then in villegiatura at Mugello, for
the purpose of avoiding the plague which had broken out in Florence.
One of his fellow pupils was Pier Soderini, the future Gonfaloniere of
the Florentine Republic (1502-1512), to whom he addressed, in 1504,
the letter concerning his four voyages, which is now reprinted and
translated. He was not sent to the University of Pisa, as his two
elder brothers had been, but placed as a clerk in the banking-house
of the Medici at Florence, and there probably obtained the favour
and protection of Lorenzo di Pier Francesco dei Medici (cousin of
Lorenzo the Magnificent), who afterwards (in 1492) became chief
of the business, and to whom at a still later date Vespucci sent
accounts of at least the first three of his voyages. In March, 1492,

X Life of Amerigo Vespucci.
he was despatched by Lorenzo di Pier as confidential agent to reside
at Cadiz, and to supervise the conduct of affairs there, the probity of
the managers of the Spanish branch business having become sus
pected. A year later he seems to have begun some trading specula
tions on his own account, without, however, ceasing to correspond
with his patron. He was not successful, although his commercial
position must have been a respectable one, judging from the
circumstance that he was commissioned in January, 1496, to
complete the financial part of a contract with the Crown which his
compatriot Berardi had left unfulfilled at his death in December,
1495. Berardi was a great merchant and naval outfitter, who had
undertaken to furnish a dozen vessels to the Government for service
in the Indies, and the accounts were unsettled when he died. It
was probably this transaction which influenced Vespucci, already
discontented with his fortune as a trader, to seek and obtain service
from King Ferdinand, when an expedition of four ships was prepared
in the following year for adventure in the New World. The
monopoly granted originally to Columbus had been recalled, and
freedom of navigation conceded in April, 1495, to all merchant-
adventurers, so that the efforts of the great Genoese were in vain
to prevent the despatch of the four ships which the King was about
to send out. He ultimately succeeded, but the renewal of his
monopoly was not signed till June, 1497, when the King's expedition
was already on its way across the Atlantic
The four ships sailed from Cadiz on May 10, 1497, and Amerigo
went in one of them. We do not learn what position in the
fleet had been assigned to him, but it was probably an important
one, as he seems to have completely gained the favour of King
Ferdinand. His special qualification was his knowledge of
astronomy, and, as he combined with it a useful experience in
commercial matters, it was perhaps as astronomer and super
cargo that he figured in this first expedition. There are grounds
for believing that Vincente Yafiez Pinzon (one of Columbus's
former captains) and Juan Diaz de Solis were the chief com-

Life of Atnertgo Vespucci. xi
manders, although their names are not mentioned by Vespucci ; and
that the famous pilot, Juan de la Cosa, accompanied them. What
ever credit may be due to them for the conduct of the enterprise,
it is certain that our Florentine was the only one whose account
of the voyage has survived ; and we glean from his Lettera that
in this expedition (in which the navigators were more than seventeen
months absent from Spain, and in which Cuba seems to have been
discovered to be an island, not a portion of the Asiatic continent, as
Columbus had imagined) the coasts of Mexico and Florida were seen
and touched upon for the first time, and Vespucci won the honour
of being the first explorer who has recorded a visit to any portion
of the territory now known as the United States of America.^ It is
true that his notices are jejune and confused, and that there have been
eminent writers who held this first voyage to be supposititious, — that
either the dates were wrong, or the whole narrative forged ; but every
one^ is now agreed that Vespucci was an honest sailor, incapable of
fraud, and recognised by Columbus himself as a worthy and honour
able friend. This appears from a letter dated February 5, 1505,
addressed by the Genoese discoverer to his son Diego. In that letter,
of which Amerigo was himself the bearer, and which is still in
existence in the autograph of Columbus, these significant phrases
occur: — " I spoke with Amerigo Vespucci, the bearer hereof, who is
going yonder on business of navigation. He has ever had a desire to
do me pleasure : he is a very worthy man : fortune has been adverse to
him as to many ot/ters : his labours have not profited him so much as
justice would require. . . . He goes resolved to do for me everything
that shall be possible to him. See yonder in what he can be benefited,
and exert yourself for him. . . ." Vespucci's narratives were already in
' Mr. Harrisse's recent work upon the voyages of the Cabots disposes com
pletely of the notion that they coasted the shores of the continent from Newfound
land to Florida in 1497. There was undoubtedly some such voyage in 1498,
although there is no direct proof of it ; but in 1497 they did no more than touch
land, probably a long way to the north of Cape Breton, and then immediately
returned. ' Except Mr. Major. See note, p. xviii.

xii Life of Amerigo Vespucci,
circulation at this date, and could not have been unknown to
Columbus, whose testimony to his probity suffices to put an end to
the old charge of wilful fraud. As for the modern assumptions
that his dates were erroneous and his memory imperfect, or of
the sophistication of his narratives by injudicious friends, — no
one who reads the original text of the Lettera will now maintain
them. It is from beginning to end the homogeneous and unadulter
ated production of a sailor whose neglected education had not been
improved by a long absence in foreign countries. It is full, through
out, of characteristic vices of style, grammar, and language ; Spanish,
Portuguese, and Latin words and phrases being freely interlarded in
his Italian text, and the punctuation being so peculiar in its nature,
that there are scarcely half a dozen full stops in the whole narrative.
As for defectiveness of memory, there is no sign of it. On the
contrary, he seems to have been a close observer, and, as he informs
us several times, he kept a diary or commonplace book, in which he
wrote down his notes and made memoranda of all things that seemed
to deserve it, at the time of their occurrence.
On October 15, 1498, King Ferdinand's four ships returned
to Cadiz, with 222 Indian prisoners taken in the island of Ity, (
and the leaders, amongst whom Vespucci seems to have been [
reckoned, were joyously received by the authorities and the '
people. A new voyage was at once contemplated, in spite of the
privileges which had been so grudgingly re-accorded to Columbus ;
and, seven months later, on May 16, 1499, Vespucci went out again
with an expedition of three ships. According to his usual custom,
he mentions no names, but it seems certain that Alonso de Hojeda
was the chief, and that his pilots were Juan de la Cosa, Amerigo
Vespucci, and others. They sailed south-west, touching at the Cape
Verde islands, and on June 27 reached the coast of Brazil, some
where north-west of Cape St. Roque. After some ineffectual attempts
to coast the land south-eastwardly, they turned round and went
north-west, making acquaintance with the Caribs (Camballi or
Caniballi) in the north of Guiana and Venezuela. Proceeding further

Life of Amerigo Vespucci. xiii
north-west, they landed on the island of St. Margaret, and Curasao
(called Isle of Giants), in the latter of which they underwent great
danger from the hostility of the natives. After some further experi
ences, they sailed to San Domingo, but not in company, as we know
from other sources that Hojeda and Juan de la Cosa arrived there
first, in a small boat, having been shipwrecked. Vespucci made a
long stay (two months and seventeen days) in that island, and must
have been frequently in the company of Columbus, who had arrived
there in 1498, and was still struggling against the jealousy and en
mity of the Spanish colony. Vespucci then returned to Europe, and
re-entered the port of Cadiz on September 8, 1 500, having navigated
along the northern coast of South America from near Cape St. Roque
in Brazil to the Gulf of Maracaibo in Venezuela. He carried home
a number of pearls with him from Paria, and the Queen took
from him a single oyster containing 130 of those gems. He says
ingenuously that he had taken care to secrete others from her
observation. Dom Manoel of Portugal, by repeated messages and promises,
succeeded in detaching Amerigo from the service of King Ferdinand,
•and the navigator speaks with regret of his ungrateful conduct in
quitting Spain without having even taken leave of his royal patron.
Departing from Seville, he made his way to Lisbon, and was
immediately engaged to take part in an expedition to Brazil.
On May 14, 1501 (not the lOth, as it appears by a typographical
error in Arabic numerals in the Lettera, but the xiiii, as it is given
in the Epistola to Lorenzo di Pietro dei Medici), three ships started
from Lisbon, in one of which Amerigo went as captain. It has been
wrongly alleged that Gonzalo Coelho was the chief leader ; but Varn
hagen gives almost proof that Dom Nuno Manoel was in command
of the expedition. They took a southern course, and stopped several
days at Bezeguiche, or Besenegue, the site of the present Goree, a
little below Cape Verde, on the west coast of Africa. Thence they
sailed south-west and a quarter by south, and reached Brazil on
August 16, the feast of St. Roch, for which reason they named the
b

xiv Life of Amerigo Vespucci.
headland Cape St. Roque. On the following day they landed and
took possession of the country, but saw no natives till the i8th.
They found the Indians very sanguinary and savage, and lost three
men, who were massacred and eaten. The Admiral was probably
wise in forbidding any attempt at reprisals, although Vespucci does
not seem to have thought so. Following the coast-line southwardly,
they discovered and named Cape St Augustine on that saint's day
(August 28),^ and landed at Bahia on November i. All Saints' Day
(whence the name, Bahia de todos os Santos).^ Still coasting south
wardly, it is believed that they saw and named Rio Janeiro on
January i. They must have reached the mouth of the Rio de la
Plata before they decided to change their course, as Vespucci states
that they made 750 leagues in sight of the shore, reckoning from
Cape St. Augustine. On February 15 they were probably on the
coast of Uruguay, at about 37 degrees south latitude (although in
the Lettera Vespucci says 32, — perhaps a typographical error), where
the coast seems suddenly to recede due west, at the mouth of the Rio
de la Plata (giving rise to the idea that here was the southern limit
of the land that barred their way to Asia). Here the Admiral handed
over the control of the expedition to Vespucci, and they quitted the
American coast, sailing south-east, till, on April 7, they reached the
island afterwards called South Georgia by Captain Cook, who
believed himself the first discoverer of it. The intense cold, the
darkness, and the storms appalled them, and after a vain effort
to find a port, they veered around, and Vespucci congratulated
himself on his luck, for he states that the delay of another day
would have caused the total destruction of ¦ their little fleet. On
May ID they reached Sierra Leone, in Africa, and made a stay of
fifteen days there, burning one of their three ships which had
' It is said to have been previously discovered by Vincente Yaiiez Pinzon.
2 Misprinted in the Lettera " La Badia" (?>., the Abbey), for " La Bahia" (Portu
guese, "A Bahia," the Bay), an error which was perpetuated in the CosmograpMa
and in most of the early maps, beginning with Ruysch's (Rome, 1507-8), and
repeated in the Ptolemies of 1513, 1522, 1525, 1535.

Life of Amerigo Vespucci. xv
become useless. Then, sailing homewards by way of the Azores,
they reached Lisbon on September 7, 1 502.
Within the next six or eight months Vespucci seems to have
written at least two reports to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco dei Medici,
as the opening lines of the well-known Epistola (of which so many
editions of the Latin translation were printed in and after the year
1503-4) clearly show. It is probable that this Epistola concerning his
third voyage was written in Lisbon about the close of the year 1 502.
The Italian text has perished ; we only know it through the Latin
translation made by Fra Giovanni del Giocondo (first printed
perhaps in Paris in the year 1503, but of which the earliest
dated edition is that of Augsburg, 1504) ; and the Italian or
Venetian re-translation from the Latin (first printed in 1507
in the Paesi nuovamente retrovati). It is a curious circumstance,
— ^whether ascribable to the negligence of Vespucci himself, writing
without his official notes (which were still in the hands of Dom
Manoel), or to the fortuitous similarity between American tribes
remote from each other, — that the account given in the Epistola
of 1503 of the manners of the Indian men and women, seen
presumably in the third voyage, resembles very much that in the
Lettera of 1504 concerning the natives of Honduras or Yucatan,
seen in his first voyage. But this may be accounted for. The
Epistola is not professedly a record of a single voyage (Vespucci's
third) to the New World, but is written in somewhat general terms
regarding the whole of the Transatlantic continent. It is rather
an assemblEige of notes regarding the tribes of the Western Hemi
sphere than a detailed account of any particular voyage, although
its groundwork is the narrative of his most recent expedition to
the West In any c£ise, the Lettera is a document of infinitely more
value, for which it is evident the author had his note-books to work
from ; and it is decidedly more in the nature of a set of consecutive
reports of voyages than the Epistola, which seems rather to be an
extract from the promised QuATTRO GlORNATE, or commonplace
book, of the author. The chief value of the Epistola, apart from

xvi Life of Amerigo Vespucci.
its interest as the first printed account of one of the early voyages
to the New World, lies in certain words of great significance by reason
of their date. Vespucci says (in 1502-3, it is to be observed) : " Those
new countries which . . . we have sought and found: which it is
allowable to call the New World, since there has been amongst our ances
tors no knowledge thereof . . . and if some of them have affirmed it to
be a continent, they have for many reasons denied it to be a habitable
land. But that this opitiion is false, and in everywise contrary to the
truth, this last navigation of mine has made clear, insomuch as I have
found the continent in tliat soutliem division inltabited by more
numerous peoples and animals than our Europe, or indeed Asia, or
Africa'' This quotation suffices to prove that Vespucci already
knew, what no one else appears to have as yet imagined, that the
Western world was not only no part of Eastern Asia, but was a
large and totally distinct continent.
In the following year six ships were fitted out for the discovery
of a passage by the west to Malacca. Such at least we can judge to
have been the intention of the expedition, although Vespucci, who
had command of one of the vessels, says nothing that can be clearly
understood to mean by the West. However, the direction taken by
the fleet, when they quitted the coast of Africa, makes it clear that
there was an expectation of finding a passage or strait in the same
direction in which Magellan afterwards succeeded (or perhaps by the
imaginary passage supposed to be formed by the yet unexplored
Plata river). Vespucci had less good-fortune in this voyage than in
the others, being separated from his admiral and returning with a
less brilliant record long before him. They left Lisbon on May 10,
1503 (perhaps this is a mistake for June 10), under the command
of Gonzalo Coelho, and having Juan Diaz de Solis (who like Vespucci
had entered the Portuguese service) amongst their pilots. After an
ineffectual attempt to land at Sierra Leone on the African coast, they
resumed their " proper course," and sailed across the Atlantic in a
south-westerly direction, reaching the lofty island of Fernando
Noronha on August 10. Here they had ill-luck, through the loss of

