668 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 



anj^ reason for it. Muiioz was convinced that some intentional falsifi- 

 cation existed in regard to the voyages of Vespucci; and he was as well 

 as the other historian, M. F. de Navarrete, a believer in some sort of 

 fraud on the part of the Florentine. Alexander de Humboldt not know- 

 ing what to do with the double r, thought it might be *' a proof of eru- 

 dition " on the part of Vespucci, quoting the opinion of Professor von 

 der Hagen of Berlin that " when in Italian Vespucci uses the double 

 r in signing Amerrigo, it is by assimilation of two consonants, it is 

 Amerrigo for Amelrigo (name of a bishop of Como in 865)." The main 

 difficulty in accepting such an explanation is that Vespucci did not 

 use it when he wrote in Italian and to Italians, as is proved by his let- 

 ter of Mantova, but only to Spaniards and in Spanish. After the many 

 researches of all sorts made in the archives and in published books and 

 documents, it is certain that the spelling of Amerigo with two r's is 

 subsequent to the christening of St. Die in 1507. It is the most dam- 

 aging discovery made against Vespucci, which can not be satisfactorily 

 explained in any other way than to bring his Christian name as near as 

 possible to the Indian name of Amerrique. 



SCHOENER VERSUS VESPUCCI. 



By a strange occurrence, not rare however in the first discoveries of 

 lands and aborigines of the new continent, the name of the Indian tribe 

 and of their country was not printed in any pamphlet or book or writ- 

 ten on any map that we know of. It escaped the researches of all the 

 Americanists; even of Alexander de Humboldt, and it seems that 

 ev^erything conspired to make good the triple errors of Jean Basin, 

 accepted and consolidated by Vespucci as much as he safely could. 



It may be that Vespucci wrote on some manuscript map Tierra di 

 Amerriques, and that it was read Tierra di Amerigo, as Schoener has 

 accused him ot doing in 1535. Johannes Scboener, born in 1477, at 

 Carlstadt, Lower Franconia, in Bavaria, died at Nuremberg in 1547. 

 He was an excellent geographer and well acquainted with all the dis- 

 coveries made during his time, as is amply proved by Dr. Franz Wieser, 

 in his important book: '' Magalhaes-Strasse und Austral-Continent auf 

 den Globen des Johannes Schoener," Innspruck, 1881. Certainly Schoe- 

 ner can not be considered as a detractor of Vespucci. He seems to 

 have acted with great honesty of purpose, saying only the truth of what 

 he heard about him ; for in 1515, in his " Luculentissima," etc., he is 

 very friendly to Vespucci, saying that he discovered the New World in 

 1497 and that the name America was generally accepted and already 

 in great use. But when he was convinced of the great injustice done 

 to Cristoforo Colombo, the true discoverer, lie did not hesitate to say 

 that he knew tliat Vespucci had written his name upon some maps. 



There is no doubt that maps made by Vespucci existed at that 

 time ; for we know of their existence through his contemporaries Pierre 

 Martyr d'Anghiera and his nephew and heir, Juan Vespucci. Only, as 

 I have said before, it may be that instead of writing Tierra di Amerigo 



