Chapter 1: Two Enigmas in the Orient. c1492–1510.

Some men are made commonplace by close scrutiny; under the same eye others become enigmas.

To the Italians he was Cristoforo Colombo; to the Portuguese, Cristovao Colombo; to the Spanish, Cristobal Colon; to the French, Christophe Colomb; and to the English, Christopher Columbus. When he made his first appearance in Lisbon in the 1470s, the ruddy-haired young man claimed to be from the Italian city-state of Genoa. Genovese archives support the claim, but many historians yet question his ancestry. Perhaps he came from one of Genoa's Mediterranean colonies, like Corsica, or Chios, where his surname is still common. Others maintain that he was neither Genovese by birth nor by blood. Of the many surviving documents penned by Columbus, all but one are written in articulate Castilian Spanish, with a spattering of words from other Iberian dialects; the only sample written in Italian is riddled with grammatical errors. So perhaps he was from an outlying Spanish region, like Galicia or Catalonia, recently subjugated by the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. In his own lifetime, scurrilous rumors oft questioned his ancestry – the most damaging suggesting he was a Jew from Majorca, come to wreak havoc in Christian realms.

Columbus could not have beached himself upon more favorable shores. In the 15th century, Portuguese fleets traded across the Mediterranean Sea, explored the west coast of Africa, and ventured out to distant islands in the Atlantic Ocean, like Madeira and the Azores. Whatever voyages Columbus made in the service of the Portuguese crown are undocumented. But by middle age he had traversed the Mediterranean – skirting the coastlines of Southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor. He had voyaged out into the Atlantic Ocean at least as far as Ireland, and maybe on to Iceland.

Columbus scoured works of classical scholarship and medieval literature, finding descriptions that piqued his curiosity. Plato wrote of Atlantis and other lost civilizations in the Atlantic Ocean; Aristotle suggested a western crossing would lead to Asia; Ptolemy described a spherical world, some 24,000 miles around at the equator; Viking Sagas mentioned lands beyond the western ocean, peopled by dark-skinned natives; Marco Polo detailed his journey overland to the palaces of the Far East. Even within the Holy Bible, Columbus found evidence to support his worldview. He was sure the world was round – and that by travelling west from Europe he must reach Asia. Columbus offered to lead an expedition across the Atlantic, opening to Europe all the gold and spices of the Orient. In the royal courts of Portugal, England, and France, his offers were refused. He received a warmer reception at the Spanish court in Santa Fe, an encampment that the Catholic monarchs had dedicated to the Holy Faith while they besieged the last Islamic city in Western Europe, Granada.

In the new year of 1492 Queen Isabella of Castile (1474–1504) and her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon (1479–1515), stood poised to change the course of Western history. On January 2, the last sultan of Granada, Boabdil, descended from the splendorous Moorish palace of the Alhambra and surrendered the keys to the city to Isabella and Ferdinand, declaring, 'These are the keys to paradise.' The fall of Granada completed the Christian Reconquest of Spain after eight centuries of Islamic occupation. In March the Catholic monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree expelling all Jews from their realms; to enforce Catholic beliefs, and stamp out every heresy, they granted extra powers to the Spanish Inquisition. Columbus had watched the Spanish banners rise over the old Moorish palace but had to wait until April before the Catholic monarchs summoned him to court to receive their decision: they would provide him three ships in which to sail westward.

On August 3, 1492, Columbus embarked from the Spanish port of Palos, leading the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria south-southwest to the Canary Islands, an Atlantic archipelago recently brought under Spanish control. After taking on the last of his provisions, Columbus left terra firma and the known world behind. What lay ahead remained a matter of conjecture. None among his crew expected to sail off the edge of the world; some perhaps feared the ocean was endless; many anticipated finding Asia under the setting sun; all hoped to receive 10,000 maravedis annually, as pledged by the Catholic monarchs to the first man to sight land.