Life of Amerigo Vespucci. xvii
the Admiral's ship, which struck upon a rock. He and his crew were
saved, the crew being distributed amongst those of the other vessels,
except that of Vespucci. The latter, on the contrary, was deprived
of the services of part of his men, who had been called away in his
boat to lend assistance at the time, and, while they were so absent,
he received orders to find a port in the island. He went forward,
found a port, and waited eight days, but the rest of the fleet did not
arrive. At last he had sight of a sail and issued forth to meet it.
It was one of the associated vessels, and he then was informed of the
loss of the flagship, and that the others had proceeded on their
voyage without him. The two detached ships thenceforward kept
together, and, in accordance with the King's instructions providing
for such a contingency, made their way to Bahia de todos os Santos,
where it was supposed they would find the other vessels. There they
stayed for over two months, but none of their companions arrived.
Vespucci took for granted that they had been lost, and assigns all
the blame to the misconduct of the Admiral (Gonzalo Coelho). [He
could not know what we know now, that Coelho was very successful in
his voyage, and discovered great part of the coast of South America,
including Monte Video, the Rio de la Plata, the region of Buenos
Ayres, and other lands as far as the Gulf of St. Matias; being, however,
detained so long at one point on the coast that he only returned to
Lisbon with one of the ships of his fleet late in 1 506.] From Bahia,
Vespucci and his companion sailed south-west, and reached Cape
Frio (near Rio Janeiro). There they remained five months, built a
fort, and left a garrison of twenty-four men sufficiently provisioned
to hold it till relieved from Portugal. These twenty-four men were
that portion of the Admiral's crew which had been taken on board
the vessel now sailing with Vespucci. He and his comrade then set
sail for Europe, and after a voyage of seventy-seven days reached
Lisbon on June 18, 1504.
Thus having accomplished the four voyages described in his
Lettera, he wrote the narrative which is here reproduced, dated Sep
tember 4, 1504, and sent it to Soderini by the hands of Benvenuto

xviii Life of Amerigo Vespucci.
di Domenico Benvenuti, apparently one of his fellow-voyagers.
Before long he threw up the service of Portugal, in which he had
never been sufficiently rewarded for his labours, and returned early
in 1 505 to that of King Ferdinand. He was naturalised in Spain,
and seems at this time to have become a married man, being accepted
by a Spanish lady in spite of his fifty-three years of age and his
lack of fortune. The King, however, appointed him a ship's captain,
with a fixed salary, and seems to have designed to send him
with an expedition then being fitted out for a voyage in search of
the spice-lands. The construction of new ships caused a long and
tedious delay, and the result was that Vespucci never joined such an
expedition, if indeed it was undertaken. He made, however, two
more voyages to America : the fifth in 1505 along the coasts of
Venezuela and the isthmus; and the sixth during 1507 (between
March and November), in company with Juan de la Cosa. In this
last voyage, they visited the isthmus and the shores of Central
America, and brought home a quantity of gold, for which they
received payment, and were also rewarded with honours. In 1508
the title of Piloto-Mayor was conferred upon Vespucci, and, with a
considerable salary, the office of Examiner-General of pilots. He
remained in the enjoyment of this post, which undoubtedly required
his presence continually in Spain, until his death on February 22,
15x2. He left a widow and a great reputation behind him, but no
pecuniary fortune, and no children. His maps and his diaries
were bequeathed to his nephew Giovanni Vespucci, who was one
of his successors in the office of Royal Pilot, a position which he
seems to have forfeited by publishing in 1524 a map of the New
World. This map, now of the extremest rarity, was probably based
largely on the explorations of Amerigo Vespucci.

Mr. Major and Vespucci's First Voyage. — Mr. Major is about the only
person of our day who impugns, or seems to impugn, the veracity of Vespucci, and
who holds, or seems to hold, his first voyage a myth. His natural dislike to the
process of circumstances which gave to the New World the name of America
rather than that of Columbia has swollen into a sceva indignatio, which in this

Life of Amerigo Vespucci. xix
instance y5i«V injuriam instead of versum. The gist and strength of his argument
lie in the following charges (collected from the " Select Letters of Columbus " and
" Prince Henry the Navigator").
I. No assertion was made by Vespucci and his friends of any voyage to the
New World before that of 1499-1500, in wMch he accompanied Alonso de Ojeda,
until Columbus had been a year in Ms grave, and the false statement could be made
without fear of contradiction.
2. There is no reason to suppose that the Letter to Soderini was printed till
after ihe publication of the Cosmographise Introductio at St. Did in lyyj, which
included Vespucci^s account of his four voyages, iu a Latin form.
Vespucci's letter to Lorenzo di Pietro de Medici was written admittedly
between September, 1502, and June, 1503 ; of its many editions in Latin and
German, some were undoubtedly printed in 1503, and one is dated Augsburg, 1504.
That letter received a wider circulation than any other of the early-printed docu
ments relating to the New World. It would be idle to assume that its existence
was unknown to Colmnbus at any time between November, 1 504 (when he returned
to Spain for the last time), and May, 1506 (when he died). If that letter had
contained any false statement, prejudicial to his own just rights, Columbus would
not have described Vespucci as a true and cherished friend, as he did in a letter
to his son Diego dated February 5, 1505, in which he commended Vespucci to the
kind ofiSces of the latter. Yet Vespucci at the beginning of his Medici letter,
speaks of " hee mea ultima navigatio " to the regions " fuas Novum Mundum
appellare licet .... versus meridiem"; and near the end we read the words "hac
mea ultima navigatione quam appello diem tertiam. Nam alii duo dies fuerunt
due alie navigationes quas ex mandato Serenissimi Hispaniarum regis fed versus
occidentem." This plain statement, made and frequently published during the
life-time of Columbus, is in perfect agreement with the Letter to Soderini. In the
phrases dies tertius and duo alii dies, Vespucci alludes plainly to the note-book or
diary which, after his fourth voyage, he entitled his Quattro Giornate. Under
that name he describes it in the Soderini letter as containing in detail the daily
observations made during his four voyages, the first two to the West (in Spanish
service), the other two to the South (in the service of Portugal). At the time he
wrote the Medici letter (say in January, 1503), he says explicitly that he had in his
possession the diaries of the first two voyages, and that King Manoel still withheld ,
from him that of the third, — for which reason he begs his patron to excuse the
imperfections in the account then sent him. Now, it is admitted that he made a
voyage to the New World between May, 1499, and September, 1500, and another
between May, 1501, and September, 1502, each occupying over sixteen months in
its accompUshment. Early in 1503, he speaks of those two voyages as his second
and third, in a letter which was made known to all the world ; at the same time
referring to a first voyage which had been, like the second, a westerly one. (It
is not possible, as some might allege, that any similar voyage could have taken
place in the short interval between his return to Spain in September, 1 500, and his

XX Life of Amerigo Vespucci.
taking service with King Manoel early in 1501.) If we had no documentary know
ledge of his first voyage, we might, judging from probabilities alone, assume that it
was also a sixteen-months' performance, concluded four or five months before
May, 1499, and therefore begun about August, 1497. This assumption, based
on rational conjecture only, would differ but by three months from his own account
that his first voyage occupied the seventeen months between May, 1497, and Octo
ber, 1498. The facts must have been very well known to Columbus, and conse
quently he made no protest or accusation of falsehood against Vespucci during
1504, 1505, and 1506, but on the contrary held the Florentine to be a worthy and
honourable navigator. So much for Mr. Major's No. 1.
As for No. 2, it only needs the application of ordinary common sense. What
ever special pleading might allege as to the want of proof that the Italian text of
the Soderini letter was not printed at a later date than the CosmograpMa Intro
ductio of 1507, every unbiassed person must admit that the text of a letter written
and sent in 1504 to the head of the Florentine Republic, and printed at Florence
(without a date) for a publisher who is known to have been at work there at least
as early as 1495-6, may be unhesitatingly considered to have preceded the
impression of a second-hand translation printed in Lorraine with the date
of 1507. A small circumstance gives corroboration to this natural assumption.
The name oi Bahia appears in the Latin impression of 1507 as Abbatia omnium
sanctorum, a ludicrous misnomer which might be supposed to have arisen from the
phrase " Labaye" (" La baye"), possibly found in the intermediate French trans
lation now lost, but which is evidently derived from the typographical error in
the Florentine edition of the text, wherein the compositor had per\'erted the Bahia
of Vespucci's MS. into the Italian word Badia (Abbey). — It is neither impossible
nor improbable that Columbus had read the Soderini letter in print before his
death.

(Beogtajj^icaf ^utnmatg of (peepucci^a ^oux

First Voyage, or Expedition of King Ferdinand {four ships, probably
under tlie cotnmand of Vincente Yaiiez Pinzon and Juan Diaz
de Solis, with Juan de la Cosa as Pilot).
1497- May lo. Started from Cadiz.
May 20-28. Reached the Canary Islands, where they stayed for
eight days.
July 4. Reached the coast of Honduras thirty-seven days
later, at 16 degrees north latitude, as Vespucci
says, but probably near Cape Gracias a Dios (or
about 15 degrees north latitude), on a difficult
coast, which he thought lay 75 degrees west of the
Canaries. It is really not much over (>'j degrees.
July 6. Advanced north-west, and harboured two days later
in a safe anchorage (? near Cape Cameron, or some
where in the Bay of Honduras). From Vespucci's
long and elaborate description of the people and
their customs, the fleet must have remained some
considerable time on this coast.
c

xxii Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.
1497- .' August 6. Advancing again north-west> as he thought (really
north and by east), they coasted Yucatan, changing
their course according to the configuration of the
shore, and frequently landing, until they reached a
harbour, in which there was a village seated, " like
Venice," on the water. This must have been in
} Sept. 10. Campeachy Bay, a little north of Tabasco (about
1 8^ degrees north latitude). After some fighting
with the Indians, they went onwards next day,
coasting west and north-west for about 400 miles
.' Sept 30. [he says about 80 leagues, or 320 miles], and reached
the province of Lariab (? Tampico, in Mexico),
23 degrees north latitude, where they found a
friendly race of Indians, who were cooking and
eating iguanas (which Vespucci describes as wingless
serpents, and which the sailors supposed to be
poisonous). The Spaniards baptised many of these
people, and were themselves designated Carabi
(which he says means wise men). Vespucci and
others travelled into the interior, and from his
details they must have been a month at this place.
.' Nov. I. Starting again north-west, they coasted the shore for
870 leagues [naturally, although he does not say
so, changing the course according as the land
1498. trended], frequently touching on land, and at the
April 30. end of April [after having passed along the coasts
of Mexico and Louisiana, they reached Cape Sable,
i.e., Cabo do ffim de Abril]. Turning the cape,
they advanced northward, and anchored in a fine
? June 30. large bay, the utmost northern limit of their voyage.
This was presumably the Cabo del Mar Usiano
(probably Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina, 35
degrees north latitude), where they stopped thirty-

Summary of Vespttcci's Voyages.

xxiii

1498.

} August 6.

? August 13.

? August 15.

seven days, refitting their vessels for the home
voyage. The natives were very friendly, and
asked the Spaniards to protect them from a tribe
which frequently came from islands across the sea
to plunder and slay. The Christians took seven of
the Indians with them as guides to the islands, and
sailed east and by north-east \injra greco e levante.
Qucere, error for infra siroco e levante, or east and by
south-east .'], for about 100 leagues across the ocean,
reaching, after seven days' sail, an archipelago
partly inhabited, on the chief island of which,
named Ity, they had severe fighting, which ended
by their carrying away 250 prisoners. They then
sent the seven Indians back, making them a present
of seven prisoners, and sailed for Spain, reaching
Cadiz on October 15, 1498.

Ity. — The island of Ity is a problem which Varnhagen has solved, but not
very satisfactorily, by assuming that it referred to the Bermudas, and that the
expedition sailed thither fi-om Cape Canaveral. This would explain the direction,
but not the distance (of 100 leagues, equal to 400 miles), and we can hardly suppose
that the Indian boatmen would have ventured much farther than 100 leagues
across the ocean. The distance is reduced to about 200 leagues, but the direc
tion is altered if we suppose that they started from Cape Hatteras ; while it
becomes too enormous, although the direction would then be right, if we assume
that they went fi-om Cape Canaveral However, the difficulty is cleared if we
suppose that the vioTdi greco is, as suggested by Varnhagen, a typographical error
fbr siroco, in which case we might take it for granted that Vespucci sailed from
Cape Hatteras to the Bermudas, — twenty-four years earlier than the supposed first
discovery of those islands. In any case, Vespucci's measurements and compass
were at fault ; but when we examine the map in the Strasburg Ptolemy of 1513,
derived, like that in the Rome Ptolemy of 1508, firom the Charta marina Poriugal-
lensium of 1504, it is impossible to resist the conviction that Cape Hatteras was
the Cabo del Mar Usiano under which were inscribed the words " Hucusque naves
Ferdinandi Regis Hispaniae pervenerunt." The map seems, in fact, to derive in
almost every way from Vespucci himself, its northern limit on the American side
being evidently identical with the northern limit of his first voyage, and its South
American coast, on the other hand, being plainly traced from the record of his

xxiv Summary of Vespucci s Voyages.
second, third, and fourth voyages, with the only exception that it does not show his
discovery of the island of South Georgia. What makes this more striking is the
mixture of languages in the 1513 map, the point of Florida being marked with a
Portuguese name (C. do ffim de Abril), Cape St. Bonaventura with an Italian name,
and the rest in Spanish chiefly, with a few in Latin. It appears very probable that
the Charta marina was Vespucci's own map. As already pointed out, a mistake
made in the text of Vespucci, by the Florentine printer, is singularly repeated in the
New- World Chart which forms portion of all .the Ptolemy maps of 1507-8, 15 13 (de
signed in 1507), 1522, 1525, 153s, in regard to Bahia. This port was discovered by
Vespucci and his fellows on November i, 1 501, but he does not mention it byname
in the narrative of his third voyage ; merely allowing it to appear in the account of
his fourth voyage that "the port which they had discovered in the preceding
expedition and named Badia di tucti e sanctt" was the appointed rendezvous for
the vessels in case of separation. On the map, as in Waldseemiiller's translation
of the Lettera, the Italian typographical error badia is turned into a Latin one,
Abbatia omnium sanctorum. Of course this might have simply arisen from the
circumstance that the editors of Ptolemy had before them in 1507 the printed
Lettera with its blunder of badia for bahia \baid\, but it is evident that only a
practical and experienced navigator had constructed the chart, which tacitly
corrects and supplements the defective statements of Vespucci, showing that his
specifications of courses of sailing chiefly refer to initial and not to continuous
movements. We have in any case a clear case of connexion between Vespucci
and the so-called "Admiral's" map (usually assigned to Columbus). A further
evidence appears on the text of the editorial observations in the Ptolemy of 1513,
for the originator of the map is there referred to as an Admiral of Ferdinand,
King of Portugal. This has been considered an error of oversight, — ^not for
Manuel, King of Portugal, but for Ferdinarid, King of Spain, — and to refer to
Columbus, in accordance with the inscription in the same map on the South
American continent — " Hee terra inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex man
dato Regis Castelle " ; but it is probably an error only in the King's name. In 1 504,
when Vespucci probably drew the chart which was used for the Ptolemies, he
could be properly styled an Admiral (or Captain) in the service of the King of
Portugal, notwithstanding that his first and most important voyage was made
as a subordinate officer (? astronomer or hydrographer) in the service of Spain.

