The question is, whether Vespucci made four voyages to that half of the world which was ever after to bear his name,[457] and whether those voyages were really made at the time it is said they were. The most essential point, however, is that of the date of the first voyage: for if that which is asserted to be the true date be correct, the first discoverer of the western continent was neither the Cabots nor Columbus, but Vespucci; and his name was properly enough bestowed upon it. “In the year 1497,” says an ancient and authentic Bristol manuscript,[458] “the 24th June, on St. John’s day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men [the Cabots] in a ship called the ‘Mathew.’” On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus says: “We saw land [Trinidad] at noon of Tuesday the 31st of July.” In a letter, written no doubt by Vespucci, he says: “We sailed from the port of Cadiz on the 10th of May, 1497;”[459] and after leaving the Canaries, where the four ships of the expedition remained a few days to take in their final supplies of wood, water, and provisions, they came, he continues, “at the end of twenty-seven days, upon a coast which we thought to be that of a continent.” Of these dates the first two mentioned are unquestionably authentic. If that last given were equally so, there would be an end of all controversy upon the subject; for it would prove that Vespucci’s discovery of the continent preceded that of the Cabots, though only by a week or two, while it must have been earlier than that of Columbus by about fourteen months.