there is no question that Vespucius in his second voyage, with Ojeda for captain, did sail along that coast, visiting the gulfs of Paria and Maracaibo. This was in the summer of 1499, one year after a part of the same coast had been visited by Columbus. Hence in a later period, long after the actors in these scenes had been gathered unto their fathers, and when people had begun to wonder how the New World could ever have come to be called America instead of Columbia, it was suggested that the first voyage described by Vespucius must be merely a clumsy and fictitious duplicate of the second, and that he invented it and thrust it back from 1499 to 1497, in order that he might be accredited with 'the discovery of the continent' one year in advance of his friend Columbus. It was assumed that he must have written his letter to Soderini with the base intention of supplanting his friend, and that the shabby device was successful. This explanation seemed so simple and intelligible that it became quite generally adopted, and it held its ground until the subject began to be critically studied, and Alexander von Humboldt showed, about sixty years ago, that the first naming of America occurred in no such way as had been supposed. As soon as we refrain from projecting our modern knowledge of geography into the past, as soon as we pause to consider how these great events appeared to the actors themselves, the absurdity of this accusation against Americus becomes evident. We arc told that he falsely pretended to have visited Paria and Maracaibo in 1497, in order to claim priority over Columbus in the discovery of 'the continent.' What continent? When Vespucius wrote that letter to Soderini, neither he nor anybody else suspected that what we now call America had been discovered. The only continent of which there could be any question, so far as supplanting Columbus was concerned, was Asia. But in 1504 Columbus was generally supposed to have discovered the continent of Asia, by his new route, in 1492. … It was M. Varnhagen who first turned inquiry on this subject in the right direction. … Having taken a correct start by simply following the words of Vespucius himself, from a primitive text, without reference to any preconceived theories or traditions, M. Varnhagen finds" that Americus in his first voyage made land on the northern coast of Honduras; "that he sailed around Yucatan, and found his aquatic village of communal houses, his little wooden Venice, on the shore of Tabasco. Thence, after a fight with the natives in which a few tawny prisoners were captured and carried on board the caravels, Vespucius seems to have taken a straight course to the Huasteca country by Tampico, without touching at points in the region subject or tributary to the Aztec confederacy. This Tampico country was what Vespucius