The two letters addressed to a gentleman at Florence were published for the first time in Fracanzio di Montalboddo’s famous _Paesi novamente retrovati_, Vicenza, 1507. This seems to be a faithful reproduction of the original, except that a few passages have been omitted, and that the letters have been divided into chapters, each with a distinctive heading. Ramusio,[280] who republished these letters in 1550, has taken much greater liberties with their writer. He has not merely improved his literary style, but has also condensed many passages, not always very happily, and suppressed others altogether. The more important of these omissions, and occasional additions, have been pointed out by me in the notes appended to the present translation. The writer’s name is not mentioned by Fracanzio or Ramusio. Bandini[281] rashly suggested it was Amerigo Vespucci, who addressed these letters to Dr. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Professor Kopke[282] devotes several pages to a refutation of this untenable hypothesis. It suffices to state that Vespucci was away with Alonzo de Hojeda in the West Indies, from May 1499 to February 1500, and cannot consequently have been at Lisbon in July 1499, when the first vessel of Vasco da Gama’s fleet came back from India.[283] To Baldelli Boni is due the credit of having first made known the name of the actual writer, and of having directed attention to the copy of the first letter existing in the Riccardian library.[284] The first of these letters was undoubtedly written immediately after the arrival of Coelho’s vessel, on July 10th. The information it conveys was obtained from various members of the expedition, and there is at least one passage in it which shows that it was not all written on the same day. The second letter was written some time afterwards, for it embodies information obtained from the “pilot”, Gaspar da Gama, who had not come back when the first letter was written (see p. 136). This intelligent informant reached Lisbon on board the flag-ship, the _S. Gabriel_, the command of which had been entrusted by Vasco da Gama to his clerk, João de Sá, when he himself left São Thiago in a caravel for Terçeira. Both these letters are addressed to a gentleman at Florence with whom the writer was not on terms of familiarity, and whom he consequently addresses as “Vossignoria”. This need not, however, be translated as “your Lordship”, for that style of address was customary in the case of persons of much humbler degree. The third letter is undoubtedly by the same writer. An abstract of it, in German, was discovered among the papers of Conrad Peutinger, of Augsburg, the antiquarian, and at one time the owner of the famous _Tabula Peutingeriana_. It was first published, together with other documents dealing with early voyages to the New World and to India, by Dr. G. Greiff, in 1861.[285]