FLORENTINE NAVIGATOR FROM WHOM
AMERICA HAS DERIVED ITS NAME.

(1452-1512)

ABOUT the beginning of the thirteenth century a family called Vespucci established themselves in the City of Florence, Italy. Anastatio Vespucci was the head of the family in 1451 and lived in a stately mansion, now occupied as a hospital for the poor, near the gate of the city known as Porta del Prato. He was Secretary of the Senate, and, although he lived in a palatial dwelling, had little besides the salary attached to his high office. Upon March the ninth, 1451, the third son of this official was born, and, when three days of age, was duly christened Amerigo. He has since been called Americus.

Almost from his cradle the boy was destined to become a merchant. Yet he had a good schooling, too, and was educated at a private institution presided over by his father’s brother, a monk of the Order of San Marco, who, before the birth of Americus, had become famous as a teacher of the noble youths of the city. Here the boy was taught mathematics, astronomy, geography, and the classics. He became especially interested in geography and was ambitious to excel as a geographer.

Amerigo, or Americus, seems to have remained a student under the direction of his uncle for a number of years, yet we have no record of when it was that he followed the wishes of his father and entered upon mercantile pursuits. At any rate, he never lost his early interest in geography. In spite of his days in a counting house, he eagerly studied maps and charts. He made a collection of them, and, for one map alone, paid a sum equivalent to five hundred and fifty-five dollars.

Americus had an elder brother, Geralamo, who had left home to seek his fortune in foreign climes and had established himself in business in Asia Minor. He became immensely wealthy, and all went well with him, until one day, while he was at church, thieves broke into his house and robbed him of all that he possessed. This greatly impoverished the family, so that Americus determined to leave Florence and journey to some other country where he could retrieve his brother’s losses. He selected Spain as the scene of his future labors.

Just as Magellan deserted Portugal for Spain, so, also, Americus felt that here were fame and fortune awaiting him. Ferdinand and Isabella were then waging war upon the Moors who held the southern part of the peninsula, and, as this was regarded as a holy war, many of the young nobles from surrounding countries were in Spain fighting for the crown of Castile. The war created a demand for many articles of commerce, so Americus went to Spain as the agent for one of the Medici, a ruling family in Florence. At the beginning of the year 1492, when Columbus made his first journey of exploration to the West Indies, we find the young Italian associated with one Berardi, who, after the return of Columbus from his first voyage, was commissioned to furnish and equip four vessels to be sent to the New World at different intervals. Vespucci met Columbus, had lengthy conversations with him regarding the New World, and, from his letters, we can see that he had a very clear idea that Cuba was not the main land, as Columbus supposed it to be, but was an island.

Berardi died in December, 1495, and the management of all his affairs devolved upon the shoulders of Vespucci, who soon wearied of seeking the favors of fortune and determined to abandon mercantile life for something, “laudable and stable.” He formed, in fact, a determination to visit the various parts of the world, a determination which he soon put into execution.

A navigator, called Ojeda, was about to set sail for the West Indies with four vessels and we find that Americus became one of his crew. According to some, he was to be one of the principal pilots; according to others he was to be an agent of the King and Queen, having a voice in the direction of the ships. On May 10th., 1497, the fleet left Cadiz, and, after reaching the Canary Islands, sailed so rapidly that, at the end of twenty-seven days, it came in sight of land. This was the coast of South America.

The Spaniards anchored and attempted to hold some intercourse with the natives, but the Indians were very shy and refused to come out to visit them. So, coasting along the shore, they came upon a village, which, much to their surprise, was built after the fashion of the city of Venice, Italy. The houses were placed upon piers in the water, and had entrances by means of drawbridges, so that the inhabitants, by leaving the bridges down, could traverse the whole town without difficulty. The explorers therefore called it Venezuela, a name which has endured to the present day.

The inhabitants, at first, shut themselves up in their houses and raised the drawbridges, and, as the ships came nearer, the savages embarked in their canoes and rowed out to sea. The Spaniards made every mark of friendship and invited the Indians to come to their ships, but the brown-skinned natives hastened away, making signs for the Spaniards to wait where they were, as they would return. They came back, bringing with them sixteen young girls, who beckoned to them and made signals of peace. The Castilians were much impressed by this; so much so, in fact, that their suspicions were not aroused by the sight of numerous natives who came swimming towards the ships. Suddenly they noticed that some of the women at the doors of the huts were wailing and tearing their hair, as if in great distress.

