10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



Chapter V 



Discussing the Condition of the Countries Which Had Just Passed 

 Through the Flood, and How They Split Apart, and How the First 

 Settlers Crossed to the Indies. 



24. These are very difficult matters to handle — how, when, and 

 by what routes those tribes crossed to settle the New World of the 

 Indies, and by what genealogy and lineage they could have issued 

 and descended ; for with regard to those colonies of New Spain and 

 Peru and the other regions comprised in the New World, as large 

 as the three of the Old World of Europe, Asia, and Africa, there 

 was no word or trace until, in the year 1492, the renowned Don 

 Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) made a beginning of his 

 discoveries, and in so doing underwent great risks and excessive dif- 

 ficulties — the world's foremost achievement, for which it ought to be 

 called Colonia, as is stated by the most learned D. Juan de Solorzano, 

 most erudite Justice of the Supreme Council of the Indies, in "De 

 Indiarum Jure," fT. 38-39, book I, chapter 4 ; in all of that he argues 

 it should be called Colonia from Colon, and not America. And I do 

 not know with what justification Americus Vespuccius usurped the 

 name, poor mariner that he was, neither first in crossing to those 

 regions, nor accomplishing anything sufficiently notable to have his 

 name immortalized with the glory of such a discovery, since he was 

 not the one who made it. 



25. I would remark that there are several important authors who 

 have written on this subject all that they could dig out and arrive at, 

 without however reaching any conclusion approaching certainty, but 

 rather leaving it more in doubt, as a consequence of the antiquity of 

 its immemorial age and duration ; for it was not known until coura- 

 geous Christopher Columbus, with the support of the Catholic 

 monarchs, discovered it, not without divine order and providence, in 

 order that the Holy Gospel might be preached to those peoples, and 

 that they might come to the knowledge of His most Holy Name, as 

 He had promised through Zephaniah, chapter III : "For then I will 

 give those peoples a choice language (which is the Gospel), that they 

 may thus call upon the name of the Lord, and serve Him." 



26. And since both in this as in all else I desire and aim at brevity 

 and clearness, I will state as best I can formulate it with my limited 

 talent, what seems evident to me and I understand, leaving to one 

 side the views of previous authors, except as I choose those which 

 seem to me most apposite. Accordingly I assume that the whole 

 earth, both the New World and the Old (and well-known), either 



