Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. The Americas are generally believed to have derived their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.Frederick Albion Ober (1849-1913) was an American naturalist and writer.
During his writing career which lasted 30 years he wrote more than 40 books mostly travel books but also bird books and biographies about Amerigo Vespucci, Hernán Cortés, and Israel Putnam.
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If you have followed the fortunes of Christopher Columbus, reader, you have seen this name before, for it was Toscanelli who, in the year 1474, sent a letter and a chart to the so-called discoverer of America, which confirmed him in the impression that a route to India lay westward from Europe across the Sea of Darkness.
It is not known just when Amerigo first met Paul the Physicist, as Toscanelli was called in Florence; but it may have been in youth or early manhood, for aside from the fact that all the world knew and reverenced the famous savant, there was the inclination arising from a mutual interest in cosmography and astronomy.
...I am very glad to hear of the familiarity you enjoy with your most serene and magnificent king, and though I have very often discoursed concerning the short way there is from hence to the Indies, where the spice is produced, by sea (which I look upon to be shorter than that you take by the coast of Guinea), yet you now tell me that his highness would have me make out and demonstrate it, so that it may be understood and put in practice.
Therefore, though I could better show it to him with a globe in my hand, and make him sensible of the figure of the world, yet I have resolved, to make it more easy and intelligible, to show the way on a chart, such as is used in navigation, and therefore I send one to his majesty, made and drawn with my own hand, wherein is set down the utmost bounds of the earth, from Ireland in the west to the farthest parts of Guinea, with all the[Pg 24] islands that lie in the way; opposite to which western coast is described the beginning of the Indies, with the islands and places whither you may go, and how far you may bend from the North Pole towards the Equinoctial, and for how long a time-that is, how many leagues you may sail before you come to those places most fruitful in spices, jewels, and precious stones.
...Moreover, to give you full information of all those places which you are very desirous to know about, you must understand that none but traders live and reside in all those islands, and that there is as great a number of ships and seafaring people, with merchandise, as in any other part of the world, particularly in a most noble port called Zaitun, where there are every year a hundred large ships of pepper loaded and unloaded, besides many other ships that take in other spices.
Idioma: INGLÉS