Relying on dead reckoning and experimenting with celestial navigation, Columbus led his three ships westward across open ocean, borne swiftly by favorable winds. In the middle of the Atlantic he deemed driftwood and migratory birds proof of nearby land; others onboard mistook hazy horizons and low-lying cloudforms for islands. Boundless ocean water quashed each dim prospect of land. To avoid alarming his crewmen about the actual distance travelled – and their true distance from known land – Columbus hid his logbook and began falsifying records in another. As his crewmen's grumbles grew louder, he knew he must find land soon or face mutiny. On October 10 he promised that if land weren't found within a few days he would turn back to Spain. Good fortune spared him this indignity. A few hours before sunrise on October 12, 1492, perched in the crow's nest of the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana sighted a speck on the horizon and shouted, 'Tierra!' Columbus gave thanks to God and dedicated the land to Jesus Christ. Disavowing Triana's claims to the 10,000 maravedis, Columbus later claimed that he had first seen a light on the horizon hours earlier. 1

After the sunrise of October 12 Columbus stepped ashore on a sandy, palm-strewn island. Flying the royal standard of Ferdinand and Isabella, he claimed possession of the land for the Spanish monarchs. Brown-skinned natives painted black, white, and red, examined the fair-skinned strangers, running their fingers over elaborate European attire and armor. Inquisitive natives paddled canoes or swam out to examine the Spanish ships; some wondered if the enormous vessels had descended from the sky. To win their favor and open trade, Columbus gave them glass beads, hawk bells, and other trifles. The natives offered strange new fruits and vegetables but had little else to trade. Fixed upon finding the gold and spices of mainland Asia, Columbus weighed anchor once more.

Every day Columbus plotted new islands on his charts. To most he gave Christian and European names – either ignorant or dismissive of extant native names – setting a precedent of ongoing influence in transatlantic lands. To the wider region, Columbus did and did not give a new name. By his reckonings he had arrived in Asia, perhaps China; or Japan; or India and all the islands east thereof. These lands already had a name in common usage among Europeans, a name loosely applied to all lands in the East: The Indies or 'Las Indias.' By thus referring to all the lands he had discovered, Columbus fixed upon them a name wholly inappropriate to their geographical position. More than the land, the inhabitants were to bear the legacy of his misnomer: for centuries to come, the natives of two continents would be known as Indians.

The condition of these Indians perplexed Columbus. He had expected to find the cultivated civilizations of China and Japan but here the people were naked, living in simple tribal communities. He questioned them about the Great Khan and the peoples described by Marco Polo, but they could tell him nothing of Xanadu. They instead fed him rumors of semi-mythical islands where the men had not human faces, but the snouts of dogs; islands where a race of Cyclops reigned; and islands inhabited only by women, where once a year men came from neighboring islands to copulate. Columbus was ambivalent about such exotic and monstrous tales: Marco Polo had recorded similar chimeras in his travels. Giving credit to old sea fables, Columbus would mistake manatees for mermaids – adjudging them 'not half as beautiful as they are painted.' Some ghastly stories proved true. Natives expressed their dread of a certain seafaring tribe, the 'Caribes' or 'Canibas,' who butchered islanders and ate their flesh; from the name of this tribe 'cannibalism' entered European languages. 2

Columbus heard of a large land to the south, whose description resembled that of Japan. But upon reaching the littoral days later, he thought it more probably China, concluding 'I am certain that this is the mainland.' 3 Five weeks later, he was in doubt again, having arrived at another land to the east, whose fine harbors and verdant mountains held him in awe. Which was China and which Japan he could not now conclude; without stopping to think about the audacity of his actions, he drove another cross into the ground and claimed possession of the land in the name of Spain. 4

On Christmas Day, 1492, the Santa Maria ran aground and had to be abandoned. Columbus believed it was God's will that he should establish a settlement on site. From the ship's wreckage and cargo, he oversaw construction of the first European settlement in the Indies. 5 Armed with blades of Toledo steel, and muskets loaded with lead balls, 38 Spaniards were left to man the fort. Columbus expected the surrounding population of Indians to obey them, 'with love and fear.'

In January of 1493, the Nina and Pinta re-embarked for Europe with a sampling of wonders from the Indies: half a dozen Indians, traces of gold, and unknown crops like maize and sweet potato. Seeking to improve their sleeping quarters, some of the mariners trialed native sleeping nets, called hammocks. The Spanish had also acquired the dried leaves of a strange plant prized by Indians; finding its taste repulsive, and not knowing what else to do with it, most crewmen had cast the tobacco overboard.

Arriving in Spain in March, Columbus sent glowing reports to Queen Isabella and received a warm reception at King Ferdinand's court in Barcelona. The prospect of converting Indians to Christianity and dominating lucrative trade routes to the Orient excited imperial hopes. But there remained skeptical voices at court. Peter Martyr, an Italian-born scholar, held fast to a vision of the world much larger than that imagined by Columbus. Like most 15th century geographers, Martyr subscribed to Ptolemy's view of a globe whose circumference was approximately 24,000 miles at the equator. Prodding Columbus and his co-pilots for precise details of the journey, Martyr was confounded by their responses. If they had struck land only 3000 miles west of Lisbon, then they had not seen the Far East. They must have seen, according to Martyr, a 'Western Hemisphere.'

