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SUPPOSED IDENTITY OP 



In 1508, all the country from the Cabo de la Vela to the 

 Gulf of Uraha. where the Castillo del Oro begins, was called 

 New Andalusia, a name since restricted to the province oi 

 Cumana. 



A fortunate chance led me to see, during the course of my 

 travels, the two extremities of the main land, the moun- 

 tainous and verdant coast of Paria, which Columbus sup- 

 Eoses to have been the cradle of the human race, and the 

 )w and humid coast extending from the mouth of the Sinu 

 towards the Gulf of Darien. The comparison of these scenes, 

 which have again relapsed into a savage state, confirms what 

 I have elsewhere advanced relative to the strange and some- 

 times retrograde nature of civilization in America. On one 

 side, the coast of Paria, the islands of Cubagua and Margue- 

 rita ; on the other, the Gulf of Uraba and Darien, received 

 the first Spanish colonists. Gold and pearls, which were 

 there found in abundance, because from time immemorial 

 they had been accumulated in the hands of the natives, gave 

 those countries a popular celebrity, from the beginning of 

 the sixteenth century. At Seville, Toledo, Pisa, Genoa, and 

 Antwerp, those countries were viewed like the realms of 

 " Ormuz and of Ind." The pontiffs of Rome mentioned 

 them in their bulls ; and Bembo has celebrated them in those 

 historical pages which add lustre to the glory of Venice. 



At the close of the fifteenth, and the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century, Europe saw, in those parts of the New 

 "World discovered by Columbus, Ojeda, Vespucci, and Rod- 

 rigo de Bastidas, only the advanced capes of the vast terri- 

 tories of India and eastern Asia. The immense wealth of 

 those territories in gold, diamonds, pearls, and spices, had 

 been vaunted in the narratives of Benjamin de Tudela, 

 Rubruquis, Marco Polo, and Mandeville. Columbus, whose 

 imagination was excited by these narrations, caused a depo- 

 sition to be made before a notary, on the 12th of June, 

 1494, in which sixty of his companions, pilots, sailors, and 

 passengers, certified upon oath, that the southern coast of 

 Cuba was a part of the continent of India. The description 

 of the treasures of Cathay and Cipango, of " the celestial 

 town" of Quinsay and the province of Mango, which had 

 fired the admiral's ambition in early life, pursued him like 

 phantoms in his declining days. In his fourth and last 



