leagues more to north and north-east to the islands of the people called “Iti,” from which they returned to Spain, reaching Cadiz on the 15th of October 1498. Still following Vespucci’s own statement, he, on the 16th of May 1499, started on a second voyage in a fleet of three ships under Alonzo de Ojeda (Hojeda). Sailing south-west over 500 leagues they crossed the ocean in forty-four days, finding land in 5° S. Thence, encountering various adventures, they worked up to 15° N., and returned to Spain by way of Antiglia (Española, San Domingo), reaching Cadiz on the 8th of September 1500. Entering the service of Dom Manuel of Portugal, Vespucci claims to have taken part in a third American expedition, which left Lisbon on the 10th (or 15th) of May 1501. Vespucci has given two accounts of this alleged third voyage, differing in many details, especially dates and distances. From Portugal he declares that he sailed to Bezeguiche (Cape Verde), and thence south-west for 700 leagues, reaching the American coast in 5° S. on the 7th (or 17th) of August. Thence eastward for 300 (150) leagues, and south and west to 52° S. (or 73° 30′; in his own words, “13° from the antarctic pole,” i.e. well into the antarctic continent). He returned, he adds, by Sierra Leone (June 10th), and the Azores (end of July), to Lisbon (September 7th, 1502). His second Portuguese (and fourth and last American) voyage, as alleged by him, was destined for Malacca, which he supposed to be in 33° S. (really in 2° 14′ N.). Starting from Lisbon on the 10th of May 1503, with a fleet of six ships, and reaching Bahia by way of Fernando Noronha (?), Vespucci declares that he built a fort at a harbour in 18° S., and thence returned to Lisbon (June 18th, 1504). In February 1505, being again in Spain, he visited Christopher Columbus, who entrusted to him a letter for his son Diego. On the 24th of April 1505, Vespucci received Spanish letters of naturalization; and on the 6th of August 1508 was appointed piloto mayor or chief pilot of Spain, an office which he held till his death, at Seville, on the 22nd of February 1512.
If his own account had been trustworthy, it would have followed that Vespucci reached the mainland of America eight days before John Cabot (June 16th against June 24th, 1497). But Vespucci’s own statement of his exploring achievements hardly carries conviction. This statement is contained (i.) in his letter written from Lisbon (March or April 1503) to Lorenzo Piero Francesco di Medici, the head of the firm under which his business career had been mostly spent, describing the alleged Portuguese voyage of March 1501–September 1502. The original Italian text is lost, but we possess the Latin translation by “Jocundus interpreter, ” perhaps the Giocondo who brought his invitation to Portugal in 1501. This letter was printed (in some nine editions) soon after it was written, the first two issues (Mundus Novus and Epistola Albericii de Novo Mundo), without place or date, appearing before 1504, the third, of 1504 (Mundus Novus), at Augsburg. Two very early Paris editions are also known, and one Strassburg (De Ora Antarctica) of 1505, edited by E. Ringmann. It was also included in the Paesi novamente retrovati of 1507 (Vicenza) under the title of Novo Mondo da Alb. Vesputio. The connexion of the new world with Vespucci, thus expressed, is derived from the argument of this first letter, that it was right to call Amerigo’s discovery a new world, because it had not been seen before by any one. This prepared the way for the American name soon given to the continent. (ii.) In Vespucci’s letter, also written from Portugal (September 1504), and probably addressed to his old schoolfellow Piero Soderini, gonfaloniere of Florence 1502–1512. From the Italian original (of which four printed copies still exist, without place or date, but probably before 1507) a French version was made; and from the latter a Latin translation, published at St Dié in Lorraine in April 1507, and immediately made use of in the Cosmogrophiae Introductio (St Dié, 1507) of Martin Waldseemüller (Hylacomylus), professor of cosmography in St Dié University. Here we have perhaps the first suggestion in a printed book that the newly discovered fourth part of the world should be called “ America, because Americus discovered it.” Since Alexander von Humboldt discussed the subject in his Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent (1837), vol. iv., the general weight of opinion (in spite of F. A. de Varnhagen, Amerigo Vespucci, son caractère, ses écrits. . . sa vie . . ., Lima, 1865, and other pro-Vespuccian works) has been that Vespucci did not make the 1497 voyage, and that he had no share in the first discovery of the American continent.
