AN ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY OF AMERICA.* To the peoples of both
Americas, the discovery of the Genoese sailor of fortune is undoubtedly the greatest event in history ; but in the history of mankind, the famous voyage of the 'Santa Maria,' the 'Pinta,' and the 'Nina' holds a comparatively subordinate place. America has added the potato—a gift of doubtful value—and maize to the food of man, tobacco to his comforts, and cinchona bark and its alkaloids to the list of his remedies. The New World has farther afforded a boundless field of enterprise and development to the Aryan race, especially to the Teutonic branches, and furnished unequalled opportunities to mankind of political experimentation upon a vast scale, and under conditions infinitely less trammelled than ever the world had witnessed before or is likely to witness again. But the Old World owes nothing to such civilisation as pre-historic America possessed, and it may be doubted whether the course of Euro- pean history has in reality been much influenced by the happy stumbling of fifteenth-century navigators upon two great con-
• Narrative and Critical History of America. Edited by Junin Winner, Librarian of Harvard University. London Sampson Low and 0o. Vol.. II., LEL, and IV. 183e.
tinenta in their aearchinge after Japan and the land of the Great Cham. Even the political opportunities involved in the dis- covery have proved but moderately fruitful results, and it is still on the stage of the Old World that the great social and political problems of humanity must be worked out.
Nevertheless, though, in the sense we have indicated, an event of less consequence than the victory of Salamis, or the fall of the Roman Empire,—less important, probably, in its bearings upon the history of the world than the Battle of Hastings or the great revolution of which Europe is preparing to celebrate the centenary, the discovery of America will be re- garded to the end of time with something of the wonder and interest which the revelation of an unknown third of the earth's land surface called forth at the close of the fifteenth century. It was one of those unique world-events which, by their unique- ness alone, captivate the imagination, and it occurred, besides, at a moment of extraordinary interest in the history of man- kind, when the art of printing (of which the invention was almost coincident with the advent of the new learning) had enormously enlarged the bounds of knowledge and stimulated the curiosity of men to an unexampled boldness of speculation, resulting in a feverish and varied activity surpassed only in our own century. For the Old World, the history of the origins of Aryan America is thus invested with a twofold impressive- ness, and the present volumes of this great work will meet with a welcome on this side of the Atlantic at least equal to that which will be extended to them beyond the wide ocean, which for untold centuries kept its great secret from the ken of our ancestors. Up to the period, indeed, of definite colonisation, the history of America is a phase of the history of Europe, and it is only when adventurers are replaced by permanent emigrants that the differentiation begins.
The plan of the work, of which the second, third, and fourth volumes have appeared (the publication of the first, dealing with pre-historic America, being postponed), is in many respects a novel one. The subject is divided into portions, a necessary arrangement in view not only of the extended scale on which it is proposed to treat it, but also of the fact that it is a critical, and not merely a narrative history of America that is contem- plated. Each of these portions is allotted to a collaborator specially qualified to deal with it, so that the work will consist of a series of historical monographs, brought into a sort of unity by an identity of aim and method which it will be the task of the learned librarian of Harvard to maintain by an editorial supervision that will not be free from difficulties. These mono- graphs are arranged as chapters following, as far as may be, a chronological order, the second volume dealing- with the discovery of America and the beginnings of Spanish America, the third with the early explorations and settlements of the English in America, and the fourth with the early history of the Atlantic States. Lastly, each chapter opens with a simple narrative of events, which is followed by a critical survey of the authorities and an exhaustive discussion of the various theories that have been propounded in con- nection with doubtful points in the particular tract of history under consideration. These volumes are amply, indeed profusely, illustrated with portraits and woodcuts taken from various sources, which add largely to their attraction and value, and in especial are enriched with reproductions of old and rare maps, that bring before the reader in a most vivid and interesting manner the successive steps of the wonderful evolution which has taken place in geographical science since the revival of learning. In general execution and finish, the work must be regarded as an edition de luxe, and upon all grounds merits the heartiest welcome and commendation at our hands.
