650 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 



The mountains to whicb they are now confined are called Amerrique 

 range, or Sierra Amerrique ; and they have occupied for centuries the 

 richest gold area ot the region. The gold mines are numerous and are 

 worked even to this day, on a great scale, round Libertad, Santo Do- 

 mingo, and Juigalpa, where great quantities of the precious metal have 

 been and are still extracted. The name Juigalpa (Huzgalpa) means 

 the country of gold; and the name of the Mosquito coast in the Indian lan- 

 guage is Tauzgalpa, or Taguzgalpa. Galpa means gold, so that the true 

 name of the country between the Cape Gracias a Diosto the Rios Rama 

 and San Juan, instead of being Mosquito coast or Mosquita, is, accord- 

 ing to the aborigines, Gold Coast. 



Kow let us see about the first explorations by European navigators 

 of the coast of the central part of the New World. 



FIRST VOYAGE OF VESPUCCI. 



From the beginning we are confronted by the most contested of Ves- 

 pucci's voyages, May, 1497, to October, 1498. Las Casas, Herrera, 

 Charlevoix, Robertson, Tiraboschi, MuQoz, Navarette, and Washing- 

 ton Irving declare that the author of the "Quatuor Navigationes" has 

 forged his first voyage. Alexander de Humboldt, after calling his so- 

 called first voyage preteiidu, tries to show an alihi for Vespucci, who, 

 according to his opinion, was then in Sevilla and at San Lucar super- 

 intending the arming of a fleet for the third voyage of Cristoforo Co- 

 lombo, from April, 1497, to May, 1498; and accordingly in a material 

 impossibility of having then accomplished his first voyage, which fin- 

 ally he calls ^^problematic voyage of a contested date,"* admitting as 

 proved that the date of May 10 or 20, 1497, is false. 



FA. deVarnhagen is the only person who has accepted and maintained 

 by excellent arguments and proofs drawn from the three historians, 

 Pierre Martyr d'Anghiera, Oviedo and Gomara, the authenticity of the 

 first voyage. After a careful stud^^ of all the objections, I have come 

 to the same conclusion with Varuhagen, who correctly says, that " if 

 the first voyage is not true, all fall to the ground ;" and also, "if we 

 admit that Vespucci has been guilty of not telling the truth in regard 

 to such an important voyage, then we must treat him as a forger and 

 an imposter, and accept nothing of all that he says in his four voyages." 

 In fact, if the first voyage is a fable, or even only " problematic," Ves- 

 pucci is a fabulist and an imposter who can not be trusted. But I do 

 not believe it is the case. Vespucci, according to the great admiral, 

 Cristoforo Colombo, was a good man {es mucho hombre de Men), unfor- 

 tunate in his commercial enterprise, but eagerly looking out to 

 get a reputation of being a great discoverer and traveler, what I have 

 called him before, a tanjino, in Italian {Nouvelles recherches, p. 80, Paris, 

 1888.) 



* Examen critique, vol. IV, p. 292. 