While wondering what this meant, suddenly all the girls sprang from their canoes, and the Spaniards saw that many men—who had been heretofore hidden by them—were armed with a bow and arrows. Each native in the water had a lance in his or her hand. Hardly had the white men perceived this before they were furiously attacked.

The Spaniards vigorously defended themselves with their muskets and then made a dash for the canoes in their long boats. They overturned several, killed about twenty of the South Americans, and took two of the girls and three men prisoners. Many of the natives were wounded. The Spaniards did not burn the town, but returned to their ships, where they placed the three men, whom they had captured, in irons. Then they sailed southward, but, when morning dawned, discovered that the natives had managed to wiggle out of their irons and had jumped overboard.

Keeping their course continually along the coast, the explorers came to anchor about eighty miles from this new-world Venice, where they saw about four thousand persons gathered upon the shore. These set up a wild yelping, when the Spaniards let down their boats, and fled into the forest. The white men followed and found a camp where two natives were engaged in cooking iguanas, an animal which the early discoverers describe as a serpent. The two cooks fled, of course, but the whites disturbed nothing in the camp, in order to reassure the natives, and then leisurely returned to their boats.

Upon the following day these Indians paddled to the ships, and when they saw the two girl prisoners whom the Spaniards had taken, they became suddenly very friendly, for these girls belonged to a tribe with which they were then at war.

“We have only come here for the fishing,” said one of them, a chief. “We live far back in the country and wish you to journey to see us as our friends.”

The invitation was received with great satisfaction by the whites.

“They importuned us so much,” says Vespucci in his narrative of these events, published some years afterwards, “that, having taken counsel, twenty-three of us Christians concluded to go with them, well prepared, and with firm resolution to die manfully, if such was to be our fate.”

So, the Spaniards journeyed inland, remained three days at the fishing camp, and then set out for the interior, where they visited so many villages that they were nine days on the journey, and their comrades on board the vessels grew very uneasy about them. The Indians, in fact, showed them great attention, and when they were about to return to the ships, insisted upon carrying them along in hammocks, slung upon the shoulders of strong and willing porters. When the explorers arrived at the shore, their boats were almost swamped by the numbers of savages who wished to accompany them, while swarms of natives who could not get into the boats, swam alongside to the ships. So many came aboard, that the mariners were quite troubled, fearing that they might make a sudden and unexpected attack. A cannon was fired off to impress the natives with the power of the explorers. At the explosion of the piece, many leaped into the sea, like frogs plunging into a marsh. Those who remained seemed to be unafraid and took leave of the mariners with many demonstrations of affection.

The Spaniards had now been thirteen months at sea, so their thoughts turned towards home. It was therefore decided to careen their vessels on the beach, in order to calk and pitch them anew, as they leaked badly, and then they would return to Spain. The Castilians made a breastwork of their boats and their casks, and placed their artillery so that it would play upon any enemies who might advance; then, having unloaded and lightened their ships, they hauled them on land to make much needed repairs.

No attack was made by the natives. Instead of this the South Americans brought them food, begging them to assist them in punishing a very cruel tribe of people who came to their country, every year, from the sea, and killed many of their warriors. They afterwards would eat them. Against these enemies they said that they were unable to defend themselves. When the Spaniards promised to march against the cannibals, no words could express their gratitude. Many wished to go with them, but the whites wisely rejected such offers, permitting only seven to accompany them.

The Spaniards sailed in a northeasterly direction for seven days, and then came upon some islands, many of which were peopled. They cast anchor before one of them and lowered the boats; but, as they did so, they saw about four hundred men and women gather on the beach; the men armed with bows, arrows, and lances, their naked bodies painted with various colors. As the Castilians approached to within bowshot of the shore, the savages sent a flight of arrows at them in an effort to prevent them from landing.

The cannon were therefore loaded and fired. As some of the Indians fell dead, the rest retreated. The Castilians, with a cheer, hastily landed and fell upon the savages, who put up a stiff fight. The battle raged for about two hours without a decisive victory upon either side; some of the Indians were killed and some of the whites were injured. At last, tired out, the explorers were glad enough to return to their vessels.

Next day the Spaniards landed again, and, under the leadership of Vespucci, had a bloody battle with the cannibals. The natives were at length badly worsted, were driven to their village, and this was burned to the ground. Only one of the explorers was killed, while twenty-two were wounded. Many of the Indians were burned in the ruins of their thatched huts.