The opening chapter of the second volume is a monograph on Columbus, from the pen of the editor. It is a well-weighed and lucid summary or precis of the results of recent research, follow- ing, in the main, the conclusions arrived at by Harrisse in his exhaustive biography, published in 1884. The character of the Admiral is thus presented "If his mental and moral equipoise had been as true, and his
judgment as clear, as his spirit was lofty and impressive more than one brilliant opportunity for a record befitting a ruler of men would not have been lost Columbus's imagination was eager, and unfortunately ungovernable It led him to a great dis.
oovery which he was not seeking for; and he was far enough right to make his error more emphatic. He is certainly not alone among the great men of the world's regard who have some of the attributes of the small and mean."
In more than one respect this estimate is open to exception. Columbus no more pretended to be a rider of men, than did Cortez or Pizarro to be maritime discoverers ; he must be judged not as a conqueror or a coloniser, but as a geographer and a navigator, and in both capacities he displayed unequalled genius, Nor was he driven to his discovery by an ungovernable imagina- tion, but, on the contrary, by a restrained and sustaining enthusiasm. It was the imperfection of his materials, rather than any formal miscalculation, that led him to the fortunate error upon which he based the feasibility of his enterprise, and he was distinguished among the navigators and adventurers of the age, in that he was animated by a distinctly religious purpose, combined with a faith which he entertained with singular fervour. The object he had most at heart was not to win a western sea-way to the land of the Great Chem, teeming with gems and spices, but he dared the perils of a voyage into unknown tracts of ocean, thousands of miles beyond the utmost bounds of navigation, and beset, in the imagination of the time, with strange and monstrous horrors, to find, at the junction of East and West—as he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella—the summit of the earth, where the Lord had planted the earthly Paradise, in the midst whereof was a fountain, whence flowed the four great rivers of the world,—the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile.
The letter will be found in Mr. R. H. Major's selection, printed in 1847 for the Haklnyt Society, and the substance of it is given by Mr. Gay in his striking monograph on Vespucci, from which we have quoted the concluding portion of the fore- going paragraph. Mr. Gay takes a much more favourable and sympathetic view of the great navigator's character than Mr. Winsor, who, yielding somewhat too much to the influence of Harrisse, dwells more than is just upon its incidental weak- nesses. Amerigo Vespucci claimed—if the letters ascribed to him are really his—to have been the first to see the mainland of South America upon a voyage made in 1497. But the claim rests wholely and solely upon his own assertion. There is no extrinsic confirmatory evidence of it whatever, concludes Mr. Gay, after an exhaustive review of the authorities. On the contrary, there is strong evidence to show that from Apri1,1497, to May, 1498, Vespucci was at Seville and San Lucar, busily engaged in the equipment of the fleet with which Columbus undertook his third voyage. It was in the course of this very voyage that the Admiral sighted the mainland of South America. This he took to be a portion of the territory of which the then recently printed travels of Marco Polo had given so glowing an account. Vespucci, however, was a man of great ability. and a daring and successful navigator. He died in 1512, holding the important office of Pilot-Major of the Kingdom of Spain. His claim is rather inferrible from his letters than distinctly asserted in them. "There is no good reason," says Mr. Gay," to believe that Vespucius • was of a different mind" from Columbus, who never dreamed he had discovered a new con- tinent. In that case, the Florentine can hardly be accused of having had any share in giving his name to it. In fact, there can be little doubt that the name " America " was the in- vention of the author of the famous Connographia3 Introductio, printed at St. Die in 1507, in which it was first used. A Latin version of The Four Voyages of Vespucci was appended to the work, and probably formed the chief source of such information as the author possessed on the subject of the New World, which he not unnaturally named, now that a name had become necessary, after the navigator whose narrative he had added to his treatise. This narrative, by-the-way, though more or less based upon Veepucci's correspondence, does not appear to have been actually written by him. Las Casas, in his Historia, speaks, it is true, in a passage cited by Mr. Gay, of the "in- justice of Amerigo," but immediately adds, "or the injustice, perhaps, those who printed the Quattuor Navigationes appear to have committed towards the Admiral." On the whole, while Vespucci cannot be entirely acquitted of claiming a priority of discovery to which he was not entitled, we are inclined to hold him guiltless of the baser charge of placing the name of America on the maps, to the exclusion of that of the Admiral.
On a future occasion we may briefly deal with the early history of the English colonisation of North America, which offers such startling contrasts in aim, policy, and results with the system pursued by the Spanish adventurers.
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