To Columbus himself the new-found regions were only “insulæ Indiæ super Gangem,”—India east of the Ganges; and the “Indies” which he supposed he had found, and for whose native races the Asiatic name was borrowed and continues to abide, remained the Spanish designation of their possessions therein, though distinguished in time by the expletive _West_ Indies.[570] It never occurred to the discoverers themselves to give a new name to regions which they sometimes designated generically as _Mundus Novus_ or _Alter Orbis_; but it is doubtful as Humboldt says, if they intended by such designation any further description than that the parts discovered were newly found, just as Strabo, Mela, Cadamosto and others had used similar designations.[571] It was at a much later day, and when the continental character of the New World was long established, that some Spaniard suggested _Colonia_, or _Columbiana_; and another, anxious to commemorate the sovereigns of Castile and Leon, futilely coined the cumbrous designation of _Fer-Isabelica_.[572] When Columbus and others had followed a long stretch of the northern coast of South America without finding a break, and when the volume of water pouring through the mouths of the Orinoco betokened to his mind a vast interior, it began to be suspected that the main coast of Asia had been found; and the designation of _Tierra firme_ was naturally attached to the whole region, of which Paria and the Pearl coast were distinguishable parts. This designation of Firm Land was gradually localized as explorations extended, and covered what later was known as Castilla del Oro; and began to comprehend in the time of Purchas,[573] for instance, all that extent of coast from Paria to Costa Rica.[574] When Cabral in 1500 sighted the shores of Brazil, he gave the name of _Terra Sanctæ Crucis_ to the new-found region,—the land of the Holy Cross; and this name continued for some time to mark as much as was then known of what we now call South America, and we find it in such early delineations as the Lenox globe and the map of Sylvanus in 1511.[575] It will be remembered that in 1502, after what is called his third voyage, Vespucius had simply named the same region _Mundus Novus_.