The Naming of America. 205 



lam quam a suo nomine vocari instituit. (H. Harries, p. 304.) 

 This passage affords no proof that Schoner ikmec? Americus 

 for thus baptizing his finding with his own name. But there 

 is no doubt that he did. Yet the first name which Schoner 

 himself gave to the southern half of our continent on a globe 

 he had made thirteen years before, and which we may see to- 

 day in the city library at Nuremberg, is America. Besides, 

 eighteen years before, — or in 1515, the same Schoner had pub- 

 lished a geography in which we read, " America or Amerigen 

 a novus mundus, — and fourth part of the globe, named after 

 its discoverer Americus Vesputius, a man of sagacious mind, 

 who found it in the year 1497." (H. Harries, p. 142.) As 

 Schoner subsequently censured Americus, he must have 

 changed his mind after 1515. It was after that time perhaps, 

 that he first learned about the abuse of Columbus by Span- 

 iards, and iiTdignant at his wrongs naturally attributed the de- 

 frauding him of fame to the man who had gained most by that 

 fraud. Yet the truth is, there is no proof that Americus ever 

 gave his own name either ou maps or otherwise to any portion 

 of hi« findings, — though most other voyagers in all ages have 

 thus perpetuated their fame. 



The slur cast on Americus by Schoner was repeated and 

 exaggerated, especially by Las Casas in his Historia de las 

 Indias, a work not completed for forty-seven years after the 

 death of Americus, till it reached the pitch indicated at the 

 commencement of this article. 



But no map with the name " America" on it of an earlier 

 date than 1520, is known to exist, or to have ever existed any 

 where. This first map appeared in Vienna, and long before 

 any bearing the name America was issued in Spain, although 

 its own date was eight years after the death of Americus. If 

 any suggestions of his led to its issue, they must have been 

 those fabulous, or at least thaumaturgic, " poisons given to work 

 a long while after." 



But the maker of this Vienna map had no thought of doing 



