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
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