680 COSMOS. 



feelings of those nations who occupy the eastern shores of the 

 Atlantic, the boundaries of which appear to be constantly 

 brought nearer and nearer to one another. (See my Examen 

 crit. de I Hist, de la Geographic, t. iii. pp. 154-158 and 



225-227.) 



is represented as having sailed in the year 7 (1497) : a statement that 

 seems indeed to have been only an oversight in writing, and not an 

 intentional false statement (pareze aver avido yerro de pendola y no 

 malicid), because he is stated to have returned at the end of eighteen 

 months. The foreign writers call the country America ; it ought to be called 

 Columba." This passage shows clearly that up to that time Las Casas 

 had not accused Amerigo of having himself brought the name America 

 into usage. He says, an tornado los escriptores estrangeros de nombrar 

 la nuestra Tierra firme America, como si America solo y no otro con el 

 y antes que todos la oviera descubierto. In lib. i. cap. 164-169, and in 

 lib. ii. cap. 2, of the work, his hatred is fully expressed ; nothing is now 

 attributed to erroneous dates, or to the partiality of foreigners for 

 Amerigo; all is intentional deseit, of which Amerigo himself is guilty 

 (de industrialo hizo . . . persisitd en elengaiio , . . de falsedad estd 

 claramente convencido). Bartholome de las Casas takes pains, more- 

 over, in two passages to show especially that Amerigo, in his accounts, 

 falsified the succession of the occurrences of his first two voyages, placing 

 many things which belonged to the second voyage in the first, and vice 

 versa. It seems very strange to me that the accuser does not appear 

 to have felt how much the weight of his accusations is diminished by the 

 circumstance that he himself speaks of the opposite opinion, and of the 

 indifference of the person who would have been most interested in 

 attacking Vespucci, if he had believed him guilty and hostilely disposed 

 against his father and himself. " I cannot but wonder," says Las Casas 

 (cap. 164), "that Hernando Colon, a clear-sighted man, who, as I cer- 

 tainly know, had in his hands Amerigo's accounts of his travels, should 

 not have remarked in them any deceit or injustice towards the Admiral." 

 As I had a fresh opportunity, a few months ago, of examining 

 the rare manuscript of Bartholome de las Casas, I would wish to em- 

 body in this long note what I did not employ in 1839, in my Examen 

 critique, t. v. pp. 178-217. The conviction which I then expressed, in 

 the same volume, pp. 217 and 224, has remained unshaken. "Where 

 the designation of a large continent generally adopted as such, and con- 

 secrated by the usage of many ages, presents itself to us as a monument 

 of human injustice, it is natural that we should at first sight attribute 

 the cause to the person who would appear most interested in the matter. 

 A careful study of the documentary evidence has, however, shown that 

 this supposition in the prssent instance is devoid of foundation, and that 

 the name of America ha& originated in a distant region (as for instance 

 in France and Germany), owing to many concurrent circumstances which 

 Appear to remove all suspicion from Vespucci. Here historical criticism 



