NOTE.--The problem of rendering in English the names of places in foreign countries is one of some difficulty, and rests rather on conventionality than on principle. It is solved by different writers in different fashions. Greek purists have for some time past lost no opportunity, in writing Greek words, of substituting the original Greek K for the Roman C; but they still respect the latter in names of such places, familiarized to our ears by Scripture, as Corinth and Crete. In like manner Oriental purists, such as Sir Frederic Goldsmid and Colonel Malleson, have done their best to introduce into English literature a system of orthography as to Oriental names which is, of course, in place in the schoolroom of a professor of Oriental languages, but which has not yet made itself fully accepted by the general English reader. Those of us whose acquaintance with Indian history began with the reading of Macaulay’s Essays on Clive and Hastings, are loth to accept _Pílasi_ for Plassey and _Lakhnao_ for the capital of the princely House of Oude. To look nearer home, it would be pedantic to use _El Kahira_ for Cairo, or _Dimishk_ for Damascus. It would be little less so, although strictly correct, to use _Venezia_ for Venice, _Roma_ for Rome, or _Livorno_ for Leghorn. We have added an _s_--why, I know not--to the French spelling of the word _Marseille_. That port is as familiar in our mouths as Liverpool or Glasgow, but we invariably write it and pronounce it Marseilles. In writing Spanish or Portuguese words applied to names of places in South America, I find a considerable divergence of custom amongst authors. To take the one name of _Assumption_, for instance. The capital of _Paraguay_ is so written by the Robertsons and other writers, whilst in Southey’s History of Brazil it is throughout written _Assumpcion_. In Washburn’s History of Paraguay it becomes _Asuncion_, the original Spanish name, which I see no reason to supersede. As a rule I have followed the native names of places in Portuguese or Spanish America, they being for the most part those by which they are known in England. CHAPTER II. _THE DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN._ 1508-1514. [Sidenote: 1508.]