Although Martyr's opinion rested upon centuries of scientific theory, Columbus stirred enough excitement to silence the science. He insisted he had seen the Indies, trodden the soil of the Indies, and brought back dark-skinned Indians as proof. Of what value, by comparison, were vague speculations made by men who had never set foot outside of Europe? His worldview, at present, prevailed.

Confirmed as 'Admiral of the Ocean Sea' and 'Viceroy of the Indies,' Columbus prepared to return across the Atlantic, commanding an armada of 17 ships. Returning as a colonizer in 1493, he brought over some 1200 men, along with horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and other species foreign to the Indies. He also cast himself as the spearhead of a new evangelical crusade to bring Christianity to the Indians. He had always sailed under the patronage of his namesake, St Christopher, protector of sailors and travelers. Now he saw greater meaning in his Christian name of Christopher, literally as a Christ-carrier. Dotting the maps of the Caribbean with the names of Holy Saints, Columbus set a pattern of religious propaganda on the maps. 6 Despite the Christianity espoused in his placenames, Columbus showed the duplicity of his own faith in his treatment of Indians. In early encounters he had shown tolerance of native customs, but his attitudes hardened after his return to Fort Navidad – where he found the mutilated bodies of its Spanish defenders. At his command, increasing numbers of Indians were imprisoned or executed. Although Columbus declared his intent to convert all heathens, he frequently opposed the baptism of those he could sell as slaves.

Columbus directed the further exploration of the largest island discovered in his first voyage, seeking proof he had found Asia. Although the explorations proved inconclusive, he prevailed upon all those with him to swear oaths that the long island was in fact a peninsula of the Chinese mainland. Any officer who claimed otherwise would be fined 10,000 maravedis; lesser seamen would be given 100 lashes apiece; and no man who broke the oath would keep his tongue. In 1496 Columbus returned to Europe to reaffirm that he had reached Asia. In his absence, he entrusted the governance of the Indies to his brothers, Bartolome and Diego. In such ways did the Admiral ensure that his visions of the Indies prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic. 7

Back in Spain, Columbus presented Ferdinand and Isabella with a selection of Caribbean delicacies; the king was especially enamored of the pineapple, which he declared his favorite fruit. 8

The Catholic monarchs also confirmed to Columbus that by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas – backed by the authority of the Pope – they had agreed to draw a line through the Atlantic: Portugal could claim what was east and Spain could claim what was west. Since all his discoveries in the Indies lay west of this line, Columbus was unbothered. But whilst publicizing his second voyage and promoting a third to come, Columbus was alarmed to learn of a new transatlantic voyage made by an Italian compatriot, Giovanni Caboto. Called John Cabot by his English sponsors, he had sailed west from Bristol in 1497 and struck an unknown land in cooler climes. Cabot was confident he had reached Asia, though he could offer no proof to match his assertions. Returning with a larger fleet in the spring of 1498, Cabot was now in competition with Columbus for the treasures of the Indies. It would be a short-lived competition, though Columbus could not have known this when he embarked on his third voyage in the summer of the same year. 9

In late July 1498, after a southerly course stalled his flotilla in the doldrums, Columbus sighted three peaks of another large island. 10 Farther south, he skirted a verdant coast from which a great river delta flushed freshwater miles out into the sea. Columbus considered but dismissed the idea that the river flowed from deep within an uncharted landmass. That he might fit this discovery into his worldview, he concluded instead that he had found one of the four great Biblical rivers, coursing from the same source as the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Ganges. This then, he concluded, must be the terrestrial paradise: The Garden of Eden.

Despite his long search for the mainland, Columbus chose not to explore this find further. Had he followed the coastline south, he could have charted the entire east coast of the southern continent; had he followed the coastline west, he would have reached the narrow isthmus where the northern continent joins the southern. Columbus instead turned north, across open sea. His reasons for doing so may be traced to concurrent ideas he had of the world. He thought that it was pear-shaped:

'I have come to the following conclusions concerning the world: that it is not round as they describe it, but the shape of a pear, which is round everywhere except at the stalk, where it juts out a long way; or that it is like a round ball, on part of which stands something like a woman's nipple.'

