natural that they should be tender of the reputation of Columbus, although he was not a Spaniard, for his discoveries reflected great luster upon the Spanish crown. For this reason they have ever disputed the claims of Vespucci, and denounced him as a liar and a charlatan. These denunciations, however, prove nothing, and the fame of Columbus loses none of its brightness by admitting the claims of the Florentine; claims, it must be acknowledged, that have sound logic and fair inferences as a basis. Amerigo seems to have been the first who published an account of the discoveries in the New World, and for this priority the narrow and selfish policy of the Spanish government is responsible. His first announcement was made in a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, 1504 and soon afterward he published a volume giving an account of his four voyages, which he dedicated to the Duke of Lorraine.1507 In these he claims the merit of discovering the continent, having landed upon the coast of Paria,(1497) in Colombia, South America, and traversed the shores, according to his own account, as far northward as the Gulf of Mexico. If this statement is true, he visited the continent nearly a year previous to the landing of Columbus at the mouth of the Oronoco, in the same district of Paria. From the circumstance of Amerigo making the first publication on the subject, and claiming to be the discoverer of the continent, the New World was called America, and the Florentine bears the honor of the name; but to neither Columbus nor Vespucci does the honor of first discoverer of America properly belong, but to young Cabot, for he and his crew first saw its soil and inhabitants. He alone, of all those voyagers in the fifteenth century, beheld North America. Whether to Columbus, Vespucci, or Cabot, truth should award the palm, Italy bears the imperishable and undisputed honor of giving birth to all three. The expeditions of the Cabots turned attention to the regions north of the West India Islands. Emanuel of Portugal dispatched some vessels, under the command of Caspar Cortereal, in 1501, to follow in the track of the English. Cortereal sailed between two and three hundred leagues along the North American coast, but his voyage was fruitless of good results, either to science or humanity. He made few discoveries of land, carried on no traffic, planted no settlements, but kidnapped and carried to Portugal several friendly natives, to be sold as slaves! Perfidy and cruelty marked the first intercourse of the whites with the tribes of our continent; is it to be wondered that the bitter fruits of suspicion and hostility should have flourished among them?