Summary of Vespttcci's Voyages. xxv

Second Voyage, also made in the Spanish Service {in a fleet of three
ships under the command of Alonso de Hojeda, with Juan de
la Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci as Pilots).
1499. May 16. Departure from Cadiz.
Reached Fogo, one of the Cape Verde islands [there
is no valid reason for supposing, with Varnhagen,
that Vespucci meant Ferro, one of the Canaries],
whence, departing south-west, after a voyage of
June 27. forty-four days they reached, on June 27 [which, by
the way, gives only forty-two days for the voyage],
the American continent at 5 degrees of South
latitude, that is about 150 miles west and by
north of Cape St Roque. Here Vespucci observed
that the days and nights were equal at that date.
The country being full of rivers and wholly inun
dated, so that they could not land, their first
endeavour was to go east-south-east, but the current
off Cape St. Roque was so strong to the north-west
? July 3-4. that they were obliged to turn again and sail with
it, after having proceeded east-south-east for some
40 leagues, probably approaching near the point of
Cape St. Roque. [Varnhagen remarks that the
equatorial currents are so powerful in that region
during the months of June and July that it is
extremely difficult even now to double Cape St.
Roque in a southerly direction.] With the wind
and the current they proceeded north-west, and
harboured in a deep bay with an island at its
mouth. Navarrete imagined that this referred

xxvi Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.
1499. to the mouth of the Maraiion or Amazon, and
Varnhagen supposed that it was the port of
Cayenne, mistakenly, as I think; but, reasoning
justly from the words of Vespucci, we can only con
clude that the voyage was a long one to the north
west from the inundated land above mentioned ;
and while there is no reason either to believe or to
doubt that the fleet may have touched in succession
at some of the points named, we cannot acknow
ledge that there is really any allusion to them in
Vespucci's narrative. Varnhagen's usual acumen
seems to have failed him here. The first harbour
mentioned by Vespucci after the fleet had quitted
the region west of Cape St. Roque is the deep bay
with an island at its mouth which, from its form,
could only refer to the mouth of the Amazon, or to
the great Gulf of Paria, in which lies the island of
Trinidad. In view of the subsequent transactions,
July 20-25. and judging also from the 1507-13 map, the last
must be the correct ascription. It was a very lengthy
run along the coast, but there is nothing in Vespucci's
words " tanto navicammo " to invalidate the con
clusion to which we are led by concurrent testi
mony. They had the winds and the waves in their
favour, and eighteen or twenty days of such sailing
would easily carry them so great a distance. In
the map above referred to we find the two
islands Trinidad and Tobago lying at the mouth of
the gulf, with the inscription, Ysla de los Canibales,
which may refer to either, and in his text Vespucci
calls the people (whether in allusion to the natives
of the island or of the mainland, but probably of the
former) Camballi or Caniballi, mentioning that his

Summary of Vespucci's Voyages,

XXVIl

1499.

sailors saved four boys from being eaten. After a
vain attempt to make friends with these Caribs,
they penetrated further into the gulf, and har
boured in a place where they stopped seventeen
days, and purchased by barter some pearls and
gold ; hearing at the same time of a hostile tribe
further west which possessed great numbers of
pearls, and practised pearl fishery. Departing
thence to return into the main sea again, and
quitting the gulf on the western side of the island
in the opposite way to that in which they had
entered it, they pursued their western course, and at
the end of several days, harboured to repair one of
the ships. Proceeding again, they came in sight of
? August the Island of St Margaret, off the coast of Cumana
(on the map it is named Y. de Larapossa). Such
we may understand to have been the " island fifteen
leagues out to sea from the mainland." Thence
they proceeded to another island in which the
people were of such a stature that they named
it the Isle of Giants (Curasao).
After a dangerous encounter, and a somewhat igno
minious retreat, they quitted that island, and
still went onwards, along the coast, finding the
Indians generally hostile and having to fight them
frequently. Judging from other sources of informa
tion, Alonso de Hojeda and Juan de la Cosa must
have gone onward before the other two ships, which,
however, followed more slowly in the same direction.
It is, at least, certain that the flagship was wrecked,
and Hojeda sailed in a small boat for San Domingo,
September, where he arrived on September 5, 1499 ; while the
other two ships, in one of which Vespucci remained.

XXVlll

Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.

1499.

1500.

January.

Feb.-March.

March.

May.

after having reached the point of Gallinas, sailed
back along the coast they had already explored,
and the leader had probably, at first, no intention of
following Hojeda to Haiti. In the course of the west
wardly voyage, the Gulf of Maracaibo was discovered
(although Vespucci does not mention the fact). The
land here is marked on the 15 13 map as a peninsula
between two bays (by which is meant the pro
montory which forms the eastern boundary of the
Gulf of Venezuela), and is inscribed Arcaybacoia, in
which we can easily recognise \_M'\arcuayb\p\
Having reached, as Vespucci says, 15 degrees
(properly 13) north latitude (and 72 degrees west
longitude), and having been " about a year " (pro
bably some ten months) at sea, the captains of the
two vessels began to think it was time to begin
a homeward course. In the hope, apparently, of
renewing their dealings with the natives of the
pearl-country, they made their way back along
the northern shores of South America. In this
return-voyage, which must have occupied a couple
of months, they met, while seeking a harbour to
refit their vessels, with a friendly tribe of Indians,
from whom they obtained a great number of
pearls, by barter at an enormous advantage to the
Spaniards. This was at a cape (marked, on the
map already referred to, Cabo de las Perlas) off the
coast of Caracas, and opposite the island of St.
Margaret Here they stopped forty-seven days,
and then sailed for San Domingo to re-victual their
ships; reaching that island early in. May. Their
leader Hojeda, who had arrived there eight months
eariier, and taken an active part in the mutiny of

1500.

Sumtnary of Vespucci's Voyages. xxix
the Spanish colonists against Columbus, was already
gone. Vespucci mentions the existing state of
things, and says briefly that envy was the cause of
it. The esteem in which Columbus afterwards held
him, seems to show that he must have joined the
pjirty of his distressed and wronged compatriot
during the time he remained Jh the island (between
two and three months). He left San Domingo on
Sept 8. July 22, and reached Cadiz~on September 8, 1500.

Note.'— We observe by the account of the two preceding voyages, summing
the results together, that Vespucci had visited and coasted continuously the entire
shore ofthe New World fi-om Cape Hatteras, or about 35 degrees north latitude, to
the coast of Brazil, 5 d^rees south latitude, excepting only Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
the Isthmus, and New Granada. The next two voyages will appear to have been
confined to the South American coasts below Cape St Roque (5 degrees south
latitude).

XXX

Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.

Third Voyage, in the Service of Portugal {three ships, under the
command of Dom Nuno Manoel, in one of which Vespucci
was Captain).
1501.
May ID or 14. They started from Lisbon, and navigated in sight of
the Canaries towards the coast of Africa, landing
and stopping eleven days at the port of Besechicce,
or Bezenique (Gorde), 14^ degrees north latitude.
June 10. They then struck across the Atlantic, south-west
quarter by south, and in sixty-seven days, navi
gating through exceptionally bad weather, they
made 700 leagues, and anchored off Cape St Roque
August 17. in Brazil on August 17. They must have seen it
and named it on the day before, August 16 being
St. Roch's Day. After having lost three men by the
treachery of the Indians, they started southwards on
the 24th or 2 Sth, and on (the 28th) St Augustine's
Day saw and named the . cape which is still called
after that saint. Still keeping the land in sight,
November i. they went further south, and on All Saints' Day
1502. discovered and named Bahia di todos os Santos ;
January i. on January i, the harbour of Rio Janeiro. When
they were 32 degrees south latitude (as Vespucci
indicates, perhaps by error for 37 or 38), or 38
degrees (as Humboldt calculated), which leaves it
uncertain whether they had reached the port of
Rio Grande in Uruguay, or Cape Antonio or Cape
Corrientes in Buenos Ayres, but in the latter case
would imply that they had missed the mouth of

Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.

XXXI

1501. February 15.
April 7.

May 10.

August 15.
September 7.

La Plata* — it was February 15. By Vespucci's
advice they then started out towards the south-east,
into the ocean, and only stopped when, on April 7,
they reached an island beyond 52 degrees of south
latitude. This was South Georgia (re-discovered in
1775 by Captain Cook, who believed himself the
first discoverer). Frightened by the dreadful storms,
the intense cold, and the gloom of the atmosphere,
they quickly turned again, and took a north-easterly
course, scudding for some days under bare poles
before the wind. On May 10 they reached Sierra
Leone. Thence, after some delay, they sailed to
the Azores, where they also stayed some time, and
on August 15 sailed for Lisbon, reaching that port
on September 7,. 1502.

* It was perhaps the very northern point of the embouchure of Rio de la Plata,
and they may have thought they had reached the end of the continent, misled by
the enormous width of the river-mouth, and the sudden recession of the coast
westwards.

xxxii Summary of Vespticci's Voyages.

Fourth Voyage, in the Service of Portugal {six ships, in one of which
Vespucci was Captain, under the Admiralship of Gonzalo
Coelho).
I SOS- June lo. Vespucci says May, but it is evidently a mistake for
June. They started from Lisbon, went to Cape
Verde, staying there thirteen days, and thence
proceeded south-east This was for the purpose
of touching at Sierra Leone, according to the
Admiral's desire, but much against that of Vespucci.
The ultimate object of the expedition was to reach
Malacca, which was understood to be the richest
emporium of the East ; and the intention evidently
was to seek it by a western passage, although
Vespucci does not clearly say so. [It is possible
that the place said to be 32 or 38 degrees of south
latitude, from which they quitted the American
continent in the third voyage, was really near
Monte Video, and about 34^ degrees south latitude,
thus allowing them to discover the great ex
panse of water at the mouth of La Plata, and
leading them to believe they had reached the
southern end of the continent. In any case a
notion seems to have existed that the Plata was
the wished-for passage to the East which Columbus
and others had sought in vain.] So far as Vespucci
was concerned, he looked upon this voyage as a
failure, through the misconduct of the admiral.
Bad weather prevented them from landing at Sierra
Leone. They turned south-west, and after sailing
SOO leagues (Vespucci says 300 erroneously, or by

Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.

XXXlll

1503-

a typographical error, for the " 300" is in Arabic
numerals) came in sight of the island of Fernando
Noronha. He calls it Bad Island, for here the
August 10. Admiral lost his ship on a rock, on August 10.
The chief and his crew were saved,*his men being
distributed among the other crews. Here, however,
the fleet was separated. Vespucci's ship harboured
alone in a part of that island, with only half his
crew (the rest having been called away in his boat
at the time of the disaster, and so entirely lost to
him). He was joined a few days later by one of
the other vessels, and the two sailed thenceforward
in company. Vespucci left Fernando Noronha and
sailed south-south-west for Bahia, where, by the
'^ King's order, they had appointed a rendezvous in
such a case of separation as had taken place. They
waited at Bahia for over two months ; but, seeing
nothing of their companions, quitted that harbour,
under the impression that the other ships, which
had gone on with the Admiral, were all lost
They next sailed 260 leagues southwardly and landed
at Cape Frio, near Rio Janeiro. Here they stayed
five months, building a fort, in which they placed a
garrison of twenty-four men (part of the Admiral's
crew saved from the wreck at Fernando Noronha),
whom they furnished with weapons and ammuni
tion, and provisions for six months. Varnhagen
discovered a document which proved that this fort
and garrison were still maintained by the Portuguese
in 1 5 II, and therefore makes light of the discre
pancies of latitude and longitude between Vespucci's
statement and the actual situation of Cape Frio.
He is probably right, and the Florentine printer

November.

1503-4- Dec-April.

xxxiv Summary of Vespucci's Voyages.
1504- may be responsible for the change of 23 into 18
(south latitude), and 31 into 37 (longitude west of
Lisbon), mistakes easily made in the use of the
old Roman type with its indistinct Arabic numerals.
April 2. • The two ships then sailed for Lisbon, making the
voyage north-north-west in seventy-seven days, and
June 18. reaching that port on June 18, 1504.

(American ')}?otb0 tnen^toneb 6g (p^efpucci*
Page 13. lUCA. — This word, whether of Carib or Maya origin, was common to
the West Indian islands and the eastern shores of Central America ;
it probably represents the ioc of the word mandioc or manioc, which
was afterwards adopted as the general term for the bread-fruit found
to flourish within the tropics, from Brazil to Mexico.
This plant, /wca ot yuca, though frequently met with in the early
Spanish narratives, is mentioned in print for the first time in this
Lettera of Vespucci.
„ 13. Cazabi. — ^Vespucci says "another [root] which they call cazabi"; but
the casabi, or caqabe, or cassave, is simply the flour which is made
into bread firom ihe yuca or manioc.
This word, probably of Carib origin, was first found in San
Domingo, but was common also to the Carib populations which
lined the western coast of America, from Vera Cruz in Mexico to
the northern shores of Brazil. It appeared in print for the first time
in Vespucci's Lettera.
,, 13. Ignami. — This word, so well known in English as yam, a sort of potato,
has been assigned to an African origin. Even Varnhagen believed
that it had been imported into America by the negroes who
accompanied the early Spanish and Portuguese voyagers. In
1493, the root was called age, or ages, in Hispaniola, as is proved
by Doctor Chanca's Letter concerning Columbus's second voyage,
first printed by Navarrete. In Franck's Weltbuch of 1567, in the
passage where it occurs in the account of Cabral's voyage, translated
from the Paesi of 1 507, there is added in brackets, " Das sind rote
Wurzeln die die Negren oder Moren in Portugal sehr brauchen."
In an account of the island of St. Thomas (Gulf of Guinea) by an
anonymous Portuguese pilot (about 1545), given in Ramusio, we find
it stated that " igname is the San Thomd word for the root called
batata in Hispaniola.'' On the other hand, we have the following
facts in earlier chronological order : —
In 1500, May i, Pedro Vaz de Caminha wrote, at Porto Seguro in
Brazil, the account of Cabral's discovery of the Terra l/'era Crucis, a
few days before, which the latter sent home directly to King Manoel,
and which the King cites (in print for the first time) in his Letter
to the King of Castile (Copia di una Lettera, &c.), printed at Rome
in 1505. In the King's abstract, nothing is mentioned but the dis
covery of Brazil. The text of the letter of Pedro Vaz was never
printed till 1826 (in the Notidas Ultramarinas of the Portuguese
Academy of Sciences), but its substance appeared in print for the
first time in the Paesi ritrovati of 1507, and there we find igname
used as an American word. In the original text of 1500- 1826, it

XXX vi American Words mentioned by Vespucci.
appears twice as inhame, and, although not specially stated to be a
native American word, nothing is saidfrpm whi(t) we shpuld ipfer the
contrary. In 1504 we find it in Vespucci's Lettera, and in 1507 in the Cosmo
grapMa, specified apparently as an American word, used by people
of Carib race.
In Fray Simon's Cenguistas (1626) we find name without any
reference to its being a foreign word, and the word is nambi in Ruiz
(1639) Dictionary of the Guarani language, which is related to the
Carib. It may, therefqre, be supposed that the. word inhame, iiame, ihame,
iuhame, ignami, igname, yam, was introduced from America into
Africa, not vice versd, the thing itself being common to both con
tinents ; and this is not invalidated by the fact that the name in
Hispaniola was ages. The Portuguese pilot who, half a century
afterwards, wrote the account of S. Thom^ evidently did not know
that there was any difference between the batata and the inhame, but
the distinctness of the two varieties has been clearly pointed out by
several early writers on the botany of the West Indies.
P'liCe 14. Canoa. — "Canoes, which are a kind of boat." The word canoa ap
peared in print for the first time in Columbus's letter of 1493 ; for the
second time in Vespucci's Lettera (1505). Like other Haytian words,
it was probably of Carib origin, and therefore in common use along
an enormous stretch of coast.
„ 19. Carabi. — "They called us Carabi, which means men of great wisdom."
So says Vespucci, who was unaware that the word Carib, Galib, Canib
[whence Cannibal^ — whether or not derived originally from the
Quiche-Maya root car, to fish, fishing, and \hencejishei'men — implied,
in its use at that time by the milder people of the continent and of
some of the isles, <? warrior, or a powerful and dreadful man.
„ 19. Lariab. — This is said to be the name of a province, which we assume
to have been somewhere in the region of Vera Cruz in Mexico. The
form is distinctively Quiche, not Maya proper, as the r and ri, which
were customary in words of the former language, had been softened
into y in the parent speech. In Quiche and Maya alike, a* is a
plural termination, and sometimes the formal ending of an abstract
noun. It might be imagined that Vespucci meant Xalapa or
Jalapa, and that he wrote Cariab (for Caliab), altered by a typo
graphical error to Lariab. But the truth is probably akin to the
circumstance from which the name of Yucatan arose (from the
Indian Tectitan), namely, that the Quiche natives misunderstood the
Spanish inquiry as to the name of the province, and answered in
their own speech, Lar ydb (Maya, Lay ycuxb, or II& yaab, "There is
much " ; there are many " ; or " behold, there are many."