Well satisfied with the outcome of this affair, the mariners now set sail for Spain, with the plaudits of the savages, whom they had assisted, ringing in their ears. They arrived in October, 1498, after an absence of about nineteen months, and were well received by the King and Queen, for they brought considerable gold, jewels, and skins of strange beasts and birds. Vespucci was highly pleased; he had been the first to visit the shore of South America and had really done something great in exploration,—his dream for many years.

Shortly after his return, a second expedition was prepared for a journey to this new-found country, headed by one Ojeda, a Spaniard of some wealth and influence. A fleet of four vessels was equipped, and the latter part of the Spring of 1499 saw them ready for sea. The reputation of Vespucci as a geographer was such as to make him the very man needed for this particular voyage, and, although at first disinclined to leave home at so early a date, he finally yielded to the entreaties of Ojeda, and joined the party.

They set sail from Cadiz in May, 1499, and twenty-four days later saw land. The shore was low and so densely covered with small aromatic trees that the explorers concluded to return to their ships and try some other spot. After coasting along in a southerly direction they came to the mouth of a great river, and, having manned their boats with twenty well-armed adventurers, entered the stream and ascended it for more than fifty miles. But the land was as low, up-stream, as it was at the mouth, so the reconnoitering party floated down-stream to the fleet again. Anchors were raised, the ships stood out to sea, and, sailing in a southerly direction, encountered the great equatorial current which sweeps along the coast of Brazil.

“We could scarcely make any headway against it,” says Amerigo, in his description of this journey published some years later. “Seeing that we made no progress, or but very little, and also seeing the danger to which we were exposed, we determined to turn our prows to the northwest.”

Ten degrees north of the equator, the explorers again saw land, and, drawing nearer, found that this was an island. Many of the inhabitants were gathered upon the shore; but, when the pale-faced strangers landed, they took fright and ran into the woods. Fortunately two were captured and acted as envoys, so, after a time, the rest allowed the Spaniards to approach and speak with them. They were cannibals, eating the bodies of all those whom they killed or captured in war, and had the heads and bones of those who had been eaten piled up in a big heap. Much disgusted at what they had seen, the Spaniards sailed away.

Drowsing along the coast of this island they came to another village of the same tribe, where they were hospitably received and were fed by the brown-skinned inhabitants. But they moved onward, sailed westward, and soon anchored near one of the mouths of the Orinoco River, where was a large village close to the sea, the inhabitants of which regaled the mariners with three different kinds of wine, and presented them with eleven large pearls, more than a hundred smaller ones, and a small quantity of gold. Here the navigators remained seventeen days, feasting upon fruits and the savory acorns with which the place abounded. Then they continued along the coast, stopping occasionally to hold intercourse with the natives.

These, for the most part, were unfriendly, and the Spaniards had many a battle with the South Americans.

Vespucci says: “Many times not more than sixteen of us fought with two thousand of them, and, in the end defeated them, killing many and robbing their houses. We were obliged to fight with a great many people, but we always had the victory.”

Thus they progressed upon their way, fighting, trading, exploring, until their stock of provisions became so nearly exhausted that it was impossible for them to proceed further. Their ships, too, were sea-worn and leaky, so that the pumps could scarcely keep them free from water.

Other Spanish adventurers had founded a city called Hispaniola, not long before this, situated upon the eastern coast of Panama. The Ojeda expedition was now about three hundred and sixty miles from the point, but it was decided to sail thither in order to repair the ships and secure food, such as Europeans were accustomed to. After a voyage of several weeks, the Spanish caravels anchored in the harbor of the city founded by their countrymen, where they remained for two months.

Refreshed by their stay at Hispaniola, the Spaniards now cruised for some time among the numberless small islands north of Hayti, but the provisions which they had secured soon began to give out; they were reduced to six ounces of bread and three small measures of water a day for each man; and the ships began to leak again, in spite of all the caulking which had been done at Hispaniola. The leaders of the expedition, therefore, decided to capture some slaves for the purpose of selling to wealthy grandees in Spain, and to return home.

This harsh resolution was well carried out. Two hundred and thirty-two unfortunate natives were torn from their island home and their pleasant, indolent life, and were taken on board the ships. It was a dastardly thing to do, but men in these times were like the German invaders of Belgium in ours,—they were brutes. The prows of the four caravels were now turned towards Spain, and, after an uneventful voyage, they arrived at their place of departure, June 8th., 1500, after an absence of about thirteen months. Of the fifty-seven men who had set out upon the expedition, two had been killed by the Indians, the rest returned home. Thirty-two of the slaves died upon the journey across the Atlantic, the rest were sold to the Spanish grandees.

