THE NAME "AMERICA"

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should be named for Amerigo Vespucci. "Quarta orbis pars, quam quia Americus invenit Amerigen, quasi America terram, sive American, nuncupare licet;" or, "the fourth part of the world, which it is proper to call America, or American Land, since Amerigo discovered it." Again, in another chapter: "Alia quarta pars per Americum Vesputium, ut in sequentibus audietur, inventa est: quare non video, cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen, quasi Americi terram, sive Americam, dicendam ;" or, "the other fourth part (of the world) was discovered, as will appear in what follows, by Amerigo Vespucci; wherefore I do not see why any one can lawfully object to its being called the Land of Amerigo, or America, after Amerigo or Americo, the man of genius who discovered it by his sagacity." (It will be recalled that Amerigo Vespucci is said to have accompanied Ojeda to the Isthmus of Panama in 1499, and to have been the first European to set foot upon Terra Firma, as the mainland of the American continent was then called.) Nevertheless, the error of his conceptions and of his conclusions in no way detracts from the glory of Columbus. He went to seek a new road to a known continent. Instead, he found two hitherto unknown continents, and to their colonised inhabitants in after centuries he left the lesser work of creating by artifice the water highway which he had sought, but which he had sought in vain because nature had failed to create it.

THE NAME "AMERICA”

17

should be named for Amerigo Vespucci. "Quarta orbis pars, quam quia Americus invenit Amerigen, quasi America terram, sive American, nuncupare licet;" or, "the fourth part of the world, which it is proper to call America, or American Land, since Amerigo discovered it." Again, in another chapter: "Alia quarta pars per Americum Vesputium, ut in sequentibus audietur, inventa est: quare non video, cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen, quasi Americi terram, sive Americam, dicendam;" or, "the other fourth part (of the world) was discovered, as will appear in what follows, by Amerigo Vespucci; wherefore I do not see why any one can lawfully object to its being called the Land of Amerigo, or America, after Amerigo or Americo, the man of genius who discovered it by his sagacity." (It will be recalled that Amerigo Vespucci is said to have accompanied Ojeda to the Isthmus of Panama in 1499, and to have been the first European to set foot upon Terra Firma, as the mainland of the American continent was then called.) Nevertheless, the error of his conceptions and of his conclusions in no way detracts from the glory of Columbus. He went to seek a new road to a known continent. Instead, he found two hitherto unknown continents, and to their colonised inhabitants in after centuries he left the lesser work of creating by artifice the water highway which he had sought, but which he had sought in vain because nature had failed to create it.

CHAPTER II

THE SECRET OF THE STRAIT

COLUMBUS Sought the "Secret of the Strait." He was not, however, the first European to visit the American Isthmus. Galvano, deriving his authority from Gomara, records that "in the year 1502, one Alfonso Ojeda went to discover Terra Firma, and followed his course till he came to the Province of Uraba. The next year following also one Rodrigo Bastidas, of Seville, went out with two caravels. They took their course toward the west to Santa Martha, and Cape de la Vela, and to Rio Grande, or the Great River; and they discovered the haven of Zamba, the Coradas, Carthagena, and the islands of St. Bernard, of Baru, and Islas de Arenas; and went forward unto Isla Fuerta, and to the point of Caribana, standing at the end of the Gulf of Uraba, where they had sight of the Farallones, standing on the other side, hard by the river of Darien; and from Cape de la Vela unto this place are two hundred leagues, and it standeth in nine degrees and two parts of latitude." There are other records bearing upon these adventures, and it is difficult to determine with confidence the true story.

According to some, Alfonso, or Alonzo, de Ojeda landed at Darien as early as 1499; having with him as his pilots Amerigo Vespucci and Juan de Cosa, the latter being the Biscayan navigator and cartographer who was the owner and master of the Santa Maria and the companion of Columbus on his first voyage. The weight of testimony, however, inclines to the belief that in that voyage Ojeda and his famous comrades visited only the coast of Venezuela and did not go west of Cape Gallinas, and that we should give the credit of discovering the mainland of the Isthmus to another, who has

BASTIDAS, THE ISTHMIAN PIONEER

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been called "Spain's noblest and best conquistador." Rodrigo de Bastidas, a native of Seville, sailed from Cadiz in October, 1500, with La Cosa, and, passing by Hispaniola and the other islands of the West Indies, was probably the first of all Europeans to reach the American Isthmus, at or near Porto Bello. Thence he skirted the coast, southward and eastward, entering the Gulf of Darien, or the Gulf of Uraba, as far as the mouth of the Atrato River, and going along the Colombian coast as far as Cape Gallinas, at the extremity of the Goajira Peninsula, and the entrance of the Gulf of Venezuela and thence striking off on a tangent for Hispaniola. The object of that voyage was partly to get pearls and gold, but more to find the "Secret of the Strait," the entrance to that fabled passageway from ocean to ocean of which there were innumerable traditions among the natives from California to Peru, and of which you may still hear confident reports among the Indians of San Blas, and the natives in the Valley of the Atrato. Bastidas, then, was the pioneer at Panama, two years in advance of Columbus. His quest was unsuccessful, but it inspired Columbus himself to follow him, and many others. In 1505, from May to December, La Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci diligently explored the Gulf of Darien and ascended the Atrato River about 200 miles, in quest of a passageway to India; and two years later they went thither again, not for the Strait but for gold, of which they found much. Indeed, the profits of the voyage were so great that they made a second visit to the same region in 1507, this time seeking gold rather than the Strait. In 1506 came Juan Diaz de Solis, and Vincente Yañez Pinzon, the latter the commander of the Nina on Columbus's first voyage; who in 1497-8 had sailed with Amerigo Vespucci from Yucatan to Florida. They reached Juanaja, the easternmost of the Bay Islands, and sighted the mainland near Truxillo, and thence surveyed the coast westward and northward almost to Yucatan. Two years later they were sent again on the same errand, but turned southward and followed the South American coast as far as the Rio de la Plata. It may be a cause of