-210 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



himself knew less concerning the greatness of his own dis- 

 coveries than was manifest on maps to all the world ? 



It is further worth notice that while the words mundus 

 novus head the very first publication of the voyages of Amer- 

 icas, they never occur in the title of any one among the twenty- 

 one works which were issued in the fifteenth century in rela- 

 tion to Columbus, 



One reason may be that the islands — or at least the main 

 land which Columbus brought to light needed in bis opinion 

 no name. According to his foregone conclusion they had 

 been named already with appellations time-honored and in 

 part sacred. 



A principal reason then why our continent does not bear 

 the name of Columbus, was that he and his contemporaries 

 supposed there was no continent in existence which still re- 

 mained without a name. Bombastes cut off only the hand of 

 his slain enemy, because the head had been cut off already. 

 Janus was never struck on the back of the head because he 

 was all face, and time cannot be seized by the hind-lock for he 

 is bald behind. 



The first landing of Columbus on the American main was at 

 the mouth of the Orinoco. He thought it the paradisaical 

 Gihou. He died assured that he had there bathed in one of 

 the rivers of Eden. According to his faith, " the airs of Para- 

 dise did fan its shores, and angels orficed all." Small thanks 

 would he have rendered anyone who had proved that his land- 

 ing was not in Paradisaical Asia, but that it was of the earth 

 earthy. His celestial dream he would have scorned to ex- 

 change for stamping his name on any continent. If forced to 

 give up his beau ideal for a continental reality, his must have 

 been the feelings of Lessing's hero in Nathan the Wise, who 

 at the denouement found out that the lady whom he had 

 adored with the love of forty thousand brothers, and who loved 

 iiim as much, was after all only his own sister. 



Should a less sentimental image be demanded, Columbus, if 



