Although Queen Isabella assumed all responsibility for the first voyage of Columbus, and is said to have declared, “I am ready to pawn my jewels for the expenses,” yet the treasury of Aragon has the credit of providing the necessary funds. Already fifty–six years of age when he started on this voyage, Columbus had spent eighteen of the best years of his life supplicating at courts and pleading for recognition; so he was no longer blessed with health and vigour. Returning from the first triumphant achievement early in 1493, the same year he sailed from Cadiz with a larger fleet, and discovered islands farther to the south than those which he first saw and landed on, as well as the island of Jamaica. In 1498 yet another voyage revealed the island of Trinidad and a portion of the north coast of South America; but, through the course of events which we can not follow in this history, he was sent home to Spain in chains by his enemy, Bobadilla. The queen, though she received him with distinction, and did all she could to soothe his wounded sensibilities, yet was unable to secure him another command until 1502, when he sailed on his last and most disastrous voyage, which ended in the wreck of his ships on the north coast of Jamaica, and his final return to Spain, worn with disease and broken–hearted from abuse. Two years after the death of Isabella he too departed this life, in the year 1506, at the city of Valladolid, where the house in which he died is still pointed out to the stranger. His remains were at first deposited in Valladolid, then taken to Seville, and about the year 1540 transported to Santo Domingo, in accordance with his last request. Following closely in the wake of Columbus were other voyagers and other discoverers, notably Americus Vespucci, who, together with a valiant Spaniard named Ojeda, sailed along the north coast of South America from the Pearl Islands to the Gulf of Maracaibo, in the year 1499, trading with the natives, and finally returning with a rich cargo of pearls and other valuable products of their barter. They not only obtained the beautiful pearls which unfortunate Columbus had somehow overlooked the year before, but they first saw those curious people, the Lake Dwellers, in the Gulf of Maracaibo, whose settlements over the water suggested the name by which the region adjacent is known to–day, of _Venezuela_, or Little Venice. Americus Vespucci was further rewarded, on his return, by being appointed chart–maker to the king, and eventually his name came to be applied to the continent discovered by Columbus in 1498. That, at least, was long held to be the case, but of late years it has been noticed that the word “America” may have been derived from the native name of one of the provinces on that coast, _Americapan_.