altogether too plausible; he seemed
to settle too many difficulties at once. But after becoming convinced of
the spuriousness of the Bandini letter (see below, vol. ii. p. 94); and
observing how the air at once was cleared in some directions, it seemed
that further work in textual criticism would be well bestowed. I made a
careful study of the diction of the letter from Vespucius to Soderini in
its two principal texts:--1. the Latin version of 1507, the original of
which is in the library of Harvard University, appended to
Waldseemueller's "Cosmographiae Introductio"; 2. the Italian text
reproduced severally by Bandini, Canovai, and Varnhagen, from the
excessively rare original, of which only five copies are now known to be
in existence. It is this text that Varnhagen regards as the original
from which the Latin version of 1507 was made, through an intermediate
French version now lost. In this opinion Varnhagen does not stand alone,
as Mr. Winsor seems to think ("Christopher Columbus," p. 540, line 5
from bottom), for Harrisse and Avezac have expressed themselves plainly
to the same effect (see below, vol. ii. p. 42). A minute study of this
text, with all its quaint interpolations of Spanish and Portuguese
idioms and seafaring phrases into the Italian ground-work of its
diction, long ago convinced me that it never was a _translation_ from
anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody would
ever have translated a document _into_ such an extremely peculiar and
individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its author
was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text
as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of
the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was
able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow. When he showed that
the landfall of Vespucius on his first voyage was near Cape Honduras and
had nothing whatever to do with the Pearl Coast, he began to follow the
right trail, and so the facts which had puzzled everybody began at once
to fall into the right places. This is all made clear in the seventh
chapter of the present work, where the general argument of Varnhagen is
in many points strongly reinforced. The evidence here set forth in
connection with the Cantino map is especially significant.

It is interesting on many accounts to see the first voyage of Vespucius
thus elucidated, though it had no connection w