Beffer of (^merigo 2e0pucci
upon i^t xbUb ntW^
fottttb in ^ie
four Sogajes^

Woodcut representing a King throned and pointing with
his right liand, as if giving orders, on this side of a sea,
upoji wliich three ships are floating ; tlie inost distant of
tlu three manned with sailors and touching upon a shore
from which a crowd of natives are seen hurrying in flight
inland.

[Sitikt of ©rnetigo Seapucci to (piet
^oberini. (Bonfafonier of t^t (RepuBftc
of J^forence.]

Woodcut of
Vespucci ai a
writing desk.

M

AGNIFICENT Lord. After humble rever
ence and due commendations, etc. It may
be that your Magnificence will be surprised
by [this coTijunctiou ofl my rashness and your cus
tomary^ wisdom, in that I should so absurdly bestir myself to write
to your Magnificence the present so-prolix letter : knowing [as I do]
that your Magnificence is continually employed in high councils and
affairs concerning the good government of this sublime Republic.
And will hold me not only presumptuous, but also idly-meddlesome
in setting myself to write things, neither suitable to your station,
nor entertaining, and written in barbarous style, and outside of
every canon of polite literature :^ but my confidence which I have
in your virtues and in the truth of my writing, which are things
[that] are not found written neither by the ancients nor by modern
writers, as your Magnificence will in the sequel perceive, makes me
bold.-' The chief cause which moved [me] to write to you, was at
' Varnhagen suggests that usada is a corruption of the Spanish osadia
(daring), but this would leave vostra savidoria inexplicable. ^ Humanita.
^ Here usato is certainly the Spanish osado, or the Portuguese ousadc.

p. 2.

4 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
the request of the present bearer, who is named Benvenuto Benvenuti
our Florentine [fellow-citizen], very much, as it is proven, your
Magnificence's servant, and my very good friend : who happening
to be here in this city of Lisbon, begged that I should make com
munication to your Magnificence of the things seen by me in divers
regions of the world, by virtue of four voyages which I have made
in discovery of new lands : two by order of the King of Castile,^
King Don Ferrando VI., across the great gulph of the Ocean-sea
towards the west : and the other two by command of the puissant
King Don Manuel King of Portugal, towards the south : Telling
me that your Magnificence would take pleasure thereof, and that
herein he hoped to do you service : wherefore I set me to do it :
because I am assured that your Magnificence holds me in the
number of your servants, remembering that in the time of our youth
I was your friend, and now [ajn your] servant : and [rememberiiig
our] going to hear the rudiments of grammar under the fair example
and instruction of the venerable monk friar of Saint Mark Fra
Giorgio Antonio Vespucci : whose counsels and teaching would to
p. 3. God that I had followed : for as saith Petrarch, I should be another
man than what I am. Howbeit soever,^ I grieve not : because I
have ever taken delight in worthy matters : and although these
trifles of mine may not be suitable to your virtues, I will say to
you as said Pliny to Maecenas, you were sometime wont to take
pleasure in my prattlings : even though your Magnificence be con
tinuously busied in public affairs, you will take some hour of
relaxation to consume a little time in frivolous or amusing things :
and as fennel is customarily given atop of delicious viands to fit
them for better digestion, so may you, for a relief from }'our so
heavy occupations, order this letter of mine to be read : so that
they' may withdraw you somewhat from the continual anxiety
and assiduous reflection upon public affairs : and if I shall be
' This lack of precision with regard to Ferdinand's title may be compared
with similar carelessness on the early maps which refer to America.
"^ Quomodo cunque sit. Vespucci affected a little Latin. ' " They " for " it."

First Voyage. 5
prolix, I crave pardon,^ my Magnificent Lord. Your Magnificence
shall know that the motive of my coming into this realm of Spain
was to traffic in merchandise : and that I pursued this intent
about four years : during which I saw and knew the inconstant
shiftings of Fortune : and how she kept changing those frail and
transitory benefits: and how at one time she holds man on the
summit of the wheel, and at another time drives him back from her,
and despoils him of what may be called his borrowed riches : so
that, knowing the continuous toil which man undergoes to win them,
submitting himself to so many anxieties and risks, I resolved to
abandon trade, and to fix my aim upon something more praise
worthy and stable : whence it was that I made preparation for going
to see part- of the world and its wonders : and herefor the time and
place presented themselves most opportunely to me : which was that
the King Don Ferrando of Castile being about to despatch four ships
to discover new lands towards the west, I was chosen by his Highness
to go in that fleet to aid in making discovery : and we set out from
the port of Cadiz on the 10^ day of May 1497, and took our route
through the great gulph of the Ocean-sea : in which voyage we were
18 months [engagetl] : and discovered much continental land and
innumerable islands, and great part of them inhabited : whereas
there is no mention made by the ancient writers of them : I believe,
because they had no knowledge thereof : for, if I remember well, I
have read in some one [of those writers] that he considered that this
Ocean-sea was an unpeopled sea : and of this opinion was Dante our
poet in the xxvi. chapter of the Inferno, where he feigns the death of
Ulysses : in which voyage I beheld things of great wondrousness,
as your Magnificence shall understand. As I said above, we left
the port of Cadiz four consort ships :* and began our voyage in a p. 4.
' 'Veniampeto.
" Parte is used by Vespucci as plural as well as singular, and consequently
this means properly " parts " or " various parts," as it appears in the Latin version.
' The Latin version at the end of the Cosmographice Introductio has "20"
instead of " 10." ¦* Navi di conserva.

6 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
direct course to the Fortunate Isles, which are called to-day la gran
Canaria, which are situated in the Ocean-sea at the extremity of
the inhabited west, [and] set in the third climate: over which the
North Pole has an elevation of 27 and a half degrees^ beyond their
horizon : ^ and they are 280 leagues distant from this city of Lisbon,
by the wind between mezzo di and libeccio:^ where we remained
eight days, taking in provision of water, and wood, and other neces
sary things : and from here, having said our prayers, we weighed
anchor, and gave the sails to the wind, beginning our course to west
ward, taking one quarter by south-west :* and so we sailed on till at
the end of 37^ days we reached a land which we deemed to be a
continent : which is distant westwardly from the isles of Canary about
a thousand leagues beyond the inhabited region^ within the torrid
zone : for we found the North Pole at an elevation of 16 degrees
above its horizon,^ and [it was] westward, according to the shewing
of our instruments, 75 degrees from the isles of Canary : whereat we
anchored with our ships a league and a half from land : and we put
out our boats freighted with men and arms : we made towards the
land, and before we reached it, had sight of a great number of people
who were going along the shore : by which we were much rejoiced :
and we observed that they were a naked race : they shewed them
selves to stand in fear of us : I believe [it was] because they saw us
clothed and of other appearance [than their own] : they all withdrew
to a hill, and for whatsoever signals we made to them of peace and
of friendliness, they would not come to parley with us : so that, as
the night was now coming on, and as the ships were anchored in a
dangerous place, being on a rough and shelterless coast, we decided
' The Latin has " 27§."
^ That is, which are situate at 27^ degrees north latitude.
' South-south-west. It is to be remarked that Vespucci always uses the word
wind to signify the course in which it blows, not the quarter from which it rises.
¦* West and a quarter by south-west. * Latin has 27.
* This phrase is merely equivalent to a repetition oifrom the Canaries, these
islands having been already designated the extreme western litnit of inhabited
land. ? That is, 16 degrees north latitude.

First Voyage. 7
to remove from there the next day, and to go in search of some
harbour or bay, where we might place our ships in safety : and we
sailed with the maestrale wind,^ thus running along the coast with
the land ever in sight, continually in our course observing people
along the shore : till after having navigated for two days, we found a
place sufficiently secure for the ships, and anchored half a league
from land, on which we saw a very great number of people : and
this same day we put to land with the boats, and sprang on shore
full 40 men in good trim : and still the land's people appeared shy of
converse with us, and we were unable to encourage them so much as
to make them come to speak with us : and this day we laboured so
greatly in giving them of our wares, such as rattles and mirrors,
beads,^ spalline, and other trifles, that some of them took confidence p. 5-
and came to discourse with us : and after having made good friends
with them, the night coming on, we took our leave of them and re
turned to the ships : and the next day when the dawn appeared we
saw that there were infinite numbers of people upon the beach, and
they had their women and children with them : we went ashore, and
found that they were all laden with their worldly goods ^ which are
suchlike as, in its [proper] place, shall be related : and before we
reached the land, many of them jumped into the sea and came
swimming to receive us at a bowshot's length [from the shore], for
they are very great swimmers, with as much confidence as if they
had for a long time been acquainted with us : and we were pleased
with this their confidence. For so much as we learned of their
manner of life and customs, it was that they go entirely naked, as
well the men as the women, without covering any shameful part, not
otherwise than when they issued from their mother's womb. They
are of medium stature, very well proportioned : their flesh is of a
• North-west. Latin has vento secundum collem.
' The word is cente, supposed to be a misprint for conte, an Italianised form of
the Spanish cuentas. Spalline is a word not given in the dictionaries. The Latin
translator seems to have read the original as certe <:ristalline.
' Mantenimenti. The word " all " ifucte) is feminine, and probably refers only
to the women.

8 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
colour that verges into red like a lion's mane : and I believe that if
they went clothed, they would be as white as we : they have not any
hair upon the body, except the hair of the head which is long and
black, and especially in the women, whom it renders handsome : in
aspect they are not very good-looking, because they have broad
faces, so that they would seem Tartar-like : they let no hair grow
on their eyebrows, nor on their eyelids, nor elsewhere, except the
hair of the head : for they hold hairiness to be a filthy thing : they
are very light-footed in walking and in running, as well the men as
the women : so that a woman recks nothing of running a league or
two, as many times we saw them do : and herein they have a very
great advantage over us Christians : they swim [with an expertness]
beyond all belief, and the women better than the men : for we have
many times found and seen them swimming two leagues out at sea
without any thing to rest upon. Their arms are bows and arrows
very well made, save that [the arrows] are not [tipped] with iron nor
any other kind of hard metal : and instead of iron they put animals'
or fishes' teeth, or a spike of tough wood, with the point hardened
by fire : they are sure marksmen, for they hit whatever they aim
at : and in some places the women use these bows : they have
other weapons, such as fire-hardened spears, and also clubs with
knobs, beautifully carved. Warfare is used amongst them, which
they carry on against people not of their own language, very
cruelly, without granting life to any one, except [to reserve him] for
p. 6. greater suffering. When they go to war, they take their women with
them, not that these may fight, but because they carry behind them
their worldly goods : for a woman carries on her back for thirty or
forty leagues a load which no man could bear: as we have many
times seen them do. They are not accustomed to have any Captain,
nor do they go in any ordered array, for every one is lord of himself :
and the cause of their wars is not for lust of dominion, nor of
extending their frontiers, nor for inordinate covetousness, but for
some ancient enmity which in by-gone times arose^ amongst them :
^ The expression in the original is e suta, an error for h surta.

First Voyage. 9
and when asked why they made war, they knew not any other
reason to give us than that they did so to avenge the death of their
ancestors, or of their parents : these people have neither King, nor
Lord, nor do they yield obedience to any one, for they live in their
own liberty : and how they be stirred up to go to war is [this] that
when the enemies have slain or captured any of them, his oldest
kinsman rises up and goes about the highways haranguing them to
go with him and avenge the death of such his kinsman : and so are
they stirred up by fellow-feeling : they have no judicial system, nor
do they punish the ill-doer : nor does the father, nor the mother
chastise the children : and marvellously [seldoni] or never did we
see any dispute among them : in their conversation they appear
simple, and they are very cunning and acute in that which concerns
them : ^ they speak little and in a low tone : they use the same
articulations as we, since they form their utterances either with the
palate, or with the teeth, or on the lips :* except that they give
different nzimes to things. Many are the varieties of tongues: for
in every 100 leagues we found a change of language, so that they are
not understandable each to the other. The manner of their living
is very barbarous, for they do not eat at certain hours, and as often
times as they will : and it is not much of a boon to them that the
will may come more at midnight than by day, for they eat at all
hours :^ and they eat upon the ground without a table-cloth or any
other cover, for they have their meats either in earthen basins which
they make themselves, or in the halves of pumpkins : they sleep in
certain very large nettings made of cotton,* suspended in the air :
and although this their [fashion of] sleeping may seem uncomfort-
' Che loro cuple. The Spanish word complir, with the sense of being impor
tant or suitable.
^ He means that they have no sounds in their language unknown to European
organs of speech, all being either palatals or dentals or labials.
' The words from " and it is not much " down to " at all hours " omitted in the
Latin. I have translated " et non si da loro molto " as " it is not much of a boon
to them," but it may be " it matters not much to them."
* Bambacia. C

lo Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
able, I say that it is sweet to sleep in those [nettings] : and we slept
better in them than in the counterpanes. They are a people smooth
and clean of body, because of so continually washing themselves as
they do : when, saving your reverence, they evacuate the stomach
they do their utmost not to be observed : and as much as in this
p. 7. they are cleanly and bashful, so much the more are they filthy and
shameless in making water: since, while standing speaking to us,
without turning round or shewing any shame, they let go their
nastiness, for in this they have no shame : there is no custom of
marriages amongst them : each man takes as many women as he
lists : and when he desires to repudiate them, he repudiates them
without any imputation of wrong-doing to him, or of disgrace to the
woman : for in this the woman has as much liberty as the man :
they are not very jealous and are immoderately libidinous, and the
women much more so than the men, so that for decency I omit to
tell you the artifice they practice to gratify ^ their inordinate lust :
they are very prolific women, and do not shirk any work during
their pregnancies : and their travails in childbed are so light that, a
single day after parturition, they go abroad everywhere, and especially
to wash themselves in the rivers, and are [then] as sound and healthy
as fishes : they are so void of affection and cruel, that if they be
angry with their husbands they immediately adopt an artificial
method by which the embryo is destroyed in the womb, and procure
abortion, and they slay an infinite number of creatures by that
means : they are women of elegant persons very well proportioned,
so that in their bodies there appears no ill-shaped part or limb : and
although they go entirely naked, they are fleshy women, and, of
their sexual organ, that portion which he who has never seen it may
imagine, is not visible, for they conceal with their thighs every
thing except that part for which nature did not provide, which is,
speaking modestly, the pectignone.^ In fine, they have no shame
of their shameful parts, any more than we have in displaying
the nose and the mouth : it is marvellously [rare] that you shall
' In the original, contar for contentar. ' Bigger bosom, mons Veneris.