See also R. H. Major, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1868), pp. 367–88; F. A. de Varnhagen, Le Premier voyage de Amerigo Vespucci (Vienna, 1869); Nouvelles recherches sur les derniers voyages du navlgateur florentin (Vienna, 1869); Ainda Amerigo Vespucci, Novos estudos (Vienna, 1874); Luigi Hugues, Il terzo viaggio di A. Vespucci (Florence, 1878); " Alcune considerazioni sul Primo Viaggio di A. Vespucci,” in the Bolletino of the Italian Geographical Society, series ii. vol. x. pp. 248–63, 367–80 (Rome, 1885; “ll quarto Viaggio di A. Vespucci,” in the same Bolletino, year xx., vol. xxiii. pp. 532–54 (Rome, 1886); “Sul nome’ America'” in the same Bolletino, series 111. vol. 1. pp. 404–27, 515–30 (Rome, 1888), and an earlier study under the same title (Turin, 1886); “Sopra due lettere di A. Vespucci," in the same, series iii. vol. iv. pp. 849–72, 929–51 (Rome, 1891); Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Justin Winsor, vol. ii. pp. 129–86 (1886); The Letters of A. Vespucci (translation, &c., by Clements R. Markham, London, Hakluyt Society, 1894); H. Harrisse, A. Vespuccius (London, 1895); Jos. Fischer and F. R. von Weiser, The Oldest Map with the Name America . . . (Innsbruck, 1903); Angelo Maria Bandini and Gustavo Uzielli, Vita di Amerigo Vespucci (Florence, 1898); B. H. Soulsby in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (London, February 1902), pp. 201–9. (C. R. B.)
VESSEL (O. Fr. vaissel, from a rare Lat. vascellum, dim. of vas, vase, urn), a word of somewhat wide application for many objects, the meaning common to them being capacity to hold or contain something. Thus it is a general term for any utensil capable of containing liquids, and for those tubular structures in anatomy, such as the arteries, veins or lymphatics, which contain, secrete or circulate the blood or lymph. Organs or structures which are largely supplied .with vessels are said to be “vascular” (Lat. vasculum, another diminutive of vas). Vessel (as in French) is also a general term for all craft capable of floating on water larger than a rowing boat. The word is also familiar in Biblical phraseology in the figurative sense of a person regarded as the recipient of some Divine dispensation, a “chosen vessel, ” or as one into which something is infused or poured, “ vessel of wrath.”
VESTA (Gr. Ἑστία), the goddess of fire and the domestic hearth. The cults of the Greek Hestia (q.v.) and the Latin Vesta, both of which involved the guardianship of an ever burning sacred fire, are most probably derived from a very early custom, common to a great variety of races in different ages. Among primitive peoples it became the custom for each village to maintain a constant fire for general use, to avoid the
necessity of obtaining a spark by friction in case of the accidental extinction of all the village fires.[1] This fire, the central hearth of the village (focus publicus), became a sacred symbol of home and family life. The form of the primitive house in which the fire was preserved, probably a round hut made of wattled osiers daubed with clay, appears to have survived both in the circular prytaneum of the Greeks and in the Aedes Vestae (Temple of Vesta) in Rome. To Watch this fire would naturally be the duty of unmarried women, and hence may have arisen the Roman order of virgin priestesses, the vestals, whose chief duty it was to tend the sacred fire.
The prehistoric method of getting a spark appears to have survived in the rule that, if ever the sacred fire of Vesta did go out, the negligent Vestal was to be punished by scourging (Livy xxviii. 11), and the fire rekindled either by friction of dry sticks,[2] or, in later times, by the sun’s rays brought to a focus by a concave mirror (Plut. Numa, 9). In the prytaneum (q.v.) which existed in every Greek state, a different form of cult was developed, though the essential point, the sacred fire, was kept
- ↑ J. G. Frazer in the Journal of Philology (vol. xiv. pp. 145–72), “The Worship of Vesta and its Connexion with the Greek Prytaneum,” gives many examples of a similar custom still surviving among various savage races.
- ↑ An allusion to the earliest method of obtaining fire by rubbing two sticks together is probably contained in the myth of Prometheus, who brought fire to mortals hidden in a hollow wand.
