It has been conjectured that Vespucci became known at that time to Columbus,—which is not improbable if the former was so early as 1493 in the service of Berardi. But the suggestion that he went with Columbus either on his first or second expedition cannot be true, at any rate as to the second.[450] For in 1495 Berardi made a contract with the Spanish Government to furnish a fleet of ships for an expedition westward which he did not live to complete. Its fulfilment was intrusted to Vespucci; and it appears in the public accounts that a sum of money was paid to him from the Treasury of the State in January, 1496. Columbus was then absent on his second voyage, begun in September, 1493, from which he did not return till June, 1496. In the interval between the spring of 1495 and the summer of 1497 any adventurer was permitted by Spain, regardless of the agreement made with Columbus, to go upon voyages of commerce or discovery to that New India to which his genius and courage had led the way. “Now,” wrote Columbus, “there is not a man, down to the very tailors, who does not beg to be allowed to become a discoverer.” The greed of the King; the envy of the navigators who before 1492 had laughed at the theories of Columbus; the hatred of powerful Churchmen, more bitter now than ever, because those theories which they had denounced as heresy had proved to be true,—all these influences were against him, and had combined to rob the unhappy Admiral, even before he had returned from his second voyage, of the honor and the riches which he thought would rightfully become his own. Ships now could go and come in safety over that wide waste of waters which even children could remember had been looked upon as a “Sea of Darkness,” rolling westward into never-ending space, whence there was no return to the voyager mad enough to trust to its treacherous currents. It was no longer guarded by perpetual Night, by monsters hideous and terrible, and by a constant wind that blew ever toward the west. But ships came safely back, bringing, not much, but enough of gold and pearls to seem an earnest of the promise of the marvellous wealth of India that must soon be so easily and so quickly reached; with the curious trappings of a picturesque barbarism; the soft skins and gorgeous feathers of unknown beasts and birds; the woods of a new beauty in grain and vein and colors; the aromatic herbs of subtle virtue that would stir the blood beneath the ribs of Death; and with all these precious things the captive men and women, of curious complexion and unknown speech, whose people were given as a prey to the stranger by God and the Pope. Every rough sailor of these returning ships was greeted as a hero when to the gaping, wide-eyed crowd he told of his adventures in that land of perpetual summer, where the untilled virgin soil brought forth its fruits, and the harvest never failed; where life was without care or toil, sickness or poverty; where he who