First Voyage. 1 1
see a woman's paps hang low, or her belly fallen in by too much
childbearing, or other wrinkles, for they all appear as though
they had never brought forth children : they shewed themselves
very desirous of having connexion with us Christians. Amongst
those people we did not learn that they had any law, nor can
they be called Moors nor Jews, and [they are] worse than pagans :
because we did not observe that they offered any sacrifice : nor
even i had they a house of prayer : their manner of living I judge
to be Epicurean : their dwellings are in common : and their houses
[are] made in the style of huts,^ but strongly made, and constructed
with very large trees, and covered over with palm-leaves, secure
against storms and winds : and in some places [they are] of so
great breadth and length, that in one single house we found there
were 600 souls : and we saw a village of only thirteen^ houses where
there were four thousand* souls: every eight or ten years ^ they
change their habitations : and when asked why they did so : [they
said it was] because of the soil^ which, from its filthiness, wa,s already
unhealthy and corrupted, and that it bred aches in their bodies,
which seemed to us a good reason : their riches consist of birds'
plumes of many colours, or of rosaries^ which they make from
fishbones, or of white or green stones which they put in their cheeks
and in their lips and ears, and of many other things which we in no
wise value : they use no trade, they neither buy nor sell. In fine,
they live and are contented with that which nature gives them. The
wealth that we enjoy in this our Europe and elsewhere, such as gold,
jewels, pearls, and other riches, they hold as nothing :• and although
they have them in their own lands, they do not labour to obtain
them, nor do they value them. They are liberal in giving, for it is
1 Nee etiam non.
' Waldseemiiller has "bell-towers," having misread campane for capanne, huts
or cabins.' Latin has eight. ¦* Latin, ten thousand. ' Latin has seven for ten.
° Suolo, the ground or flooring, which Waldseemiiller absurdly misread sole,
the sun. Varnhagen, no less strangely, translates it " the atmosphere."
' Patemostrini.

1 2 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
rarely they deny you anything : and on the other hand, liberal in
asking, when they shew themselves your friends : the greatest sign of
friendship which they shew you is that they give you their wives
and their daughters, and a father or a mother deems himself [or
herself] highly honored, when they bring you a daughter, even though
she be a young virgin, if you sleep with her : and hereunto they use
every expression of friendship. When they die, they use divers
manners of obsequies, and some they bury with water and victuals at
their heads: thinking that they shall have [whereof] to eat: they have
not nor do they use ceremonies of torches • nor of lamentation. In
some other places, they use the most barbarous and inhuman burial,"
which is that when a suffering or infirm [person] is as it were at the
last pass of death, his kinsmen carry him into a large forest, and
attach one of those netS; of theirs, in which they sleep, to two
trees, and then put him in it, and dance around him for a whole day :
and when the night comes on they place at his bolster, water with
other victuals, so that he may be able to subsist for four or six days :
and then they leave him alone and return to the village : and if the
sick man helps himself, and eats, and drinks, and survives, he returns
to the village, and his [friends] receive him with ceremony : but few
are they who escape : without receiving any further visit they die,
and that is their sepulture : and they have many other customs
which for prolixity are not related. They use in their sicknesses
p. 9. various forms of medicines,^ so diflerent from ours that we marvelled
how any one escaped : for many times I saw that with a man sick of
fever, when it heightened upon him, they bathed him from head to
foot with a large quantity of cold water : then they lit a great fire
around him, making him turn and turn again every two hours, until
they tired him and left him to sleep, and many were [thus] cured :
with this they make much use of dieting, for they remain three days
without eating, and also of blood-letting, but not from the arm, only
' Lumi, lights, tapers, candles, as in Catholic ceremonies
2 Interramento is the word, but he means only " funeral rite."
' That is, " medical treatment."

First Voyage. 13
from the thighs and the loins and the calf of the leg : also they
provoke vomiting with their herbs which are put into the mouth:
and they use many other remedies which it would be long to relate :
they are much vitiated in the phlegm and in the blood because of
their food which consists chiefly of roots of herbs, and fruits and fish :
they have no seed of wheat nor other grain : and for their ordinary
use and feeding, they have a root of a tree, from which they make
flour, tolerably good, and they call it Iuca, and another which they
call Cazabi, and another Ignami : 1 they eat little flesh except human
flesh : for your Magnificence must know that herein they are so
inhumem that they outdo every custom [everi] of beasts : for they eat
all their enemies whom they kill or capture, as well females as males
with so much savagery, that [merely] to relate it appears a horrible
thing : how much more so to see it, as, infinite times and in many
places, it was my hap to see it : and they wondered to hear us say
that we did not eat our enemies : and this your Magnificence may
take for certain, that their other barbarous customs are such that
expression is too weak for the reality : and as in these four voyages
I have seen so many things diverse from our customs, I prepared to
write a common-place-book^ which I name Le quattro Giornate :
in which I have set down the greater part of the things which I saw,
sufficiently in detail, so far as my feeble wit has allowed me : which
I have not yet published, because I have so ill a taste for my own
things that I do not relish those which I have written, notwith
standing that many encourage me to publish it : therein everything
will be seen in detail : so that I shall not enlarge further in this
chapter : as in the course of the letter we shall come to many other
things which are particular : let this suffice for the general. At this
beginning, we saw nothing in the land of much profit, except some
show of gold : I believe the cause of it was that we did not know the
language : but in so far as concerns the situation and condition of
the land, it could not be better : we decided to leave that place, and
' Iuca, Cazabi, Ignami. See reference to these words in the preliminary
notice. ^ Zibaldone, miscellany, omniutn-gatherum.

p. lO.

14 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
to go further on, continuously coasting the shore : upon which v/e
made frequent descents, and held converse with a great number of
people : and at the end of some days we went into a harbour where
we underwent very great danger : and it pleased the Holy Ghost to
save us : and it was in this wise. We landed in a harbour, where we
found a village built like Venice upon the water : there were about 44
large dwellings in the form of huts erected upon very thick piles,^ and
they had their doors or entrances in the style of drawbridges : and from
each house one could pass through all, by means of the drawbridges
which stretched from house to house : and when the people thereof
had seen us, they appeared to be afraid of us, and immediately drew
up all the bridges : and while we were looking at this strange action,
we saw coming across the sea about 22 canoes, which are a kind of
boats of theirs, constructed from a single tree : which came towards
our boats, as they had been surprised by our appearance and clothes,
and kept wide of us : and thus remaining, we made signals to them
that they should approach us, encouraging them with every token of
friendliness : and seeing that they did not come, we went to them,
and they did not stay for us, but made to the land, and, by signs,
told us to wait, and that they should soon return : and they went to
a hill in the background, " and did not delay long : when they
returned, they led with them 16 of their girls, and entered with these
into their canoes, and came to the boats : and in each boat they put
4 of the girls. That we marvelled at this behaviour your Magnifi
cence can imagine how much, and they placed themselves with their
canoes among our boats, coming to speak with us : insomuch that
we deemed it a mark of friendliness : and while thus engaged, we
beheld a great number of people advance swimming towards us
across the sea, who came from the houses : and as they were drawing
near to us without any apprehension : just then there appeared at
' Waldseemiiller has 20 instead of 44, and repeats his error of " bell-towers"
for " huts."
' Varnhagen says " went straight to land," evidently mistaking drieto {dietro)
for drieto, and ignoring monte.

First Voyage. 15
the doors of the houses certain old women, uttering very loud cries
and tearing their hair to exhibit grief: whereby they made us
suspicious, and we each betook ourselves to arms : and instantly the
girls whom we had in the boats, threw themselves into the sea, and
the- men of the canoes drew away from us, and began with their
bows to shoot arrows at us : and those who were swimming each
carried a lance held, as covertly as they could, beneath the water :
so that, recognizing the treachery, we engaged with them, not merely
to defend ourselves, but to attack them vigorously, and we over
turned with our boats many of their almadie or canoes, for so they
call them, we made a slaughter [of them], and they all flung
themselves into the water to swim, leaving their canoes abandoned,
with considerable loss on their side, they went swimming away to p. 11.
the shore : there died of them about 1 5 or 20, and many were left
wounded: and of ours 5 were wounded, and all, by the grace of
God, escaped [death] : we captured two of the girls and two men : ^
and we proceeded to their houses, and entered therein, and in them
all we found nothing else than two old women and a sick man : we
took away from them many things, but of small value : and we
would not burn their houses, because it seemed to us [as though that
would be] a burden upon our conscience : and we returned to our
boats with five prisoners : and betook ourselves to the ships, and put
a pair of irons on the feet of each of the captives, except the little
girls : and when the night came on, the two girls and one of the men
fled away in the most subtle manner possible : and next day we
decided to quit that harbour and go further onwards : we proceeded
continuously skirting the coast, [until] we had sight of another
tribe distant perhaps some 80 leagues from the former tribe : and we
found them very different in speech and customs : we resolved to
cast anchor, and went ashore with the boats, and we saw on the
beach a great number of people amounting probably to 4000 souls :
and when we had reached the shore, they did not stay for us, and
' Two men : the Latin has three, which agrees better with the mention of
five prisoners, a little lower down.

1 6 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
betook themselves to flight through the forests, abandoning their
things : we jumped on land, and took a pathway that led to the
forest : and at the distance of a bow-shot we found their tents, where
they had made very large fires, and two [of them] were cooking their
victuals, and roasting several animals, and fish of many kinds : where
we saw that they were roasting a certain animal which seemed to be
a serpent, save that it had no wings,i and was in its appearance so
loathsome that we marvelled much at its savageness : Thus went we
on through their houses, or rather tents, and found many of those
serpents alive, and they were tied by the feet and had a cord around
their snouts, so that they could not open their mouths, as is done
[in Europe] with mastiff-dogs so that they may not bite : they were of
such savage aspect that none of us dared to take one away, thinking
that they were poisonous : they are of the bigness of a kid, and in
length an ell and a half : ^ their feet are long and thick, and armed
with big claws : they have a hard skin, and are of various colours :
they have the muzzle and face of a serpent : and from their snouts there
rises a crest like a saw which extends along the middle of the back
as far as the tip' of the tail : in fine we deemed them to be serpents
and venomous, and [nevertheless, those people] ate them : we found
that they made bread out of little fishes which they took from the
sea, first boiling them, [then] pounding them, and making thereof
a paste, or bread, and they baked them on the embers : thus did
p. 12. they eat them : we tried it, and found that it was good : they had
so many other kinds of eatables, and especially of fruits and roots,
that it would be a large matter to describe them in detail : and
seeing that the people did not return, we decided not to touch nor
take away anything of theirs, so as better to reassure them : and we
left in the tents for them many of our things, placed where they
should see them, and returned by night to our ships : and the next
' Alia — wings or fins. Vespucci must have been thinking of the fabulous
dragon. ^ Bracda e mezo. This animal was the iguana.
' SommitcL in original, which might mean the root of the tail ; but the transla
tion given is the correct one.

First Voyage. 17
day, when it was light, we saw on the beach an infinite number of
people : and we landed : and although they appeared timorous
towards us, they took course nevertheless to hold converse with us,
giving us whatever we asked of them : and shewing themselves very
friendly towards us, they told us that those were their dwellings, and
that they had come hither for the purpose of fishing : and they
begged that we would visit their dwellings and villages, because
they desired to receive us as friends : and they engaged in
such friendship because of the two captured men whom we had
with us, as these were their enemies : insomuch that, in view of
such importunity on their part, holding a council, we determined
that 28 of us Christians in good array should go with them, and
in the firm resolve to die if it should be necessary : and after
we had been here some three days, we went with them inland :
and at three leagues from the coast we came to a village of many
people and few houses, for there were no more than nine [of these] :
where we were received with such and so many barbarous ceremonies
that the pen suffices not to write them down : for there were dances,
and songs, and lamentations mingled with rejoicing, and great
quantities of food : and here we remained the night : where they
offered us their women, so that we were unable to withstand them :
and after having been here that night and half the next day, so great
was the number of people who came wondering to behold us that
they were beyond counting : and the most aged begged us to go with
them to other villages which were further inland, making display of
doing us the greatest honour : wherefore we decided to go : and it
would be impossible to tell you how much honour they did us : and
we went to several villages, so that we were nine days journeying,
so that our Christians who had remained with the ships were already
apprehensive concerning us : and when we were about 1 8 leagues in
the interior of the land, we resolved to return to the ships : and on
our way back, such was the number of people, as well men as women,
that came with us as far as the sea, that it was a wondrous thing :
and if any of us became weary of the march, they carried us in their
D

1 8 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
nets very refreshingly : and in crossing the rivers, which are many
and very large, they passed us over by skilful means so securely that
P- 13- we ran no danger whatever, and many of them came laden with the
things which they had given us, which consisted in their sleeping-nets,
and very rich feathers, many bows and arrows, innumerable popin-
jays^ of divers colours : and others brought with them loads of their
household goods, and of animals : but a greater marvel will I tell
you, that, when we had to cross a river, he deemed himself lucky who
was able to carry us on his back : and when we reached the sea,
our boats having arrived, we entered into them : and so great was
the struggle which they made to get into our boats, and to come to
see our ships, that we marvelled [thereat] : and in our boats we took
as many of them as we could, and made our way to the ships, and so
many [otliers] came swimming that we found ourselves embarrassed
in seeing so many people in the ships, for there were over a thousand
persons all naked and unarmed : they were amazed by our [nautical]
gear and contrivances, and the size of the ships : and with them
there occurred to us a very laughable affair, which was that we
decided to fire off some of our great guns,^ and when the explosion
took place, most of them through fear cast themselves [into tlie sea]
to swim, not otherwise than frogs on the margins of a pond, when
they see something that frightens them, will jump into the water, just
so did those people : and those who remained in the ships were so
terrified that we regretted our action : however we reassured them by
teliing them that with those arms we slew our enemies : and when
they had amused themselves in the ships the whole day, we told
them to go away because we desired to depart that night, and so
separating from us with much friendship and love, they went away
to land. Amongst that people and in their land, I knew and beheld
so many of their customs and ways of living, that I do not
care to enlarge upon them : for Your Magnificence must know
that in each of my voyages I have noted the most wonderful
things, and I have indited it all in a volume after the manner of a
' Pappagalli, perroquets. » ArHglierie.

