To have succeeded on such slender foundation in
causing an entire Continent to be christened by his name was in itself
no mean performance, and this was probably his greatest claim to
distinction.
Some historians take him more seriously than this. Southey, for one,
appears to accept Vespucci very much at his own valuation, and states
that the honour of having formed the first settlement in Brazil is due
to Amerigo Vespucci.
The Spaniards claim this distinction for their famous seaman, Vicente
Pinzon. Pinzon sailed from Spain in December, 1499. He shaped a more
southerly course than any previous navigator in the Spanish service, and
he appears to have made his landfall in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco.
He went ashore, it would seem, at a spot he named Cape Consolation, and
of this he took possession in the name of the Spanish Crown. His voyage,
however, appears to have had very little practical result, for almost
immediately afterwards he returned to Europe, and no steps seem to have
been taken by the Spanish Court for the colonization of the land which
he had discovered.
[Illustration: COLUMBUS LANDING IN AMERICA.
_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]
The Portuguese, for their part, assert that the territories of Brazil
were first sighted by their great navigator, Pedro Alvarez Cabral.
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