her. It was dated
July 24th, and contained information to the effect that while Girolamo
was attending religious services at a convent in his neighborhood his
house was broken open and robbed. "At one fell swoop," he wrote, he
had been deprived of all his earnings during those nine years of toil,
besides the money his father had sent him, which represented the
accumulations of a lifetime.

He did not explain how his entire capital was in cash at the time,
when he was supposed to be in trade; but even if derelict, he was too
far away to be sought out and his story investigated, so the loss was
accepted by the family as an indication that Providence was not
inclined to smile upon the substitution of the eldest for the youngest
son as a retriever of the Vespucci fortunes. All looked now towards
Amerigo to take up the distasteful business of money-making, for which
he had been so long in training, but which hitherto he had so
successfully evaded. In sorrow, it is said, but without a murmur, he
turned his back upon his maps, globes, books, and astrolabes and faced
the situation manfully.

A position had long been open to him with the great trading-house of
Lorenzo de Medici, who was own cousin to the world-famous Lorenzo the
Magnificent, and he had only to apply in order to receive it. For the
Medici well knew the value of men--good and faithful men--trained, as
Amerigo was, in the diplomacy as well as the routine of commercial
life in that age. They needed just such a man as he in their foreign
agency, and bidding farewell to his family he set sail from Leghorn
for the Spanish city of Barcelona.

The Iberian peninsula afforded at that time a most attractive field
for commercial as well as military adventure. The protracted wars with
the Moors, which had been carried on for generations, were drawing to
a close, but they had taken thither many a man athirst for glory, and
the demand for supplies gave the merchants great opportunities for
profits. The commerce of that day was, as we have seen, mainly in the
hands of Italian merchants, and as early as 1486 the Florentine
trader, Juan Berardi, obtained a safe conduct from Barcelona to
Seville, where, a few years later, we find Amerigo busily engaged in
outfitting vessels for the Spanish voyages of discovery.

It was in the year 1490, or 1491, that Amerigo Vespucci went to Spain,
accompanied by his nephew Giovanni, and several other young
Florentines, who were placed in his