22 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
acter of Vespucci, who is hailed on the one hand as a 
gifted discoverer, and on the other as a lying adventurer. 
Possibly he was only a very ordinary person writing 
with the uncritical carelessness of an amateur on matters 
which interested him, but which he did not fully under- 
stand. Anyhow his letters are all that remain as a record 
of the expeditions and from them we learn that on reach- 
ing the coast of the New World between 5 0 and 8° S. 
the first expedition in 1501 found that Santa Cruz was 
no island but the coast of Brazil, evidently part of a 
great continent, which was followed far to the south. 
Vespucci declared that he had reached 52 0 S., being 
driven by a great storm, and there discovered a bleak in- 
hospitable land with steep cliffs, rendering a landing im- 
possible, but the weather was too foggy to admit of fur- 
ther exploration. Unfortunately for himself Vespucci 
made the remark that at that latitude the night was fif- 
teen hours long ; but for a night of fifteen hours on April 
2nd (his assigned date) it is necessary to be in latitude 
72 0 S., and he certainly was not there. It seems most 
probable that the land seen was some part of the Pata- 
gonian coast. 
O11 the second voyage of the Portuguese (in 1503) 
their instructions were to follow the coast of Brazil 
southward and search for a passage to the west in order 
to reach the much desired goal of the spice islands of 
the Moluccas; but it was unsuccessful and reached no 
farther south than 20° S. 
An interesting expedition followed the second voyage 
of Vespucci, the first in which a non-Iberian nation took 
part. A Norman noble the Sieur de Gonneville being at 
Lisbon was fired with the stories of the wealth of the 
Far East, and, securing the services of two Portuguese 
