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 and Cape Verds. Beyond these, but at no great
distance towards the west, occurs the Ysola de Antillia; which we may
conclude, even allowing the date of the map to be genuine, to be a mere
gratuitous or theoretic supposition, and to have received that strange
name, because the obvious and natural idea of Antipodes had been
anathematized by Catholic ignorance. Still farther to the north-west,
another fabulous island is laid down, under the strange appellation of
Delaman Satanaxia, or the land created by the hand of Satan. This latter
may possibly have some reference to an ignorant position of Iceland. Both
were probably theoretic, for the fancied purpose of preserving a balance
on the globe with the continents and islands already known; an idea which
was transferred by learned theorists, and even persisted in for a
considerable part of the eighteenth century, under the name of the Terra
Australis incognita; and was only banished by the enlightened voyages of
scientific discovery, conducted under the auspices of our present
venerable sovereign.
The globe of Martin Behaim, in 1492, repeats the island of Antillia, and
inserts beyond it to the west, the isle of St Brandan or Ima, from a
fabulous work of the middle ages. Occasion has already occurred to notice
two other ancient pretended discoveries of the New World: the fabulous
voyages of the Zenos, another Venetian tale; and the equally fabulous
Portuguese island of the Seven Churches, abounding in gold, and
inhabited by Spanish or Portuguese Christians.
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