n. - To those who go

Vespucci purposely selected a date previous to June 2nd.
The voyage across the Atlantic to the mainland, in 16° N., is described by
Vespucci as having been performed in thirty-seven days, with a W.S.W.
course, and a distance of 1,000 leagues. Such a course and distance would
have taken him to the Gulf of Paria, not to a coast in latitude 16° N. Even
with a course direct to that point, and disregarding the intervening land, the
distance he gives would leave him 930 miles short of the alleged position.
No actual navigator would have made such a blunder. He was quoting the
reckoning from Hojeda's voyage, and invented the latitude at random. When
he came to his second voyage, to make a difference, he halved the distance,
saying that he was forty-four days going 500 leagues on a S.W. course. He
also gives 15° as the latitude of the coast discovered when he was with
Hojeda, though no part of that coast is north of 13°. His crowning statement
that, starting from 23° N., he went 870 leagues along a coast always on a
N.W. course, is still more preposterous. Such a course and distance would
have taken him right across the continent of North America into British
Columbia.
Varnhagen accepts the Florentine's latitudes, and assumes that when in
23° N. he was near Tampico, on the coast of Mexico. But he rejects the
impossible courses and distances of Vespucci, substituting an imaginary
voyage of his own, by which he takes our contractor along the coast of North
America, round the peninsula of Florida, and up to Cape Hatteras, where, he
confesses, "the finest harbour in the world" is not to be found. But such a
voyage is a pure assumption, and as a serious argument it is quite
inadmissible. The evidence is the other way. The latitudes are wrong,
judging from the one latitude given by the Florentine in his second voyage,
while the courses and distances might be relied upon as roughly correct if
they were given by an honest man. Their absurdity proves the imposture.
From "the best harbour in the world" Vespucci says that he went eastward
for 100 leagues to some very populous islands called Iti, where the people,