a new division into sections, instead of the prolix and needlessly minute
subdivision of the original translation into a multitude of chapters;
which change was necessary to accommodate this interesting original
document to our plan of arrangement; and except in a few rare instances,
where uninteresting controversial argumentations have been somewhat
abridged, and even these chiefly because the original translator left the
sense obscure or unintelligible, from ignorance of the language or of the
subject.

It is hardly necessary to remark, that the new grand division of the world
which was discovered by this _great navigator_, ought from him to
have been named COLUMBIA. Before setting out upon this grand discovery,
which was planned entirely by his own transcendent genius, he was misled
to believe that the new lands he proposed to go in search of formed an
extension of the _India_, which was known to the ancients; and still
impressed with that idea, occasioned by the eastern longitudes of Ptolemy
being greatly too far extended, he gave the name of _West Indies_ to
his discovery, because he sailed to them westwards; and persisted in that
denomination, even after he had certainly ascertained that they were
interposed between the Atlantic ocean and Japan, the Zipangu, or Zipangri
of Marco Polo, of which and Cathay or China, he first proposed to go in
search.

Between the _third_ and _fourth_ voyages of COLUMBUS, _Ojeda_, an officer
who had accompanied him in his _second_ voyage, was surreptitiously sent
from Spain, for the obvious purpose of endeavouring to curtail the vast
privileges which had been conceded to Columbus, as admiral and viceroy of
all the countries he might discover; that the court of Spain might have a
colour for excepting the discoveries made by others from the grant which
had been conferred on him, before its prodigious value was at all thought