of. Ojeda did little more than revisit some of the previous discoveries of
Columbus: Perhaps he extended the knowledge of the coast of Paria. In this
expedition, Ojeda was accompanied by an Italian named _Amerigo_ or
_Almerico Vespucci_, whose name was Latinized, according to the custom of
that age, into _Americus Vespucius_. This person was a Florentine, and
appears to have been a man of science, well skilled in navigation and
geography. On his return to Europe, he published the first description
that appeared of the newly discovered continent and islands in the west,
which had hitherto been anxiously endeavoured to be concealed by the
monopolizing jealousy of the Spanish government. Pretending to have been
the first discoverer of the _continent_ of the _New World_, he
presumptuously gave it the appellation of _America_ after his own name;
and the inconsiderate applause of the European literati has perpetuated
this usurped denomination, instead of the legitimate name which the new
quarter of the world ought to have received from that of the real
discoverer.

Attempts have been made in latter times, to rob COLUMBUS of the honour of
having discovered _America_, by endeavouring to prove that the _West
Indies_ were known in Europe before his first voyage. In some maps in the
library of St Mark at Venice, said to have been drawn in 1436, many
islands are inserted to the _west_ of Europe and Africa. The most
_easterly_ of these are supposed in the first place to be the Azores,
Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verds. Beyond these, but at no great
distance towards the _west_, occurs the _Ysola de Antillia_; which we may
conclude, even allowing the date of the map to be genuine, to be a mere
gratuitous or theoretic supposition, and to have received that strange
name, because the obvious and natural idea of _Antipodes_ had been
anathematized by Catholic ignorance. Still farther to the _north-west_,
another fabulous island is laid down, under the strange appellation of