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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 7 of 789
Words from 1560 to 1848
of 219607