He later continued:

'I do not hold that the earthly Paradise has the form of a rugged mountain, as it is shown in pictures, but that it lies at the summit of what I have described as the stalk of a pear, and that by gradually approaching it one begins, while still at a great distance, to climb towards it. As I have said, I do not believe that anyone can ascend to the top.'

Columbus thus turned away from what might have been his greatest discovery. For such reasons are new worlds left uncharted.

Returning to the island colonies that he was supposed to be governing, Columbus found colonists in open revolt against his brothers' governance. Spaniards were hanging from the gallows, while others languished in prison awaiting the noose; Indians were executed without the formalities of trial and imprisonment. Spanish colonists were succumbing to malaria, yellow fever, and a little-known illness called the 'Spanish disease,' or the 'Italian disease,' but probably originating in the Indies: syphilis. Indians were dying from smallpox, influenza, and other diseases brought from Europe. Outbreaks of violence between colonists and natives further added to the death toll. The royal emissary Francisco de Bobadilla found abundant evidence to condemn the entire administration – sending the brothers Columbus back to Spain in chains.

Queen Isabella had Columbus released soon after his arrival in Spain, but she chastised him for his cruel treatment of the Indians and stripped him of his monopoly over the Indies. While Columbus was detained by affairs in Spain, his former Spanish co-pilots explored the Indies and brought back independent reports of transatlantic lands. Equally frustrating were reports of recent Portuguese voyages. In 1497–98, Vasco de Gama had led a fleet around the southern tip of Africa, then northeast through the Indian Ocean to India. De Gama brought back large quantities of gold and spices – and reports of the Indies unlike those of Columbus. In 1500, another Portuguese fleet under Pedro Cabral was sent back to India via the same route. Blown off-course by Atlantic winds, they struck land in the west which – according to Columbus – was part of the Indies.

Correctly deducing that the two Indies were geographically unrelated, the Portuguese instead returned to an easterly passage across the Atlantic, around Africa, and on to India. 11

In 1502 the Catholic monarchs recalled Bobadilla and installed as the new governor of the Indies Nicolas de Ovando. Although stripped of his authority over the budding Spanish colonies, Columbus was free to make a fourth and final voyage across the Atlantic. Reaching the Caribbean in June 1502, 12 with four ships under his command, he was beset by a series of violent tempests. His flotilla was tossed by tide and scattered by wind, and his skills as a navigator were rendered negligible by high seas and heavy cloud cover. In July, while he sought solace in the bays of Hispaniola, a catastrophic hurricane sank a score of Spanish ships on open water; en route to Spain, Bobadilla was among hundreds lost at sea. 13 As the storms subsided, Columbus ventured farther west – past Cuba and Jamaica – toward the shores of a great northern landmass. He saw signs offshore of a sophisticated Indian civilization based inland, reported as the 'Maiam' or 'Maia,' but storms forestalled the further exploration of the Mayan civilization. Throughout August the decrepit Spanish ships battled torrential rains, tidal swells, and lightning strikes so unrelenting that Columbus compared it to 'the end of the world.' 14

Sailing south down the coast in calmer weather, the admiral still imagined himself in Asia. Natives came to trade with small articles of gold and, that he might tap into the riches of Asia, he had his men follow them inland to its source. When they brought back inflated reports of vast inland goldfields, Columbus let loose his imagination one last time: he claimed he had reached Arabia and found King Solomon's mines.

Returning to Spain in November 1504, Columbus learnt that his greatest patron, Queen Isabella, lay on the point of death. With her passing, Columbus fell out of favor with the Spanish court, and he spent his last 18 months on land lamenting the bitter sweets he had received for his endeavors. Among the men to whom he confided in the twilight of his life was an enigmatic Italian compatriot, Amerigo Vespucci. Indeed, Columbus entrusted Vespucci with his private correspondence. In a 1505 letter to his son, Diego, Columbus wrote:

'...I spoke with Amerigo Vespucci, the bearer of this letter, who is going to the Court on matters relating to navigation. He always showed a desire to please me, and is a very respectable man. Fortune has been adverse to him, as to many others. His labors have not been so profitable to him as might have been expected...'

If the aging Admiral Columbus ever reconsidered the lands he had discovered, he never admitted so publicly. Bedridden, and plagued by pains from 'gout,' he died in 1506 – insisting till the end that he had reached Asia. His final resting place, like the site of his birth, remains a matter of contention. Some place his remains in Spain; others among the lands he discovered.

