This Country of Ours

rld does not bear the name of Columbus. So in this

eps. "There is not a man," he says himself, "down to the very tailors, who does not beg to be allowed to

arning his living as a clerk in the great merchant house of Medici. But although he was diligent at business his thoughts we

o in the service of the merchant who supplied Columbus with food and other necessaries for his second voyage. It has been thought by some that Vespucci went with Columbus on this voyage, but that is not very likely. It was about this time, however, that Vespucci went on his

as a braggart and a vainglorious fool if he said he went more. Others think that he went at least four voyages and probably six. And most people are now agre

service of the King of Portugal. But after his fourth voyage he returned again to Spain. There he received a large

of Portugal or of Spain, he was never leader. He went as astr

book called "The Four Voyages" it has never been found, and perhaps was never published. One long letter, however, which he wrote to an old schoolfello

reat men, it became at last quite certain that there was a vast continent beyond the Atlantic ocean. Map-makers, therefore, began to draw a huge island, large enough to form in itself a contin

seas in search of new lands, and learned men read the ta

parts of the world as known to the ancients. Then he spoke of the fourth part which had been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci, by which he meant what we now call South America.

Alsatian College, think that he was christening the great double continent of the New World. And as little did Amerigo

first time on a map made about 1514. In this map America is show

h Columbus had made

onnected the land sou

irst only to this so

a was

certain that Columbus had not reached the shores of India by sailing west, an

r gave the name of Ame

inent should be called Colonia or Columbiana. One, anxious that the part in the discovery taken b

. America sounded well, people li

cuit contractor," and other contemptuous names. Even one of the greatest American writers has poured scorn on him. "Strange," he says, "that broad America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle

e and Columbus had always been friends, and little more than a year before he died Columbus wrote a letter to his son Diego which Vespucci delivered. In this letter Columbus says, "Am

erica to the New World, and perhaps also the i

orgotten. The district in which the capital of the United States is situated is called Columbia. In Canada too there is the great province

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