First Voyage. 19
geography: and I intitle it Le QUATTRO GlORNATE: in which work
the things are comprised in detail, and as yet there is no copy of it
given out, as it is necessary for me to revise it.^ This land is very
populous, and full of inhabitants, and of numberless rivers, [and]
animals: few [of which] resemble ours, excepting lions, panthers,
stags, pigs, goats, and deer:* and even these have some dissimilarities
of form : they have no horses nor mules, nor, saving your reverence,
asses nor dogs, nor any kind of sheep or oxen : but so numerous are
the other animals which they have, and all are savage, and of none
do they make use for their service, that they could not be counted.
What shall we say of others \such as] birds ? which are so numerous, p i4-
and of so many kinds, and of such various-coloured plumages, that it
is a marvel to behold them. The soil is very pleasant and fruitful,
full of immense woods and forests : and it is always green, for the
foliage never drops off. The fruits are so many that they are
numberless and entirely different from ours. This land is within the
torrid zone, close to or just under the parallel described by the Tropic
of Cancer : where the pole of the horizon has an elevation of 23
degrees, at the extremity of the second climate.' 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. In this land we placed baptismal fonts, and an
infinite [number of] people were baptized, and they called us in their
language Carabi, which means men of great wisdom. We took our
departure from that port : and the province iscalled Lariab : and we
navigated along the coast, always in sight of land, until we had
run 870 leagues of it, still going in the direction of the maestrale
[Tiorth-west] making in our course many halts, and holding inter-
' Conferirla.
' In the text the colon follows " few," which alters the sense considerably, and
makes the statement run thus, " Numberless rivers and few animals : they
resemble ours," &c. ; but the real intention is evidently better conveyed by adding
the words in brackets, and displacing the colon in question.
' That is, 23 degrees north latitude.

20 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
course with many peoples : and in several places we obtained gold
by barter but not much in quantity, for we had done enough in
discovering the land and learning that they had gold. We had now
been thirteen months on the voyage : and the vessels and the
tackling were already much damaged, and the men worn out by
fatigue : we decided by general council to haul our ships on land
and examine them for the purpose of stanching leaks,^ as they made
much water, and of caulking and tarring them afresh, and [theti]
returning towards Spain : and when we came to this deter
mination, we were close to a harbour the best in the world : into
which we entered with our vessels : where we found an immense
number of people : who received us with much friendliness : and on
the shore we made a bastion" with our boats and with barrels and
casks, and our artillery, which commanded every point : * and our
ships having been unloaded and lightened,* we drew them upon land,
and repaired them in everything that was needful : and the land's
people gave us very great assistance : and continually furnished us
with their victuals : so that in this port we tasted little of our own,
which suited our game well : * for the stock of provisions which we
had for our return-passage was little and of sorty kind : where
[i.e., there] we remained 37 days : and went many times to their
villages ? where they paid us the greatest honour : and [now]
desiring to depart upon our voyage, they made complaint to us how
at certain times of the year there came from over the sea to this their
land, a race of people very cruel, and enemies of theirs : and [wlio] by
p. 15. means of treachery or of violence slew many of them, and ate them :
and some they made captives, and carried them away to their
houses, or country : and how they could scarcely contrive to defend
' Stancharle {? stagnarle).
' Fort or barricade. The Latin misreads it " a new boat."
' Che giocavano per tucto.
* Allogiate is slurred over by the Latin and Varnhagen. I take it to be in
tended for allegiate, and this to be an old form, corresponding to the French
alUger, of allegerite or alleviate : lightened, eased.
° Che dfedono buon giuoco.

First Voyage. 21
themselves from them, making signs to us that [those] were an
island-people and lived out in the sea about a hundred leagues away :
and so piteously did they tell us this that we believed them : and we
promised to avenge them of so much wrong : and they remained
overjoyed herewith : and many of them offered to come along with us,
but we did not wish to take them for many reasons, save that we took
seven of tliem, on condition that they should come [i.e., return liome]
afterwards in [their own] canoes because we did not desire to be
obliged to take them back to their country : and they were con
tented : and so we departed from those people, leaving them very
friendly towards us : and having repaired our ships, and sailing
for seven days out to sea between north-east and east : and
at the end of the seven days we came upon the islands, which
were many, some [of them] inhabited, and others deserted : and
we anchored at one of them: where we saw a numerous people
who called it Iti : and having manned our boats with strong
crews, and [taken ammunition foj'] three cannon-shots in each, we
made for land : where we found [assembled] about ^ 400 men, and
many women, and all naked like the former [peoples]. They
were of good bodily presence, and seemed right warlike men : for
they were armed with their weapons, which are bows, arrows, and
lances : and most of them had square wooden targets : and bore
them in such wise that they did not impede the drawing of the
bow : and when we had come v/ith our boats to about a bowshot
of the land, they all sprang into the water to shoot their arrows
at us and to prevent us from leikping upon shore : and they
all had their bodies painted of various colours, and [were] plumed
with feathers : and the interpreters" who were with us told us that
when [those] displayed themselves so painted and plumed, it was
to betoken that they wanted to fight : and so much did they
persist in preventing us from landing, that we were compelled
to play with our artillery: and when they heard the explosion,
' Alpie di 400. " Le lingue, a Portuguese idiom.

22 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
and saw some of them fall dead, they all drew back to the land :
wherefore, forming our council, we resolved that 42 of our men
should spring on shore, and, if they waited for us, fight them : thus
having leaped to land with our weapons, they advanced towards us,
and we fought for about an hour, for we had but little advantage of
them, except that our arbalasters and gunners killed some of them,
and they wounded certain of our men: and this was because they did
not stand to receive us within reach of lance-thrust or sword-blow :
and so much vigour did we put forth at last, that we came to
p. 16. sword-play, and when they tasted our weapons, they betook them
selves to flight through the mountains and the forests, and left us
conquerors of the field with many of them dead and a good number
wounded : and for that day we took no other pains to pursue them,
because we were very weary, and we returned to our ships, with so
much gladness on the part of the seven men who had come with
us that they could not contain themselves [for joy] : and when
the next day arrived, we beheld coming across the land a great
number of people, with signals of battle, continually sounding
horns, and various other instruments which they use in their
wars : and all [of therri] painted and feathered, so that it was a
very strange sight to behold them : wherefore all the ships held
council, and it was resolved that since this people desired hostility
with us, we should proceed to encounter them and try by every
means to make them friends : in case they would not have our
friendship, that we should treat them as foes, and so many of
them as we might be able tp capture should all be our slaves :
and having armed ourselves as best we could, we advanced towards
the shore, and they sought not to hinder us from landing, I
believe from fear of the cannons : and we jumped on land, 57 men
in four squadrons, each one [consisting of] a captain and his com
pany : and we came to blows with them : and after a long battle [in
which] many of them [were] slain, we put them to flight, and pursued
them to a village, having made about 250 of them captives, and we
burnt the village, and returned to our ships with victory and 250

First Voyage. 23
prisoners,! leaving many of them dead and wounded, and of ours
there were no more than one killed, and 22 wounded, who all escaped
[je., recovered], God be thanked. We arranged our departure, and
the seven men, of whom five were wounded, took an island-canoe,
and, with seven prisoners that we gave them, four women and three
men, returned to their [otfw] country full of gladness, wondering at
our strength: and we thereon made sail for Spain with 222 captive
slaves : and reached the port of Calls [Cadiz] on the 1 5 day of
October 1498, where we were well received and sold our slaves.
Such is what befel me, most noteworthy, in this my first voyage.
Ends the First Voyage.
Begins the Second.

' Varnhagen thought we ought to read "25 " (not 250), like the Latin version,
and to correct the figures " 222 " lower down into " 22," in both the text and the
Latin. But he was in error, having omitted to observe that the figures " 250 '' occur
twice. He evidently looked more on the Latin than the text. Besides, a capture
of only 25 savages would be very little indeed for the European force to make,
whether we reckon it at 57 men or 228 men, as he and the Latin read it (four
squadrons, each of 57 men, with its captain), especially when they had entered
into hostilities with the express intention of making captives. [He afterwards
corrected himself]

[Woodcut of two Ships at Sea.\

p. 17- AS for the second voyage, and what I saw in it most worthy
£\. of record, it is as follows here. We started from the port of
Calls [Cadiz], three ships in company, on the i6 day of
May 1499 ! and began our voyage in a direct course to the islands
of Cabo Verde, passing in sight of the island of Great Canary :
and so much way did we make that we dropped anchor at an
island which is called the Island of Fire:" and having here taken
in our provision of water and firewood, we resumed our voyage
going south-westwards : * and in 44 days * we touched upon a new
land : and we deemed that it was [part of] a continent, and con
tinuous with that [land] of which mention is made above:' the
which [new land] is situated within the Torrid Zone, and south
wardly beyond the equinoctial line : above which the southern pole
rises to the elevation of 5 degrees, beyond every climate : ^ and it
is 500 leagues distant south-westward ly '^ from the said islands:^ and
' 1499. Latin has 1489, by error. ' Lisola delfuoco. * Per illibecdo.
¦* The Latin has " 19 days," and so has Varnhagen, notwithstanding that his text
is correct. " I.e., in the preceding relation of the first voyage. The Latin makes a blunder
here, and says, " opposite to," instead of " continuous with." The translator must
have read " contraria " for " continua."
* This means, simply, at 5 degrees south latitude.
' Per el vento libeccio. ° I.e., the Canaries.

Second Voyage. 25
we found that the days were equal with the nights : for we reached
it on the 27 day of June, when the sun is at the Tropic of Cancer :
which land we found to be all overflowed with water and full of
very large rivers.i As yet " we saw no people : we brought our
ships to anchor and put out our boats : in them we pulled to the
land, and as I have said, we found it full of the largest rivers and
inundated by very great floods which we met with : and we attempted p. 18.
it in many places to see if we could enter therein : and because
of tlie great floods poured by the rivers, however strenuously we
strove, we could find no spot that was not inundated : we observed
on the waters many tokens that the land was inhabited: and
seeing that in this quarter we could not enter it, we decided to
return to the ships and to attempt landing in another place : and
we weighed our anchors, and sailed east-south-east,* always coasting
the shore which trended in that direction, and in a space of 40
leagues we made attempts to land in several places : and it was all
lost time : we found on that coast the sea-currents so strong that
they did not allow us to navigate, and they all ran from sou,th-east
to north-west : consequently seeing so many impediments to our
navigation, we held a council, and decided to turn our course to
the north-west : and we sailed along the land till we arrived at a
very fine port : which was formed by a large island that was
situated at the mouth, inside of which there was a bay, very deeply
indented : and while sailing by the side of the island to enter
into the harbour, we beheld many people : and rejoicing thereat,
we directed our vessels thither, so as to drop anchor where we
saw the people, being probably [then] about four leagues away to
seaward from them : * and proceeding thus we had sight of a Canoe
that was coming from the high sea : in which there were coming
' Varnhagen inserts here (from the Latin) a statement about the greenness of
the land, and that it was full of large trees ; which does not at all appear in the text.
* In questo principno. ' Infra levante e sdloccho.
• There is some confusion here ; they could hardly have been able to see a
crowd of people at four leagues' distance. E

26 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
many persons : and We resolved to seize it : ^ and we turned our
vessels round to meet it navigating in such order that we should
not lose it : and sailing towards it with a brisk breeze," we observed
that they were at a stand-still, with their oars lifted, I believe in
wonder at our ships : and when they perceived that we were advancing
to approach them, they dipped their oars in the water and began
to row towards the land : and as in our company there was a
caravel of 45 tons, a very quick sailer, she took station to windward '
of the canoe : and when it seemed to be time to bear down upon
it, [the caravel] shook out * full sail and made for [the canoe] and we
likewise: and when the caravel came abreast of it and did not
seek to board [the canoe], she passed by, and then stood still
against the wind : and when they saw themselves at a vantage,
they began to struggle hard with their oars to escape : and we,
who had our boats already astern manned with good crews,
thinking that they would take it [the canoe], and they laboured for
more than two hours, and at last, if the little caravel had not
p. 19- tacked again upon them, we should have lost it [the canoe] : and
when they found themselves hemmed in by the caravel and the
boatsj they all flung themselves into the sea, probably some 70
men [in number] : ^ and they were at a distance of about two leagues
from land : and following them with our boats, the whole day, we
were unable to take more than two of them, for, certain it was,
all the others reached the land in safety : and in the canoe there
remained four boys : who were not of their tribe : for they
brought them as captives from another land : and they had castrated
them, for they were all without the virile member, and had the
wound still fresh : whereat we marvelled much : and being taken
into the ships they told us by signs that [the men of the canoe] had
castrated them in order to eat them : and we learned that those
were a people who are callied Camballi, very savage, who ate
human flesh. Towing thfe canoe astern, we made in our ships for
' Haverla alia mano. ^ Fresco tempo. ' Barlovento.
" Allargho li apparecM. • Latin has " 20 men."

Second Voyage. 27
the land and anchored at [tkfi distance of] half a league : and as
we saw great numbers of people on the shore, we rowed to the
land in our boats, taking with us the two men we had captured :
and having landed, all the people fled away, and betook themselves
to the forests : and we let go one of the [two] men, giving him
several little bells,i and [indicating] that we desired to be their
friends: which he [whom] we sent to them effected very well, and
brought with him all the tribe, who were about 400 men and many
women : who came without any weapons to where we were
[standing] with our boats : and liaving made good friendship with
them, we restored to them the second captive, and sent to the
ships for their canoe and gave it back to them. This canoe was
26 paces long and two yards" broad, and entirely hollowed out
of a single tree, and very elaborately made ; and when they had
docked it in a river and put it in a safe place, they all fled away,
and would no further hold intercourse with us, which seemed to
us a quite barbarous action, so that we deemed them a people of
little faith and ill condition. With them we. saw sonie little gold
which they had in their ears. We departed from these, and made
our way to the inner part of the bay : ^ where we found such !
a multitude of people, that it was marvellous : with whom on 1
landing we made a friendship : and many of us went with!
them to their villages, very safely, and well-received. In this
place we obtained 150 pearls* which they gave, us in exchange
for a little bell, and some little gold which they gave us for
nothing :* and in this land we found that they drank a wine made of
their fruits and grain, in the manner of beer, both white and red : and
' Sanagli, little bells or rattles. ° Bracda.
' Instead of the simple statement, " and made our way," &c., the Latin inserts
" having voyaged along that coast for about eighty leagues we came to a safe
harbour," which is absurd, but has apparently influenced Varnhagen, who evidently
made the mistake of incautiously referring sometimes to the Latin and sometimes
to the Italian text, thus failing to see all the discrepancies.
* RischattamMo, The Latin has 500, instead of 150.
' Di gratia.

28 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
the best was made of myrobalans} and was very good : and they
p. 20. ate infinite numbers of these, it being then the season for them. It
is a very good fruit, pleasant to the taste, and healthful to the -body.
The soil abounds greatly with everything they need for subsistence,
and the people [were] of polite behaviour and the most pacific we had
as yet met with. We remained in this harbour for seventeen days
with much pleasure : and every day fresh people, from the interior
of the country, came to see us, wondering at our appearance and
whiteness, and our clothing and arms, and at the shape and great
size of the ships. From those people we had information of a tribe
that lived further to the west of them, who were their enemies, who
had an infinite quantity of pearls : and that those [pearls] which they
[our friends] had were what they had taken from them [the enemies]
in their wars : and they told us how they fished for them, and in
what manner they [the pearls] were produced, and we found that they
spoke with truth, as Your Magnificence shall hear. We departed
from this harbour and navigated along the coast : on which we
continually saw clouds- of smoke " arising, with people on the
beach : and at the end of several days we came to anchor in a
harbour, for the purpose of repairing one of our ships, which had
sprung a great leak : ' where we found that there was a large popu
lation : with whom we were not able, neither by force nor for love
to obtain any conversation whatever : and when we went on land,
they struggled fiercely to prevent us from doing so : and when they
could hold out no longer, they fled through the forests and did not
await us. Finding them so barbarous, we went away from hence :
and proceeding on our voyage we had sight of an island distant
1 5 leagues out to sea from the [main-] land : and we decided on
going to see if it were inhabited. We found therein the most brutish
and loathsome people that were ever seen, and they were on this
wise. In behaviour and looks, they were very repulsive : and they
' Mirabolani.
" Fumalte, by error lorfumate. Varnhagen has transcribed /wwia/Ze.
' Faceva molta acqua.

