, and (nevertheless, those people) ate them.

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 he
counted. What shall we say of others (such as) birds? which are so
numerous, 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.

[1] Americus Vespucius was born in Florence in 1452 and died in
Seville in 1512. He was the son of a notary in Florence, was
educated by a Dominican friar and became a clerk in one of the
commercial houses of the Medici. By this house he was sent to
Spain in 1490. He remained some years in Seville, where he became
connected with the house which fitted out the second expedition of
Columbus.

Vespucius claimed to have been four times in America, first in
May, 1497; second, in May, 1499; third, in May, 1501; fourth, in
June, 1503. In writing of the first expedition he says his ship
reached a coast "which we thought to be that of the continent,"
giving date. If this assumption be correct, and the dates correct,
they would show that he reached the continent of North America a
week or two before the Cabots made their discovery farther north,
but this contention has n