Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence in 1452 and died in Seville in 1512. He was employed in the latter city in the business house which fitted out Columbus� second expedition. The letter gives his own account of the first of the four voyages which he claimed to have made to the New World. He seems to have touched the mainland a few weeks before Cabot, and some fourteen months before Columbus. The suspicions which long clouded his title to fame have been largely dissipated by modern investigation; and it seems to have been not without reason that Waldseemuller in 1507 proposed to call the new continent by his name.
The present translation is made from Vespucci�s Italian (published at Florence in 1505�6) by �M. K.�, for Quaritch�s edition, London, 1885.