Second Voyage. 29
all had their cheeks swollen out with a green herb inside, which
they \\ere constantly chewing like beasts, so tliat they could scarcelj'
utter speech : and each one had [suspended] upon his neck, two dried
gourds, one of which was full of that herb which they kept in their
mouths, and the other [full] of a white flour, \\hich looked like
powdered chalk, and from time to time, with a small stick which
they kept moistening in their mouths, they dipped it into the
flour and then put it into their mouths inside both cheeks, thus
mixing -with flour the herb which they had in their mouths : and
this they did ver\- frequently : and mar\-elling at such a thing, we
were unable to comprehend this secret, nor with what object they
acted thus. These people when they saw us, came to us as
familiarly as if we had been united with them in friendship: going p. 21.
¦with them along the beach, talking, and desirous of drinking fresh
water, they made signs to us that they had none, and offered us
some of that herb and flour of theirs, so that we concluded b}- in
ference that this island was poor in water, and that it was to preserve
themselves against thirst they kept that herb in their mouths, and
the flour for the same [reason]. We went through the island for a
day and a half \vithout ever finding any flowing water : and we
observed that the water which they drank was of a dew which fell by
night on certain leaves that looked like asses' ears, and [u'hiclt]
became full of water, and hereof they drank : it was most excellent
water : and [ix., but] they had not those leaves in many places.
They had no form of victuals, nor roots, as on the main-land : and
they subsisted on fish which they took in the sea ; and of these they
had very great abundance, and they were most expert fishermen :
and they presented to us many turtles, and many ver>' excellent fish
of great size : their women did not use to keep the herb in their
mouths Uke the men, but all carried a gourd with water and drank
thereoE They had no villages, neither of houses nor huts, save
that thej- dwelt underneath [a kind of] arbours, \\ hich protected
them from the sun, and not from the water ; for I believe it rained
very seldom in that island : when they were at sea fishing, they

30 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
all had a leaf of great size and so broad, that they were quite in
shadow beneath it, and they [used to] fix it in the ground : and as
the sun revolved so did they turn the leaf : and in this manner they
protected themselves from the sun. The island contains many animals
of various kinds : and they drink marsh-water : and seeing that they
had nothing profitable [for us] we departed, and took our course to
another island : and we found [afterwards] that a race of very great
stature dwelt therein : we then landed to see if we found [could find]
fresh water : and imagining that the island was not inhabited because
we saw no people, going along the shore, we beheld very large foot
prints of men on the sand : and we judged, if their other members
were of corresponding size, that they must be very big men : and
proceeding onwards, we came upon a pathway which led to the
interior of the land : and nine of us agreed : and concluded that the
island being small could not contain within itself many people : and
thereupon we went onward through it, to see what manner of people
they were : and after we had gone for about a league, we beheld in a
valley five of their huts, which appeared uninhabited : and we made
our way to them and found only five women, two old ones and
three girls so lofty in stature that we gazed at them in astonishment :
and when they saw us, so much terror overcame them that they
had not even spirit to flee away : and the two old women began
to invite us with words, bringing us many things to eat, and they
put us in a hut : and they were in stature taller than a tall man,
so that they would be quite as big of body as was Francesco
degli Albizi, but better proportioned : insomuch that we were all
of a mind to take away the three girls from them by force : and
to carry them to Castile as a prodigy : and while thus discoursing,
there began to enter through the door of the hut full 36 men
much bigger than the women : men so well built that it was a
famous sight to see them : who put us in such anxiety that we
would much rather have been in our ships than in the company
of such people. They carried very large bows and arrows, with
large knobbed clubs : and they spoke among themselves in such

Second Voyage. ' 31
a tone as though they meant to lay hands upon us: seeing
that we were in such danger, we debated of various plans among
ourselves : some [of us] said that we ought to attack immediately
in the house : and others that it were better on the open ground
[outside] : and others who said that we ought not to begin the
quarrel until we should see what they meant to do : and we agreed
to go forth from the hut and to make our way slily towards
the ships : and so we did : and having taken our way we returned
to the ships : those [savages] however came following behind us,
always at the distance of a stone's throw, speaking amongst
themselves : I believe that they were no less afraid of us, than
we were of them : because we halted sometimes, and they did
the same without approaching nearer, until we reached the
shore where the boats were awaiting us : and we entered into them :
and when we were at some distance, they danced about and shot
many arrows at us : but we had little dread of them now : we fired two
gunshots at them, more to terrify them than to do any hurt :
and at the explosion they all fled to the hill : ^ and so we
departed from them, having as it seemed to us escaped from a
perilous day's work. They went entirely naked like the others.
I call that island, the Lsle of Giants, because of their great size :
and we proceeded onward still skirting the coast on which it befel
us many times to have to fight them, as they sought not to
allow us to take anything from the land : and since it was our
desire to return now to Castile, as we had been about a year at
sea, and we had [but] a small stock of provisions [remaining],
and that little damaged by reason of the great heats that we
endured : because from the time when we started for the isles p- 23.
of Cabo Verde till now, we had continually navigated in the
torrid zone, and twice crossed the equinoctial line : for as I have
said above we had gone to 5 degrees below it southwardly :
and here we were at 15 degrees north of it. Being in this
mind, it pleased the Holy Ghost to give uS some relief for
' Al monte. Perhaps it means " in a heap " or " in a confused rout."

32 ' Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
so much travail : which was, that while we were seeking a
harbour wherein to repair our vessels, we met with a nation
which received us with great friendliness : and we found that
they had a great abundance of very fine oriental pearls: with
whom we stayed for 47 days : and we bought from them 1 19
marks ^ of pearls ¦ for very little merchandise : for I believe
they did not cost us the value of forty ducats : since that
which we gave them was nothing but little bells and look
ing-glasses and beads, diecl-pallef and sheets of tin, indeed,
for a single little bell a man gave as many pearls as he had.
From them [the natives] we learned how and where they fished
for them [the pearls] : and they gave us many [of tlie] oysters
in which they grew : we bought [also] an oyster in which
1 30 pearls were growing, and others with less : the Queen took *
from me that with the 130 : and others I took care she
should not see. - And Your Magnificence must know that unless
the pearls are matured, and drop out of themselves, they do not
last : because they perish quickly : and of this I have had actual
experience : when they are mature, they lie within the shell
detached and set in the flesh : * and these ones are good : whatsoever
bad ones they had, though the most of them were rough and
ill-pierced, still they were worth good money : because the mark
sold for ^ : and at the end of 47 days we quitted the
people, leaving them great friends towards us. We departed, and
through the necessity of our victualling we made for the island of
Antiglia ^ which is the same that Christophal Colombo discovered
several years ago : where we took in much store of provision :
' MarcM, marco — a weight of eight ounces.
' Conte, diedpalle etfoglie di octone. Died palle must be some sort of balls
or playing-marbles. ' From " the Queen took " down to " she should not see " omitted in Latin.
* The text is obscure ; the Latin is explicatory, and I presume correct, in its
account of the nature of pearls.
= A blank in the text From "good" to "sold for" omitted in Latin.
' Hispaniola.

Second Voyage. 33
and remained two months and 17 days:^ where we underwent
many perils and troubles with the very Christians who were in
this island along with Colombo :" I beUeve through envy : but, in
order not to be prolix, I refrain from narrating them. We
departed from the said island on the 22 day of July : and
we navigated during a month and a half: and entered into the
port of Calls [Cadiz], which was on the 8 day of September,
by daylight, my second voyage : God [be\ praised.
Ended the Second Voyage.
Begins the Third.

' The Latin " 2 months and 2 days."
' " Along with Columbus," omitted in Latin and not noted by Varnhagen.

[Woodait of a Ship at Sea.]

p. 24. "T) EING afterwards in Seville, resting myself from so many
fj travails that I had in those two voyages undergone, and
purposing to return to the land of the pearls : when Fortune
not contented with my labours, for I know not how it came
into the mind of this most serene King Don Manuel of Portugal,
to wish to employ me : and being in Seville without any
thought of coming to Portugal, there comes to me a messager
with a letter of his royal crown,^ which entreated me to come
to Lisbon to speak with his Highness, promising to give me
recompense. I was not of opinion that I should come : I sent
away the messenger, saying that I was ill in health, and that
when I should be well and his Highness still desired to employ
me, that I would do whatever he should command me. And
seeing that he could not have me, he decided to send for me
[i.e., to fetch me] Giuliano di Bartholomeo del Giocondo, residing
here in Lisbon, with a commission to bring me by whatever
means. The said Giuliano came to Seville : through whose coming
and entreaty I was compelled to come : " but my coming was
regarded with ill-favour by so many as knew me : because I
' I.e., an official letter from the Crown.
' He means "go," and in the next line "going," but was led to say "come"
and "coming" from the consciousness that he was writing his letter in Lisbon.

Third Voyage. 35
quitted Castile where honour had been done me, and the Kincr
kept me in ample competence:^ the worst was that I went
insalutato hospite : ^ emd having presented myself before this King
[of Portugal], he shewed himself pleased with my coming : and
prayed me to join the company of three of his ships which were
ready to go in discovery of new lands : and as a King's request P 25
is a command, I had to consent to whatever he desired of
me : and we sailed from this port of Lisbon, three ships in com
pany, on the 10 day of May 1501, and took our route directly
for the Island of Great Canary: and we passed in sight of it
without halting : and from hence we went skirting along the coast
of Africa on the west side: on which coast we exercised our
fishing-skill on a kind of fish which are called Parchi:' where we
stopped three days : and from hence we made for the coast of
Ethiopia, to a port which is called Besechicce,* which is within the
Torrid Zone : over which the North Pole is at an elevation of 14^
degrees, situated in the first climate : * where we remained 1 1 days,
taking in water and firewood: because my intention was to make
our seaway southerly through the Atlantic gulf® We quitted this
Ethiopian port, and navigated south-westwardly,^ taking one quarter
by south, until after a course of 67 days we anchored at a land which
was 700 leagues to the south-west of the said port : and in those 6^
days we had the worst weather that ever any seafarer had, through
numerous storm-showers,^ whirlwinds, and tempests which struck us :
for we passed through much adverse weather, because the greater
part of our navigation was continually close to the equinoctial line,
for in the month of June it is winter : and we found that the day
was equal with the night: and we found that the shadows fell
constantly towards the south : it pleased God to shew us new land,
and [this] was on the 17 day of August : when we anchored at half
1 In bucna possessione (? " in high consideration," as Latin has it).
- "Without bidding adieu to my host." ' Portuguese Pargos.
* Latin has Besilicca. ' That is, 14J degrees north latitude.
^ Ocean. ' Libeccio. ' Aguazeri (? waterspouts).

36 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
a league [from the sliore] : and put out our boats : and went to
inspect the land, whether it was inhabited by people, and who these
were : and we found that it was inhabited by a people who were
worse than animals: however Your Magnificence must understand
that as yet ^ we saw no people, but we perceived well that it was
inhabited from many signs that we observed therein: we took
possession of it for this most serene King [Don Manuel] : " which
land we found to be very pleasant and green, and of goodly appear
ance : it was 5 degrees towards the south beyond the equinoctial
line : and for the present * we returned to the ships : and because
we were in great want of water and firewood, we determined the
next day to return to the shore to provide ourselves with what was
needful : and, when on land, we beheld some people on the top of a
hill, who stood gazing and did not venture to come down : they were
naked, and of the same colour and fashion as were the other former
[savages we had met with elsewhere] : and although we strove to induce
them* to come and speak with us, we were totally unable to reassure
them, for they had no trust in us : and seeing their obstinacy, and [as]
it was already late, we returned to the ships, leaving on the ground for
p. 26. them several little bells and looking-glasses, and other things within
their ken : and when we were at a distance on sea, they descended
from the hill and came for the things we had left them, displaying
great wonderment at these : and for that day we provided ourselves
only with water : the next morning we saw from the ships that the
land's people were making great clouds of smoke : and thinking that
they were calling us [to tliem] we went on shore where we found that
great numbers of them had come, and yet they remained aloof from
us : and they made signs to us that we should go with them into the
interior of the land : wherefore two of our Christians were moved to
ask the captain that he would give them leave as they wished to
undertake the risk of going with those [savages] into the land, to see
' In questo principia. ' -phe Latin says, by mistake, " King of Castile."
' Per questo: ita in Latin. He means probably " for this day."
¦* By signals, of course.

Third Voyage. 2>1
what [manner of] people they were, and whether they had any riches,
or spices, or druggeries : and so much did they beseech that the
captain was pleased [to allow it] : and they prepared themselves with
many things for barter [and] quitted us with the order that they
should not be more than 5 days before returning : because we
would wait for them just so long : and they took their way through
the country : and we [remained] by the ships awaiting them: and
almost every day people came to the beach and would never hold
speech with us : and the seventh day we went on land, and found
that they had brought their women with them : and when we leaped
to shore, the land's men sent many of their women to speak with us :
and seeing they did not seem confident, we decided to send one of our
men to them, who was a young fellow given to feats of strength ; and,
to reassure them,* we entered into our boats : and he went among the
women : ,aad when he reached them, they made a great circle around
him, touching him and gazing at him in wonderment : and while he
was thus [encircled] we saw a woman come from the hill, and she
carried a great stake in her hand : and when she reached to where
our Christian stood, she came behind him : and, lifting the club, gave
him such a tremendous blow that she stretched him dead on the
ground, in an instant the other women took hold of him t^ the feet
and dragged him along by his feet towards the hill ; and the men
bounded towards the beach, and with their bows and arrows [began]
to shoot at us : and they put our people into such terror, the boats
being held fast by the small andiors which were sunk in the ground,
that, because of the numerous arrows [the natives] shot into the boats,
no one had courage to snatch up his arms : however we fired 4
gunshots at them, and they took no effect, save that on hearing the
explosion, they all fled towards the hill and to where the women
were already [cutting] the Christian into bits : and at a great fire
which they had made, they were roasting him before our eyes,
holding up several pieces towards us and [then] eating them : and
' Che molto faceva lo sforso.
' Text has "him," by a typographical error of " lo" for "le."

