448 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 



wliicli could assist the curious to follow in the tracks of the 

 discoverers. 



Of such the best known instance is the account of the 

 voyages of VesjDucci, Two of these ]jerformed in the service 

 of Spain and two in the service of Portuo^al v/ere narrated 

 by that voyap;er in a letter written, as appears from internal 

 evidence, to Pier Sodei-ini, the (lonfaloniere of Florence, and 

 printed without a date, but probably in Florence in 1505. 

 This epistle received widespread attention througdi being- 

 translated into Latin as an appendix to the popular Cosmo- 

 graphies Introdnciio, St. Die, 1507. Humboldt and Varn- 

 hag'en have done much to elucidate these voyages of 

 Vespucci, and to restore the honour justly due to his name, 

 but even they have been misled by their anxiety to identify 

 too closely the landfalls and terminal points of his voyages, 

 and have in several cases altered his plain statements of the 

 latitudes observed. It is not to be M'ondered at, then, that 

 the Spanish alguazil and author Enciso, writing in 1519 

 about a voyage performed in the service of Portugal, should 

 have misunderstood its scope. Enciso is not reliable in 

 matters beyond his personal cognisance, as Varnhagen has 

 pointed out. {Vespuce et son premier Voyage, Paris, 1858, 

 p. 25.) The former speaks thus vaguely of a discovery of 

 land in 42° S. : " This Cape of Good Hope has to the west 

 the land called austral ; from the Cape of Good Hope to the 

 "tierra austral" the distance is 450 leagues ; it is in 42°; it 

 is 600 leagues from Cape St. Augustine ; it is S.E. i S. 

 from Cape St. Augustine. Nothing is known of this land 

 except what has been seen from ships, for no one has landed 

 on it.'* {Suma de Geographia, Seville, 1519, fol. liv., verso.) 

 Mercator, quoting this passage of Enciso, places a Promon- 

 torium TerrcB Aiistralis on his Magna Orbls Descriptio, 

 1569, in 42° S. and about 15° of Boavista, and this cape 

 cape came to be regarded by some geographers as an un- 

 assailably correct position. Jean Paulmier thus speaks of it 

 in his Mtmoires touchant V Estahlissement d'une Mission 

 chrestienne, p. 9. I think there can be little doubt that 

 Enciso had heard but an imperfect account of Vespucci's 

 third voyage performed in the service of Portugal, and that 

 he misplaced the land seen from the ships on the 7th of 

 April, 1502, and generally identified with the island of South 

 Georgia. {Lettera, p. 2S.) The mistake might have arisen 

 through misunderstanding Vespucci's statement that he 

 coasted 600 leagues from Cape St. Augustine, and in sup- 



