NOTES. Cl 



niloquencein Ihe accounts addressed to the Gonfalionere Piero Soderini, to Pier 

 'Francesco de' Medici, and to Duke Renatus II. of Lorraine, to draw upon 

 himself the attention of posterity more than he deserved, is most decisively 

 shewn hy the lawsuit which the fiscal authorities conducted from 1508 to 

 1527 against the heirs of Columbus, for the purpose of withdrawing from 

 them the rights and privileges which had heen ceded by the crown to the 

 Admiral in 1492. Amerigo entered the service of the state as Piloto mayor 

 in the same year that the lawsuit was commenced. He lived at Seville during 

 four years of its proceedings, in which it was to be decided what parts of the 

 New Continent were first seen by Columbus. The most miserable reports 

 found a hearing, and were made matter of accusation by the fiscal ; witnesses 

 were sought for at St. Domingo and all the Spanish ports, at Moguer, Palos 

 and Seville, and all this under the eyes of Amerigo Vespucci and his nephew 

 Juan. The Mundus Novus, printed by Johann Otmer at Augsburg, 1504, 

 the Raccolta 8i Vicenza (Mondo novo e paesi novamente retrovati da Alberico 

 Vespuzio Fiorentino, of Alessandro Zorzi, 1507,) usually attributed to Fra- 

 canzio di Montalboddo, and the Quatuor Navigationes of Martin Waldsee- 

 miiller (Hylacomylus) had already appeared ; since 1520 maps were extant 

 having in them the name of America, which had been proposed by Hylacomylns 

 in 1507, and praised by Joachim Vadius in a letter addressed to Rudolphus 

 Agricola from Vienna in 1512 ; and yet the person to whom extensively cir- 

 culated writings in Germany, France, and Italy, attributed the discovery in 

 1497 of the Terra firma of Paria, was neither cited by the fiscal as a witness 

 in the proceedings which had begun in 1508, and were continued for 19 years, 

 nor was he even spoken of as opposed to Columbus, or as having preceded 

 him. Why, after the death of Amerigo Vespucci (22d Feb. 1512 in Seville) 

 was not his nephew Juan Vespucci called upon to give evidence, (as were Mar- 

 tin Alonso and Vicente Yaflez Pinzon, Juan de la Cosa and Alonso de Hojeda,) 

 that he might testify that the coast of Paria, to which great value was at- 

 tached not as "part of the main land of Asia," but on account of the produc- 

 tive pearl fishery in its vicinity, had been already landed on before Columbus, 

 before August (1498) by Amerigo ? The disregard of this most important tes- 

 timony would be inexplicable if Amerigo Vespucci had ever boasted of having 

 made a voyage of discovery in 1497, or if any serious value had at that time 

 been attached to the confused dates and misprints of the " Quatuor Naviga- 

 tiones." The diiferent parts of the great and still unprinted work of a friend 

 of Columbus, Fra Bartholome de las Casas (the Historia general de las In- 

 dias), were as we know with certainty written at very different periods. It 



