ook at the sky, and to dance, if that is your diversion. I should be
extremely sorry to interfere with your departure. But you will
understand that when a commander in the service of the sovereigns of
Aragon and Castile finds intruders within their territory it is his duty
to make it his affair. I thank you for your warning. Adios,' and he
makes a little stiff bow and goes over the side, me after him. I looked
back just as I went over the rail, and the skipper was watching me, and
I may be mistaken but I believe he winked. I tell you, our little
captain can do things that would get him run through the body if he were
any other man."

Vespucci smiled thoughtfully. But this incident may have had something
to do with his later decision to part company with Ojeda. Vespucci
continued to explore the coast, and Ojeda sailed northward to the
islands, where he kidnaped some Indians for slaves. When he returned to
Cadiz the young adventurer found to his intense disgust that after all
expenses were paid there remained but five hundred ducats to be divided
among fifty-five men. This was all the more mortifying because, two
months before, Pedro Alonso Nino, a captain of Palos, and Christoval
Guerra of Seville, had come in from a trading voyage in the Indies with
the richest cargo of gold and pearls ever seen in Cadiz.

Vespucci wrote his book some years later, and as it was the first
popular account of the new Spanish possessions and was written in a
lively and entertaining style it had a great reputation. It gave to the
natives of the country the name which they have ever since
borne--Indians. A German geographer who much admired the work suggested
that an appropriate mark of appreciation would be to name the new
continent America, after Vespucci, and this was done. Vespucci described
all that he saw and some things of which he heard, using care and
discretion, and if he suspected that the captain of the Bristol ship was
Sebastian Cabot, later pilot-major of Spain, he did not say so.

NOTE

Amerigo Vespucci has been unjustly accused of endeavoring to steal the
glory of Columbus, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated
anything of the kind. It was a German geographer's suggestion that the
continent be named America.

THE GOLD ROAD

O the Gold Road is a hard road,
And it leads beyond the sea,--
Some follow it through the altar gates
And some to the gallows tree.
And they who squan