The discovery made by Columbus was followed up by the Spaniards with the greatest enthusiasm. Within twenty years the four largest of the West Indian Islands were the seats of flourishing colonies, while as yet other nations were contenting themselves with occasional voyages of discovery along the coasts of the continent. The great fertility of the soil, the mildness of the climate, but above all the finding of gold and precious stones, kept the Spaniards alive to the importance of their new possessions and encouraged immigration. Columbus himself made four voyages to the New World, discovering, in his third voyage, the South American continent near the mouth of the Orinoco River, and reaching in his fourth, Honduras and the coast to the south of this region. He never knew what a great discovery he had made and to his death rested under the delusion that he had found the eastern shore of Asia. In 1499 Alonzo de Ojeda, who had previously accompanied Columbus to the new country, made a voyage on his own account and explored four hundred leagues of the coast of South America. With him sailed Amerigo Vespucci, who afterward made three independent voyages to America and wrote the first account of it; this was published in 1507, and popular prejudice has supposed that his name came thus to be given to the New World. At the recent Congress of Americanists in Paris, this point was discussed with much warmth. M. Jules Marcon asserted that Vespucci’s name was Alberico instead of Amerigo, and that he changed it after the new continent was named. The true derivation of the name America is Amerique, that being the Indian name of a range of mountains in Central America. Still, some historians declare that very range of mountains to have been called Amerisque, and it is true that in the Florentine language Alberico and Amerigo are identical. Then there is extant a map of the world prepared by one Vallescu of Majorca in 1490, on the back of which is a note to the effect that the map was purchased for one hundred and twenty ducats in gold by _Amerigo_ Vespucci, the merchant. This proves that even if his name was not Amerigo, he sometimes wrote it so. Other voyagers were Pedro Alonzo Nigno and Vincent Pinzon, the latter being the first Spaniard to cross the equinoctial line. He discovered the mouth of the Amazon River and from there sailed north to the Carribean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. In the same year (1499), Diego Lope explored the coast of South America far to the southwest.