Amerigo Vespucci was born in Renaissance Florence, and had grown up surrounded by men of intelligence, imagination, and enduring reputation. For a family portrait, young Amerigo had sat for Domenico Ghirlandaio, and perhaps met his apprentice, Michelangelo. Simonetta Vespucci, the radiant wife of his cousin, posed for Botticelli – serving as the model for his 'Venus.' Another cousin served as secretary to Machiavelli, penning a description of war used by his colleague Leonardo da Vinci to paint his lost masterpiece 'The battle of Anghiari'. And Amerigo's uncle belonged to an elite circle of scholars including Toscanelli, with whom Columbus consulted before venturing across the Atlantic.

Despite these surroundings, Vespucci spurned a life devoted to art or science. Instead, he prospered as a debt-collector, intermediary, and small-time merchant dealing in gems; he may have even dabbled as a pimp, procuring women for friends and colleagues. Yet he had one benefactor of significance: Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici. As a friend, patron, and powerful figure in the ruling Medici family, he entrusted Vespucci to oversee various business affairs. In this capacity Vespucci arrived in Spain in 1492, just as Columbus was set to embark.

As a middleman between the Medici and their operatives in Spain, Vespucci gravitated ever more toward the lucrative transatlantic trade. His new business included the burgeoning slave trade, through which he began investing in the voyages of Columbus. In 1493, Vespucci met Columbus for the first time, pledging his own funds for the next expedition. In fact, Vespucci's Spanish colleagues would assemble and outfit the fleet for Columbus' second voyage – a disastrous investment for all concerned. The goldfields of the Indies yielded little, and hundreds of Indian slaves Columbus sent to Spain were sent back by an outraged Queen Isabella. When his partners lost fortunes, Vespucci too came close to financial ruin. But the slow demise of Columbus opened other opportunities for the opportunistic Vespucci.

In 1499, as the Catholic monarchs stripped the Admiral of his monopoly on Atlantic exploration, they opened the seas to a swathe of new Spanish expeditions under the command of his old co-pilots. 15 Vespucci contrived to position himself on one of these new voyages, led by Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. In what capacity Vespucci would serve remains unclear. He would later claim to have been a co-pilot, but he had little or no prior experience as a mariner: his longest voyage to date was probably from Italy to Spain, as a passenger. But his connections helped him secure a special or observational role among the crews, and once aboard he made great pretense of being a cosmographer.

Following the southerly course of Columbus' third voyage, Ojeda and de la Cosa reached the shores of what Columbus had thought the Garden of Eden, at the edge of the Orient. 16 Having sailed with Columbus on previous voyages, Ojeda and de la Cosa had seen enough to doubt that this land pertained to Asia; but they could not say so publicly without breaking their oaths to Columbus. Skirting the coastline of an unknown landmass, some onboard must have confided their doubts to an inquisitive Vespucci. But Vespucci yet abided by the worldview of Columbus: he too wrote home claiming he had seen Asia. 17

Vespucci's second voyage across the Atlantic in 1501 shook him free of his illusions. Embarking with a Portuguese fleet under the command of Gaspar de Lemos and Goncalo Coelho – to explore the landmass encountered by Pedro Cabral in the previous year – he was exposed to another view of the Indies. Exploiting a landmass projecting east of the demarcation line set by the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese now charted and claimed thousands of miles of pristine coast. Several Portuguese veterans had already sailed to India, and they assured Vespucci that the true Indies in the east were a world apart from these so-called Indies in the west. Sailing with such well-traveled mariners, Vespucci saw a different world. 18

Upon returning to Lisbon, Vespucci wrote a letter to his old Florentine friend and patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici, embellishing his own role in recent voyages across the Atlantic. The following year a heavily edited, Latin version of the letter appeared in print. Its title promoted the notion that Vespucci had seen something wondrous, unlike anything in the known world. It was called 'Mundus Novus' – 'New World':

'...and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors, and to all who hear about them they will be entirely new...I have found a continent in the southern part more populous and more full of animals than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa.'

Though the letter did not directly challenge Columbus, its refutation of his claims was blinding: this New World was not part of Asia. To some scholars it was a long-overdue admission of the obvious; to others it was a stunning revelation. It was not the first time a phrase like 'New World' had been used. Peter Martyr had already used a similar term – Novus Orbis – to describe the discoveries of Columbus. In fact, the term was so generic that its first usage cannot be definitively traced. Columbus himself had considered and rejected the concept of 'another world' discovered on his third voyage; others, before him, had used phrases such as 'new land' and 'other world' in describing the little-known coast of West Africa.

