been navigated over nearly three hundred leagues of dry land into the interior of the continent. No critical temerity is required to see in such a blunder the carelessness of a copyist or a compositor. It was of the first voyage from Lisbon—the third of the _Quatuor navigationes_—that, as has been already said, a narrative was first published in a letter addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici. This was illustrated with diagrams of some of the constellations of the southern hemisphere; and the repute it gave to the writer led the way to his subsequent fame. What Vespucci’s position was in the expedition is not known; but that it was still a subordinate one is evident from his own words, as he speaks of a commander, though only to find fault with him, and without giving his name. The object of the expedition was to discover the western passage to the Spice Islands of the East (Melcha, Melacca, Malaccha, according to the varying texts of different editions of the letter); and though the passage was not found, the voyage was, like Cabot’s, one of the boldest and most important of the age. But it is also, of all Vespucci’s voyages, real or assumed, that which has been most disputed. Navarrete, however, after a careful examination of all the evidence that touches the question, comes to the conclusion that such an expedition, on which Vespucci may have gone in some subordinate position, was really sent out in 1501 by the King of Portugal; and Humboldt concurs in this opinion. The Terra de Vera Cruz, or Brazil, as it was afterward named, was visited successively for the first time, from January to April, 1500, by Pinzon, De Lepe, De Mendoza, and Cabral. But the expedition to which Vespucci was attached explored the coast from the fifth parallel of southern latitude, three degrees north of Cape St. Augustin,—first discovered and so named by Pinzon,—as far south, perhaps, as about the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. They had sailed along the coast for about seven hundred leagues; and so beautiful was the country, so luxuriant its vegetation, so salubrious its climate, where men did not die till they were a hundred and fifty years old, that Vespucci was persuaded—as Columbus, only three years before, had said of the region drained by the Orinoco—that the earthly Paradise was not far off. Gold, the natives said, was abundant in the interior; but as the visitors found none, it was determined at last to continue the voyage in another direction, leaving behind them this coast, of what seemed to Vespucci a continent, along which they had sailed from the middle of August to the middle of February. Starting now on the 15th of February from the mainland, they steered southeast, till they reached, on the 3d of April, the fifty-second degree of latitude. They had sailed through stormy seas, driven by violent gales, running away from daylight into nights of fifteen hours in length, and encountering a severity of cold