s, it was like the crafty old king to send them off to scour the
seas his exacting "Admiral" claimed to control. Thereafter--whether
Pinzon and Vespucci sailed together or not--their voyages alternated
along the coast of South America, first one and then the other, and in
1505-1506 an expedition was actually projected, in which the king
intended both should share. It did not sail, because the Portuguese
objected, as its object was the exploration of the Brazilian coast
south of the Tropic of Capricorn, to all which the great rivals of the
Spaniards then made claim.

A seeming confirmation of this voyage is found in the map Juan de la
Cosa made, in the year 1500, after he had been in company with Ojeda
and Vespucci to the coast of pearls. He was with Columbus, in 1494,
when the Admiral forced all his men to swear that Cuba was, to the
best of their belief, part of the Asian continent. Yet, within six
years, La Cosa depicts it on his map as an island--and that was before
Ocampo had proved it one, by sailing around it, in 1508. It is thought
that La Cosa obtained his information as to the insular character of
Cuba from Vespucci, when they voyaged together on the coast of Terra
Firma, which we now know as the northern shores of South America.

Admitting, still, the critics say, that Vespucci made the voyage he
claimed, with Pinzon or with some one else, in 1497-1498, how does
that affect the claim of Columbus? It does not affect it at all, for,
though Vespucci may have discovered the continent a few months
previous to his rival--and he never put forth the claim that he did
so--Columbus, by his voyages of 1492 and 1493, led the way thither. If
Vespucci, as some have asserted, claimed to have sailed in 1497, in
order to establish a priority of discovery, he did it in a very
bungling manner, and at a time when it might easily have been refuted,
so many of his companions were then living. Besides, though his name
was bestowed upon the newly discovered continent--perhaps as a
consequence of the writing of this very letter--it was done without
his knowledge and without the remotest suggestion of such a thing from
him. This should be made clear: that Amerigo Vespucci had no thought
of depriving his friend, Christopher Columbus, of a single leaf of his
laurels, hard-won and well-deserved as he knew them to be.

There is no doubt whatever that Vespucci made a voyage in 1499-1500,
along with Alonzo de Ojeda and the great pilot Juan