38 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
the men [were] making signs to us by their gestures how they had
killed the other two Christians and eaten them : which grieved
us greatly, seeing with our eyes the cruelty they were exercising
p. 27. on the dead man, to all of us it was an intolerable offence : and
more than 40 of us being determined to jump on land and revenge
such a cruel death, and an action [so] bestial and inhuman, the
Admiral^ would not give his consent, and so they [the natives] re
mained glutted with so monstrous an act of wrong :" and we departed
from them ill-willingly, and with much shamefulness because of our
Captain. We quitted that place, and began our navigation east-
south-east, and thus the land trended : and we made many descents
on land, and never did we meet a tribe that was willing to hold
parley with us : and thus we navigated onward till we found that
[the line of] the land was turning to south-westward! :^ when we
doubled a cape, to which we gave the name of Cape St Augustine,*
we began to sail south-west, and this cape is 150 leagues distant to
the east of the aforesaid land which we saw, where they slew the
Christians : and this cape is 8 degrees south of the equinoctial line :
and while [thus] sailing we had sight one day of many people who
were standing on the beach to behold the wondrous apparition of our
ships and the manner of our navigation, we directed our course
towards them, and anchored in a good place, and made in our
boats for land, and found them a better-conditioned people than
the last : and although it was a toil to us to tame them, yet
we made them our friends and held intercourse with them. We
stayed 5 days in this place: and here we found canna fistola^ very
thick and green, and dry on ihe tops of the trees. We decided
to take in this place a couple of [native] men, so that they
should explain for us the language : and there came three of their
own free will to come to Portugal : and for the present, tired [as I
am] already of so much writing. Your Magnificence shaU know, that
' Capitano maggiore. ' Di tanta ingiuria, wrong-doing.
' Libeccio. * The Latin has St. Vincent.
" Canna fistola (? cassia, or wild cinnamon).

Third Voyage. 39
we departed from that port, navigating always within sight of
land in a south-west direction, frequently making descents upon
shore,^ and speaking with an infinite number of peoples : and so
far did we proceed southwards that we were now beyond the
Tropic of Capricorn, where the South Pole was at an elevation of
32 degrees above the horizon : and we had already quite lost
[sight of] Ursa Minor, and [Ursd] Major was very low, and
appeared to us to be almost on the line of the horizon, and we
guided ourselves by the stars of the other pole [that] of the South :
which are numerous, and much larger and more brilliant than
those of our pole: and I drew diagrams of most of them, and
especially of those of the first and greater magnitude, with an exposi
tion of the orbits which they describe around the southern pole, and
a declaration of their diameters and semidiameters, as may be seen
in my 4 Giornate : ' we ran along this coast to the length of 750
leagues, 150 leagues from the cape called [Cape] St Augustine
towards the west, and 600 * leagues to the south-west : and if I p. 28.
wished to narrate the things which I saw on this coast, and what
we underwent, twice the number of leaves [of paper] would not
suffice me : and on this coast we saw nothing of value,* except an
infinite number of dye-wood and cassia-trees, and those which
beget myrrh, and other wonders of nature which cannot be re
counted : and having already been fully 10 months voyaging, and
seeing that in this land we found nothing of mineral [wealtK] we
decided to hasten away from there, and to put to sea for some
other quarter : and having held our council, it was resolved that
the course should be followed which I should think fitting : and
the command of the fleet was entirely handed over to me : and
I then ordered that all the crews and the fleet should provide
themselves with water and wood for six months, as the masters
of the ships judged that we might navigate in them for so much
' Di continovo faccendo di molte scale.
' " Le Quattro Giornate," ihe projected book to which he has already made
more than one reference. ^ Latin has 700. * Proficto.

40 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
time. Having taken in our stores from this land, we began our
voyage towards the south-east : and it was on the 1 5 ' day of
February, when the sun was already nearing the Equinox, and
turning towards this our northern hemisphere : and so long did we
sail by that wind, that we found ourselves [at] so high" [a latitude]
that the southern pole stood quite 52 degrees above our horizon,
and we no longer beheld the stars either of Ursa Minor or Ursa
Major: and we were already at a distance of full 500 leagues
south-east from the harbour whence we had set out : and this was
on the 3 day of April, and on that day there arose a tempest of
so much violence upon the sea that we were compelled to haul
down all our sails, and we scudded under bare poles before the
great wind, which was south-west with enormous waves and a
very stormy sky : and so fierce was the tempest that all the
fleet was in great dread : the nights were very long : so that on
the seventh day of April we had a night which was 15 hours
long : for the sun was at the end of Aries : and in that region
it was winter [theri] as Your Magnificence may well consider, and
while in this tempest on the seventh' day of April, we had sight
of a new land, along which we ran for about 20 leagues, and found
that it was wholly a wild rough coast : and we beheld therein neither
any harbour nor any people, because, as I believe, of the cold which
was so intense that no one ih our fleet could fortify himself against
it or endure it : insomuch that, finding ourselves in so great a danger
and in such a tempest that one ship could hardly see another for the
great billows that were running [between us] and for the deep gloomi
ness * of the weather, we deliberated with the Admiral * to signal to
[the rest of] the fleet to approach and that we should abandon [this]
land : and turn round in the direction of Portugal : and it was a very
good resolve : for it is certain that if we had delayed that night,
we had all been lost : because when we turned a-stern,® both that
1 Latin has 13. ^ So high — that is, so far south.
^ 2nd April, Latin. * Serrazon, from the Portuguese cerraqiXo.
' Capitano maggiore. ' Come arrivammo a poppa, from Spanish arribar.

Third Voyage. 41
night and the next day, the tempest grew to such a height that p- 29.
we were in fear of being lost : and we had to make [vows of]
pilgrimage and other ceremonies, as is the custom of sailors at
such times : we scudded for 5 days, ^ and kept still drawing
nearer to the equinoctial line, with the weather and the sea
[becoming] more temperate : and it pleased God that we should
escape from so great a peril : and our course was with the wind
between north and north-east:" because our intention was to go
and reconnoitre the coast of Ethiopia,' as we were distant there
from [only] 300 leagues across the gulf of the Atlantic Sea : and by
the grace of God on the 10 day of May we came to a land
therein, [lying] southward, which is called La serra liona : * where
we stayed 1 5 days, taking our refreshment : and from here we
departed taking our course towards the islands of the Azores,
which are distant about 750 leagues from this place of the Serra :
and we reached the islands at the end of July : where we stayed
1 5 days more, taking some recreation : and we quitted them for
Lisbon : being [theti] 300 leagues to the west [of it] : and we
entered into this port of Lisbon on the 7 day of September 1 502,
in good condition, God be thanked, with two ships only: because
we [had] burnt the other in the Serra liona : as it was disabled
from further navigation, for we were about 15 ^ months on this
voyage : and for 1 1 days we navigated without seeing the Polar
Star, or the Greater and Lesser Bear, which are called the Como : ®
and we steered by the stars of the other hemisphere. This is
what I saw in this voyage or giornata.
' In Latin there is added here " in which five days we made 250 leagues of
sea-passage." 9 T*  ./  .^^J _... -_ 3 A CJlt^rt 4 Cll^wWn T ArwtA O To 4-1 1^ VoG T^

» Tramontano and greco. * Afirica. ¦• Sierra Leone,
^ Como — qucere a typographical error for carro, the Wain,

* Afirica. ¦• Sierra Leone. ^ Latin has 16.

G

Jbttt^S ©ogage.

[Woodcut of a Ship at Anchor, two figures in it, and one on land;
towers in the background?]

p. 30.

I

T remains for me to tell the things seen by me in the fourth
voyage, or giornata : and as I am already wearied, and also
because this fourth voyage was not carried out in accordance with
the purpose I [liad] formed, through a mishap which befel us in the
gulf of the Atlantic sea : as Your Magnificence shall learn in the
sequel, briefly, I will endeavour to be brief. We departed from this
port of Lisbon 6 ships in company, with the intention of going to
discover an island towards the east, which is called Melaccha : of
which there are news that it is very rich, and that it is as it were the
storehouse of all the ships which come from the Gangetic sea and
from the Indian sea, just as Calls [Cadiz] is the waiting-room 1 of all
the vessels which pass from east to west, and from west to east by
the route of Galigut," and this Melaccha is more westerly than
Caligut, and much more to the southward : ^ for we know that it lies
at the level* of 33^ degrees of the antarctic hemisphere. We
departed on the 10 day of May 1503 and made directly for the isles
' Camera.
^ This is a puzzling sentence, like the statement that Malacca lay to the west
of Calicut. ' Mistranslated in the Latin. ¦• Paraggio.
' As Varnhagen justly corrects, this must have been meant for " 3."

Fourth Voyage. 43
of Cape Verde, where we careened, and took some manner of
refreshment, where we stayed 13I days : and from here we departed
on our voyage, sailing by the south-east wind : and as our Chief
Captain was a presumptuous and very obstinate man, he would go to
examine Serra liona, a land of Southern Ethiopia, without having
any need except to make it be seen that he was Captain of six ships,
against the wish of all the rest of us Captains : and thus navigating,
when we reached the said land, so great were the whirlwinds that
struck us, and with them the weather so adverse, that [altliough] we
were in sight of it [tlie sliore] quite three days, the foul weather never
allowed us to land : so that we were compelled to return to our
proper course, and to quit the said Serra : and navigating hence to
the suduest which is the wind between south and south-west : " and
when we had sailed full 300 leagues through the immensity ^ of the
sea, being then quite 3 degrees south of the equinoctial line, we
became aware of a land from which we were probably 22 * leagues
distant: whereat we marvelled : and we found that it was an island
in the middle of the sea and was very lofty, a very marvellous work
of nature : since it was no more than two leagues in length and one
in breadth : in which island, never had there been inhabitation by
any people : and it was Bad Island * for all the fleet : for Your
Magnificence must know that by the ill-counsel and steering of our
Chief Captain, he lost his ship here : since he struck with it upon a rock,
and it split open on St. Laurence's night, which was on the 10 day of
August, and went to the bottom : and there was nothing saved thereof
except the crew. It was a ship of 300 tons : in which went all the im
portance of the fleet : and when all the fleet had laboured to save it, the
Captain commanded me to make with my ship for the said island to p. 31.
seek a good anchorage, where all the ships might anchor : and as my
boat manned with 9 of my sailors was in service and aiding to
' Latin has " 12," and misunderstands the careenage.
2 Infra mezzo di e libecdo. He evidently did not quite understand the Portu
guese term, or else suduest is a typographical blunder for sudsudueste.
' Mostro (?). ¦* Latin has " duodecim." " La mala isola.

44 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
belay 1 the ships, he willed that I should not take it, and that
I should proceed without it : telling me that they should take it
to me at the island : I quitted the fleet for the island as he ordered
me, without a boat, and with the deficiency of half my crew, and
I went to the said island, which was about 4 leagues distant : in
which I found an excellent harbour, where all the ships could
anchor very safely: where I awaited my Captain and the fleet
fully 8 days, and they never came: so that we were very
discontented, and the men that had remained with me in the ship
were in such dread, that I was unable to console them : and being
thus, the eighth day we beheld a ship coming upon the sea, and
from fear that it might not see us, we weighed with our ships, "
and made for it, thinking that it brought me my boat and crew :
and when we came alongside of it, after having saluted, they told
us how the admiral's ship had gone to the bottom, and how
the crew had been saved, and that my boat and crew had
remained with the fleet, which was gone further on that sea,
which was to us so great an annoyance as Your Magnificence may
conceive, finding ourselves 1000 leagues away from Lisbon, and
on the ocean, ^ and with a Httle crew: however we set our prow*
at Fortune, and went still onward : we returned to the island, and
provided ourselves with water and timber by means of my
companion's boat: which island we found uninhabited, and it
contained many fresh and sweet waters,^ innumerable trees,
[and was] full of so many sea and land birds that they were
beyond count: and they were so tame, that they allowed them
selves to be taken with the hand : and so many of them did we
take that we loaded a boat with those animals : we saw none
[other] except very large rats and lizards with two tails, and some
snakes : and having made our provision, we departed by the wind
betwixt south and south-west, for we had an ordinance of the
1 Ligare (? bind together). 2 Ship (?). He had only one (see supra).
' Golfo. ¦< Facemmo rostro. « That is, streams or springs.

Fourth Voyage. 45
King which commanded us that whichever of the ships should
lose sight of the fleet or of its Captain, should make for the land
that we discovered in the previous voyage, at a harbour to which
we gave the name of Badia di tucti e sancti :^ and it pleased God
to give us such good weather, that in 17 days we reached land
therein, which was distant from the island full 300 leagues : where
we found neither our Captain nor any other ship of the fleet: in
which harbour we waited quite two months and 4 days: and
seeing that there came no arrival, we agreed, my partner and I, p. 32.
to run the coast : and we sailed 260 leagues further on, till "
we arrived in a harbour : where we decided to construct a
fort, and we did so: and left therein 24 Christian men whom
my partner had for us, whom she had collected from the flag
ship * that had been lost: in which port we stayed full 5 months
making the fortress and loading our ships with verzino : * as we were
unable to proceed further, because we had not men [enough] and
I was deficient of many pieces of ship-tackle. All this done, we
determined to turn our course towards Portugal, which lay in the
direction of the wind between north-east and north : ^ and we left
the 24 men who remained in the fort with provision for six
months, and [with] 12 big guns' and many other arms, and we
pacified all the land's people : of whom no mention has been made
in this voyage : not because we did not see and traffic with an
infinite number of them : for we went, quite 30 men of us, 40
leagues inland : where I saw so many things that I omit to tell
them, reserving them for my 4 Giornate. This land lies 18 degrees
south of the equinoctial line, and 37 degrees to the west of the
longitude of Lisbon, as is demonstrated by our instruments. And
all this being done, we took leave of the Christians and the land :
and began our navigation to nornordeste^ which is the wind between
' Mistake for Bahia de todos os Santos. This confusion of d and h in Vespucci's
handwriting led to a long-continued error in the maps.
= Ttdo, for tato, so far that, until. ' Nave capitana.
* Brazil-wood, or dye-wood. '^ Greco and tramontano. ' Bombarde.
' It is printed nornodeste.

46 Letter of Amerigo Vespucci.
north and north-east, with the intention of making our navigation in
a direct course to this city of Lisbon : and in jy days, after so many
travails and perils, we entered into this port on the i8 day of June
1 504. God [be] praised : where we were received very well and
beyond all belief: because all the city believed us lost: since the
other ships of the fleet had all been lost through the arrogance and
folly of our Captain, for so does God reward pride : and at present
I find myself here in Lisbon, and I know not what the King will
want to do with me, for I desire much to take repose.' The
present bearer, who is Benvenuto di Domenico Benvenuti, will tell
Your Magnificence of my condition, and of some things which, for
prolixity, have been left unsaid : for he has seen and felt them,
God be  " I have gone on compressing the letter as much as I
could, and there have been omitted to be told many natural things,*
because of avoiding prolixity. May Your Magnificence pardon me :
whom I beseech to hold me in the number of your servants : and
I recommend to you Ser Antonio Vespucci, my brother, and all
my house. I remain, praying of God that he may increase the
days of your life, and that the state of this sublime RepubUc and
the honour of Your Magnificence may be exalted, etc. Given in
Lisbon on the 4 day of September 1504.
[Your] servant AMERIGO VESPUCCI in Lisbon.

' The Latin substitutes " this messenger in the meantime commending much to
your Majesty. Americus Vesputius. In Lisbon," for all the text which follows
the word " repose."
2 Dio sia 0 di, followed by a blank. This is incomprehensible, and may be
" God be . . . ." (something not understood by the printer), or di sui occhi ....
(" with his own eyes . . . ."), which would imply that Benvenuto had accompanied
Vespucci in this voyage. ^ Things relating to natural history.

WYMAN AND SONS, PSINTERS,
GKEAT QDEEN STREET, LINCOLN's-INN FIELDS
LONDON, W.C.