214 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. 



If any further vindication of Americus from the stain of 

 stealing the laurels of Columbus could be needed we should 

 see it in the fact that Columbus, to the very close ot his life 

 and his son after him, though very jealous for his father's 

 glory, remained the fast friends of Americus. The charges of 

 Las Casas, Humboldt considers refuted by the life-long friend- 

 ship of the Columbus family with Americus. He also remarks 

 that those charges are very mild near the beginning of his- 

 book, which was written scon after the death of Americus, 

 but very harsh near the end of it which was written thirty 

 years afterward. We may, therefore, appeal from Philip drunk 

 to Philip sober — from Las Casas in his dotage to Las Casas 

 in his best years. 



Again, Cuba was believed to be the continent till after the- 

 death of Columbus, and he discovered that island in 1492. 

 Americus sharing in this belief had no motive to date his first 

 voyage 1497, unless it then took place. Why forge and; 

 falsify only for the name of discovering what, as was firmly 

 believed, had already been five years discovered ? 



It was once my fortune to visit Freiburg — the native town 

 of the namer of America. My journey thither in 1868 was re- 

 paid by its mountain scenery, its streets irrigated with living 

 water after the manner of SaltLake, — its cathedral unsurpassed 

 in Germany till Strasburg was captured, and its associations 

 with the inventor of gunpowder. But I was not then aware 

 that it had given birth to the god-father of our western hemis- 

 phere. Had I been, its charms would for me have been ten- 

 fold. I also passed near Saint Die where the name " Ameri- 

 ca" was first printed, and perhaps first written. Had this 

 fact been known to me how gladl}' would I have turned aside 

 to gaze upon that cradle of our name. However small to the 

 eye it would have been great to the mind. Still greater 

 would have been my interest in it, had I not been ignorant 

 that a head-master of the school there, Pierre D'Ailly, had writ- 

 ten the picture of the world — Imago mtoidi, which stimulated 



