"I understand they passed from the Red Sea and extended their voyage into the Persian Gulf, to a city called Calicut, which is situated between the Persian Gulf and the river Indus. More lately, the King of Portugal has received from sea twelve ships very richly laden, and he has sent them again to those parts, where they will certainly do a profitable business, if they arrive in safety.
"May our Lord preserve and increase the exalted state of your excellency, as I desire.
Respecting the letter in which the so-called first voyage is described, the same great authority, Mr. Fiske, from whom we have already quoted, says: "The perplexity surrounding the account of the first voyage of Vespucius is chiefly due to the lack of intelligence with which it has been read. There is no reason for imagining dishonesty in his narrative, and no reason for not admitting it as evidence on the same terms upon which we admit other contemporary documents." Perhaps we may be allowed to claim the same privilege for the foregoing letter; yet another historian, the amiable biographer of Columbus, Mr. Irving, while freely quoting from it, in his account of the voyage made with Alonzo de Ojeda, by imputation discredits it, and loses no occasion to disparage its author.
In order that nothing may be lacking, for the purpose of forming an accurate estimate of Vespucci's character and doings, Mr. Irving's account of the Ojeda voyage, somewhat condensed, is presented in the succeeding chapter. In constructing this story he, to use his own words, "collated the narratives of Vespucci, Las Casas, Herrera, and Peter Martyr, and the evidence given in the lawsuit of Diego Columbus, and has endeavored as much as possible to reconcile them." That he did not altogether succeed is the opinion of Mr. Fiske, who says, rather caustically, that "from its mixing the first and second voyages of Vespucci [the account] is so full of blunders as to be worse than worthless to the general reader."
However this may be, the story is interesting, and in a sense valuable, as it corroborates the statements of one to whom Mr. Irving was not favorably inclined.
[12] The river was the Orinoco, the currents caused by which set with great force in the direction given by Vespucci.