Is it probable, then, that nobody should know of the sailing of four ships from Cadiz for farther and more important discoveries in the direction pointed out by Columbus? Or, if their departure was secret, can there be a rational doubt that the return, with intelligence so important and generally interesting, would have been talked about in all the ports of Spain, and the man who brought it have become instantly famous? [Illustration: VESPUCIUS. [A sketch of an old engraving as given in the _Allgem. geog. Ephemeriden_ (Weimar, 1807), vol. xxiii. There are other engravings of it in Jules Verne’s _Découverte de la terre_, and elsewhere.—ED.]] But as no account of the voyage appeared till years afterward, and then in a letter from Vespucci himself; and as, meanwhile, for most of those years the absence of his name from contemporary records shows that no celebrity whatever was attached to it,—the logical conclusion is, not only that the voyage was unknown, but that it was unknown because it was never made. Moreover, if it was ever made it could not have been unknown, if we may trust Vespucci’s own statement. For in his letter—not written till 1504, and not published in full till 1507—he said that this expedition was sent out by order of King Ferdinand; that he, Vespucci, went upon it by royal command; and that after his return he made a report of it to the King. The expedition, therefore, was clearly not one of those which, in the interval between the summers of 1495 and 1497, so often referred to, escaped all public record; and as there cannot be found any recognition of such an enterprise at that date either in contemporaneous history or State documents, what other conclusion can be accepted as rational and without prejudice, than that no such voyage so commanded was made at that time? [Illustration: VESPUCIUS. [A fac-simile of the engraving in _Montanus_, copied in _Ogilby_, p. 60.—ED.]]