The investigation of Vespucci's statements contained in the first and second voyages destroys all confidence in his unsupported word, when we proceed to examine his account of the voyages alleged to have been made by him in Portuguese ships.
There is no mention either of Vespucci or of Giocondi, who is alleged to have brought him the invitation from the King to come to Portugal, either in the voluminous Portuguese archives, or in the contemporary chronicle of Damian de Goes. This remarkable silence points to the conclusion that if Vespucci was really in any Portuguese expedition he can only have filled some very subordinate post; probably sailing as a merchant or a volunteer.[52]
Vespucci has given us two accounts of his alleged first voyage with the Portuguese, which he calls his third voyage. The Medici letter is entirely devoted to it, while it is also included in the Soderini letter. The dates and figures seldom agree in the two letters, and there is evidence throughout them of the random way in which he wrote, and of his disregard for truth or accuracy. Sailing with three vessels, on the 10th of March 1501 according to one letter, and on the 15th according to the other, they came to a place called Bezeguiche, or Beseghir,[53] on the west coast of Africa, which Vespucci identifies as Cape Verd, and places in 14° 30' N. in one letter, and in 13° within the Tropic in the other.[54] Thence they sailed across the ocean for sixty-seven days, or sixty-three days, on a S.W. 1/4 S. course for 700 leagues, reaching the coast on the 7th or 17th of August, in 5° S. latitude. In the Soderini letter there is a story of Portuguese being murdered and eaten; but in the Medici letter there is nothing but friendly intercourse with the natives, with a long account of their manners and customs, obviously as fictitious as those in the first voyage which were commented upon by Las Casas. Among the plants he saw, Vespucci gives the names of four: cannafistula, Brazil wood, cassia, and myrrh.
From the landfall they sailed eastward for (150) 300 leagues, to a point of land which was named Cape St. Augustine, and then south and west as far as 52° S. Vespucci alleges that the command of the fleet was given to him, and that he continued a southerly course. In the Medici letter he says that he went south until he was 17° 30' from the Antarctic Pole, or in 73° 30' S., which is preposterous. In the Soderini letter he reached only 52° S., got into a gale of wind, sighted some land with a rocky coast, and ran along it for 20 leagues.[55] Thence the ships shaped a homeward course, reached Sierra Leone on June 10th--where one vessel was condemned as unseaworthy, and burnt--the Azores in the end of July, and Lisbon on September 7th, 1502. Both letters contain some absurd remarks about the stars in the southern hemisphere, and one has a long explanation how two men, one in 39° N. and another in 50° S., would be standing at right angles to each other.