THE NAME AMERICA. C67 



eries of tbe Norsemen Bjarni and Leif Ericksen, at the end of the tenth 

 century: a small number of years when compared to the past human 

 history and its great future. Tbe fourth centenarian anniversary of 

 the -reatest event for the human race will be celebrated without the 

 feelin- that the name of the New World is derived from a third-rate 

 navioator, without any claim to such an honor and to the detriment and 

 great injustice of the great discoverer, Colombo; but that it originated 

 simply from a tribe of Indians and a mountain range of the new conti- 

 nent itself The name Amerrique is equal to and of as much poetical 

 beauty as Niagara, Ontario, Canada, Monongahela, Mississippi, Mis- 

 souri, Arkansas, Alabama, Dakota, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, 

 Cuba, Panama, Veragua, Chimborazo, Peru, Venezuela, etc. 



VESPUCCI CHANGES THE SPELLING OF HIS CHRISTIAN NAME. 



When Vespucci received a copy of the " Cosmographia3 Intro.luctio" 

 of St Di^, at the end of 1507, he must have been more than gratified; 

 for not onlv in it he is qualified as the discoverer of the New World, 

 which very likely he wanted to be, but more, the name of Amerrique 

 was attributed to him, and that name was extended to the whole of the 

 new country. An ambitious man has seldom seen his desires so well 



If Vespucci had been '• es mucho hombre de bien" as Colombo thought, 

 he would have taken proper steps to correct the very great errors com- 

 mitted by the Vosgiau Gvmnasium, and referred to Cristoforo Colombo 

 as the true discoverer of the New World; but notwithstanding that Ves- 

 pucci lived five years more, he did nothing of the kind, and nistead we 

 see he did all he could to sustain the scheme of naming the New World 

 after him, by correcting the orthography of his Christian name. Until 

 then he wrote Amerigho, as is proved by his letter of U92, the earliest 

 authentic autograph of him that we possess, while his other letter of 

 the 9th of December, 150^ addressed to the Archbishop of Toledo, he 

 signs Amerrigo, with a double r and the suppression of the h. (See 

 page 657.) That modification in the orthography of his Christian name 

 is "the end of the ear which sticks out" {le hout de Voreille qui perce). 

 Seeing the analogy of Amerigho and Amerrique, he did all he could to 

 bring his name as near as possible to the aboriginal name, without 

 identifying it entirely; for a complete identification might have been 

 detected at once, for there were still alive quite a number of Colombo 

 crews of one hundred and fifty seamen; and very cunningly he signed 

 himself Amerrigo, with a most attractive and prominent flourish 

 (paraph), using it until his death in 1512, as is seen in two or three 

 other signatures of him after 1508, preserved in the Casa de Contracta- 

 tion at SeviUa, and all written with the double r and the dropping of the h. 

 The Spanish historian J. B. Munoz, is the first who has observed the 

 double r in the signatures found by him in Spain ; that strange and 

 unique spelling attracted his attention, without his being able to assign 



