Publisher's Synopsis
The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci and Other Documents Illustrative of His Career. Translated, with Notes and an Introduction, by Clements R. Markham. Amerigo Vespucci, March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512, was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to people of the Old World. Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be termed "Americas," deriving its name from Americus, the Latin version of Vespucci's first name. At the invitation of king Manuel I of Portugal, Vespucci participated as observer in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the first of these voyages he was aboard the ship that discovered that South America extended much further south than previously thought.