What guaranteed fame for Vespucci's Mundus Novus was its sensational content. In describing peoples of the New World, the letter told exaggerated tales of wonder and depravity. Such salacious details made the pamphlet a best seller, propelling Vespucci and his concept of a New World into the popular imagination.

Although the Mundus Novus pamphlet was based on Vespucci's account, historians have struggled to separate his words from those published under his name. Archival evidence shows that Vespucci made only two voyages to the New World, yet the pamphlet says he made three. Did Vespucci make this claim in his original letter, or was it inserted by editors during the printing process? Whatever Vespucci's role in the pamphlet's publication, its success prompted a series of new works – each purporting to relate his further adventures in the New World. Such forgeries were common in the age: after Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Indies, dozens of spurious texts appeared in his name. Vespucci was never called upon to confirm or deny their authorship because no copies were published in his adopted home of Spain; his enduring fame rests upon their circulation throughout the rest of Western Europe.

By 1505, two years after the first publication of Mundus Novus, an exaggerated Italian account of Vespucci's travels began circulating across Europe – ostensibly written by him for the new Florentine head of state. Known as the 'Four Navigations of Amerigo Vespucci,' its narrator claimed to have made yet another undocumented voyage to the New World. 19 The text was a hodgepodge of travelogue and mythology, based loosely on the two known voyages of Vespucci; elaborated with ambiguous descriptions of flora and fauna; punctuated with inaccurate estimates of latitude and longitude; and embellished with outlandish tales of cannibals, giants, and monsters. Almost inconspicuous among the text's many egregious claims, lurked a more credible lie of enormous significance: the publication dates the first of Vespucci's New World voyages to 1497 – predating Columbus's third voyage to the same landmass by one year. It thus attributed the discovery of the whole southern continent to Vespucci. Not only is there no record of this expedition in Spanish or Portuguese archives but its constituent details have been directly lifted from the 1499 voyage made under Ojeda – one year after Columbus. Whether Vespucci authored, or authorized, this manuscript remains unclear. But even if he played no active part in its publication, he was nevertheless to profit from it. In early 1508, King Ferdinand appointed Vespucci to the privileged position of Pilot Major of the House of Trade of the Indies.

By 1507, Vespucci's letters had reached St Die, in the Duchy of Lorraine, a tiny sovereign realm wedged between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Here the 'Four Navigations of Amerigo Vespucci' was first translated into Latin and dedicated to the Duke of Lorraine. The Vespucci narratives were here read by one of St Die's most promising young scholars, Martin Waldseemuller, now preparing his first map of the known world. Waldseemuller saw revelation in Vespucci's narratives. In proclaiming transatlantic lands a 'New World,' the narratives shattered the notion that had paralyzed geographical thought since the first discoveries of Columbus. For more than a decade, cartographers had attempted to attach Columbus' charts of the Indies to vague sketches they had of Southeast Asia. They had omitted an entire ocean, thereby reducing the size of the globe to some 18,000 miles around the equator. But Vespucci's narratives agreed with Ptolemy's estimate of a 24,000-mile circumference. Seizing this worldview, Waldseemuller enlarged the scope of the globe. On the borders of his world map, he carved portraits of Ptolemy and Amerigo Vespucci.

The known world had previously comprised three parts: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Now there was a fourth part. Waldseemuller deliberated over what to call this fourth part. 20 'The Indies' was geographically incorrect, being thousands of miles from Asia. 'The Western Hemisphere' was loose terminology, applicable to the seas and the atmosphere as much as the land. And 'The New World' was too generic to be the formal title of a continental landmass. Having read the Vespucci texts, Waldseemuller chose to name the land after the man he thought had discovered it.

'...Amerigo Vespucci has found another, fourth part, for which I can see no reason why anyone could properly disapprove of a name derived from that of Amerigo, the discoverer, a man of sagacious genius.'

And thus in 1507, Waldseemuller sampled variations of Amerigo Vespucci's Christian name, until one sound rolled sweetly off his lips. He then engraved it on his map as AMERICA.

In 1512 Amerigo Vespucci died from malaria, a disease he had contracted in the New World. His claims to have discovered that New World had by now been refuted by Spanish chroniclers and cartographers. Waldseemuller soon realized that he had grossly overstated Vespucci's role in the exploration of America. Indeed, on his next mappamondo, of 1513, Waldseemuller removed Amerigo's name and in a special annotation added, 'this land with the adjoining islands was found by Columbus.' But it was too late. Waldseemuller had made an error of such magnificent proportions that five centuries of history could not erase it from the maps.