It is hardly necessary to remark, that the new grand division of the world which was discovered by this great navigator, ought from him to have been named Columbia.  Before setting out upon this grand discovery, which was planned entirely by his own transcendent genius, he was misled to believe that the new lands he proposed to go in search of formed an extension of the India, which was known to the ancients; and still impressed with that idea, occasioned by the eastern longitudes of Ptolemy being greatly too far extended, he gave the name of West Indies to his discovery, because he sailed to them westwards; and persisted in that denomination, even after he had certainly ascertained that they were interposed between the Atlantic ocean and Japan, the Zipangu, or Zipangri of Marco Polo, of which and Cathay or China, he first proposed to go in search.

Between the third and fourth voyages of Columbus, Ojeda, an officer who had accompanied him in his second voyage, was surreptitiously sent from Spain, for the obvious purpose of endeavouring to curtail the vast privileges which had been conceded to Columbus, as admiral and viceroy of all the countries he might discover; that the court of Spain might have a colour for excepting the discoveries made by others from the grant which had been conferred on him, before its prodigious value was at all thought of.  Ojeda did little more than revisit some of the previous discoveries of Columbus:  Perhaps he extended the knowledge of the coast of Paria.  In this expedition, Ojeda was accompanied by an Italian named Amerigo or Almerico Vespucci, whose name was Latinized, according to the custom of that age, into Americus Vespucius.  This person was a Florentine, and appears to have been a man of science, well skilled in navigation and geography.  On his return to Europe, he published the first description that appeared of the newly discovered continent and islands in the west, which had hitherto been anxiously endeavoured to be concealed by the monopolizing jealousy of the Spanish government.  Pretending to have been the first discoverer of the continent of the New World, he presumptuously gave it the appellation of America after his own name; and the inconsiderate applause of the European literati has perpetuated this usurped denomination, instead of the legitimate name which the new quarter of the world ought to have received from that of the real discoverer.

Attempts have been made in latter times, to rob COLUMBUS of the honour of having discovered America, by endeavouring to prove that the West Indies were known in Europe before his first voyage.  In some maps in the library of St Mark at Venice, said to have been drawn in 1436, many islands are inserted to the west of Europe and Africa.  The most easterly of these are supposed in the first place to be the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries