The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci, and Other Documents Illustrative of His Career. Bartolomé de las Casas

he can only have filled some very subordinate post; probably sailing as a merchant or a volunteer. 52

      Vespucci has given us two accounts of his alleged first voyage with the Portuguese, which he calls his third voyage. The Medici letter is entirely devoted to it, while it is also included in the Soderini letter. The dates and figures seldom agree in the two letters, and there is evidence throughout them of the random way in which he wrote, and of his disregard for truth or accuracy. Sailing with three vessels, on the 10th of March 1501 according to one letter, and on the 15th according to the other, they came to a place called Bezeguiche, or Beseghir, 53 on the west coast of Africa, which Vespucci identifies as Cape Verd, and places in 14° 30′ N. in one letter, and in 13° within the Tropic in the other. 54 Thence they sailed across the ocean for sixty-seven days, or sixty-three days, on a S.W. ¼ S. course for 700 leagues, reaching the coast on the 7th or 17th of August, in 5° S. latitude. In the Soderini letter there is a story of Portuguese being murdered and eaten; but in the Medici letter there is nothing but friendly intercourse with the natives, with a long account of their manners and customs, obviously as fictitious as those in the first voyage which were commented upon by Las Casas. Among the plants he saw, Vespucci gives the names of four: cannafistula, Brazil wood, cassia, and myrrh.