Amerigo wrote freely of the journey to South America and his letters had a wide circulation, for he was the first newspaper correspondent: the forerunner of the modern Richard Harding Davis-es and Frank G. Carpenters. By means of these epistles he gained a wide celebrity and his name became more closely connected with the New World than that of Columbus. Such being the case, it is no wonder that people began to call these new possessions after the man who wrote so graphically of what he had seen there. Amerigo Vespucci told of a land which came to be known as the land of Americus, or America. It should really have been called Columbia, after Christopher Columbus, but Columbus did not happen to have the facility for writing interesting letters.

Amerigo, greatly pleased with what he had accomplished, was resting quietly at Seville, when an invitation came from the King of Portugal to have him visit him, and, when he arrived at Lisbon, the King had much to say to him.

“Would he undertake another expedition to the new world under the Portuguese banner?” Yes, he would.

No sooner said than done. On May 13th, 1501, Vespucci left on another journey with three armed caravels. They ran south, touched at the Canary Islands, and then, through fierce and violent tempests, plowed towards the coast of South America. This they reached at length, and, coasting southward, frequently landed on the shore, where they had intercourse with the natives, most of whom were cannibals.

Here the Spaniards remained for several months, then, having found no minerals of value in the country, although there was a great abundance of valuable woods of every kind, they decided to return to Portugal. All the vessels were stocked with food and with water for six months, their prows were turned eastward, and, bidding the cannibals of South America a fond adieu, the explorers headed for home. After a stormy passage, and, after a voyage of fifteen months, the adventurous navigators again sailed into the harbor of Lisbon, where they were received with much joy. Florence received the accounts of the discoveries of her illustrious son with much pride, and honors were bestowed upon those members of his family who lived in the city of the Arno.

Amerigo Vespucci was now a popular idol. He had been the discoverer of the method of obtaining longitude at sea, by observing the conjunction of the moon with one of the planets, and his observations and enumeration of the stars in the southern heavens were of great value to mariners who came after him. He was far in advance of most other learned men of the age in his knowledge of the sciences of astronomy and geometry.

Believing that Amerigo would have reached India by way of the southwest, had not his last voyage been interrupted by the severe storm which he had encountered, the King of Portugal lost no time in fitting out another expedition. Six vessels were therefore prepared, Amerigo being placed in command of one of them, and recognized as the scientific authority of the squadron. The fleet set sail again for that country of which all Europe was talking and speculating.

This expedition was similar to those which preceded it. The vessels met with severe storms; saw cannibals, brightly plumaged birds, and islands of palm groves and chattering parrots. The Spaniards built a fortress upon one of the many harbors which they entered; then, as all but one ship had been lost by shipwreck, the vessel which Vespucci commanded sailed back to Lisbon, arriving on June 18th., 1504. He was received as one risen from the dead, for the whole city had given him up for lost.

Thus ended the last voyage of the famous Florentine. Perhaps disheartened by the unfortunate result of his cruise, he abandoned the idea of again going to sea, and devoted himself to writing an account of what he had already accomplished. Although younger by four years than Columbus, when the great Admiral had set sail upon his first voyage to the unknown West, Amerigo decided to rest upon laurels already won, and to never again tempt fame and fortune in an expedition to the shores of South America. He spent his declining years in writing a full and graphic account of his many expeditions to the New World, and, on February the twenty-second, 1512, the spirit of the astronomer and geographer passed to a better sphere.

For many years after its discovery there seems to have been no effort to give a name to the New World; indeed, it was so long supposed to be a part of Asia that this was thought to be unnecessary. In a Latin book, printed at Strassburg, Germany, in 1509—the work of an Italian called Ilacomilo—it was suggested that the country be called America, as it was discovered by Amerigo (Americus).

Not in the lifetime of the great Vespucci was this name so used. As late as the year 1550, North America was called Terra Florida on the Spanish maps, while Brazil was the name given to the coast of South America, where much dye-wood was obtained; the title coming from the Portuguese word braza, meaning live coal, or glowing fire. Both the names of America and Brazil were applied to the shore of South America, until, after a while, the second of these names was confined to that part of the coast where the valuable dye-wood was obtained, while the other name was attached to the part north and south of it. From this it was but a short step to speaking of all of the great southern peninsula as America, and gradually this name was given to the entire western continent.

Somewhere in Spain or Italy, Amerigo Vespucci sleeps in an unknown grave, but his epitaph is the name of a double continent: rich, populous, teeming with all things valuable.

Of noble thought, splendid mind, and facile pen, the memory of the great Florentine geographer should be revered and respected for all time.