Nunc Vero et hae partes sunt latius lustratae, et alia quarta pars per Americum Vesputium (ut in sequentibus audietur) inventa est quam non video cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sive Americam dicendam: cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint nomina. Ejus situm et gentis mores ex bis binis Americi navigationibus quae sequuntur liquide intelligidatur. Waldseemueller thought Americus had been the real discoverer of this continent. He said, "Now, indeed, as these regions are more widely explored, and another fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vespucius, I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to be named Amerige--that is, Americ's Land, from Americus, the discoverer." Others adopted Waldseemueller's suggestion and the name America came into general use outside of Spain. But the Spaniards continued to call all the new lands by the name which Columbus had given them--the Indies. America was at first the name for South America only, but later was also used by writers for the other continent which was soon found to the north. It was natural to distinguish the two continents as South and North America. BALBOA. The successors of Columbus kept up a ceaseless search for the real Indies, but the more they explored the more they saw that a great continental barrier was lying across the sea passage to Asia. A few began to suspect that after all America was not a part of Asia. Vasco Nunez Balboa was one of these. Balboa was a planter who had settled in Espanola. He fell deeply into debt, and to escape his creditors had himself nailed up in a barrel and put aboard a vessel bound for the northern coast of South America. From there he went to the eastern border of Panama with a party of gold seekers. The Indians told him of a great sea and of an abundance of gold on its shores to be found a short distance across the isthmus. It is probable that the Indians wished to get rid of the Spaniards as neighbors. [Illustration: VASCO NUNEZ BALBOA] BALBOA'S DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC. Balboa resolved to make a name for himself and to be the discoverer of the other sea. He set off in 1513. The land is not more than forty-five miles wide at Panama, but it is almost impassable even to this day. For twenty-two days the hardy adventurers advanced through a forest, dense with thickets and tangled swamps and interlacing vines--so thick that for days the sun could not be seen--and over rough and slippery mountain-sides until they came to an open sea stretching off to the south and west. Balboa called it the South Sea, but it is usually called the Pacific Ocean, the name given it afterward.