second voyage, and would thus be compelled to return eastward. Thus, to our lasting regret, he was deterred from going on to Yucatan and visiting that country while it was yet in the glories of Mayan civilisation. Instead, he turned southward, to seek the Golden Chersonesus, and to go home to Europe by way of the Strait of Malacca, which he believed was to be found somewhere between Honduras and Venezuela-between Cochin China, Cathay, and Mangi at the north, and the Garden of Eden at the south. That "Secret of the Strait" thereafter engaged his chief attention. He rounded Cape Gracias a Dios, and so went down the Mosquito Coast, along Costa Rica, to the Chiriqui Lagoon, and along the coast of Veraguas, the western part of the Caribbean coast of Panama. There he reckoned that he was only ten days' journey from the mouth of the Ganges River. The natives told him he was nearing what they called “a narrow place between two seas." They meant, of course, a narrow strip of land, the Isthmus of Panama. But Columbus, always believing that which he wished to be true, confi lently assumed it to be a narrow strip of water-the much desired Strait. No such Strait appearing, however, he pressed on to the eastward along the Panama coast, entering the Bay of Limon and the mouth of the Chagres River. On November 2, 1502, he entered the Bay of Porto Bello, east of Colon, and thence proceeded to Nombre de Dios. Finally at El Retrete, on December 5, he abandoned for a time the quest of the Strait in that direction and turned back to the westward, to explore more carefully the coast of Panama along which he had already sailed. He spent the winter there, chiefly on the coast of Veraguas, which, because of its gold mines, he firmly believed to be a part of the Golden Chersonesus. He vainly sought to plant a permanent colony on the Belen River. At the end of April he set out again in quest of the Strait. Reaching the Mulatas Islands, near Point Blas, he identified them with a part of Mangi, or southeastern Asia. Past them he proceeded as far as the entrance to the Gulf of Darien, and then, instead of entering it and exploring its

FAILURE AND SUCCESS

15

waters and shores, the very native habitat of the Legend of the Strait, he turned northward and eastward, and on May 1 started back for Hispaniola, never again to approach the mainland of the American continent.

Thus he ended his career under the same delusion which had marked its beginning, and left his actual aim unaccomplished, though in the unconscious fulfilment of a far greater aim. He died in the unshaken belief that he had reached the Asian coast, and in ignorance of his real discovery of a thitherto unknown continent, and without finding the mythical Strait for which he sought. He had indeed "builded better than he knew." In his will he reaffirmed the error he had cherished, declaring that "It pleased the Lord Almighty that in the year 1492 I should discover the Continent of the Indies and many islands, among them Hispaniola, which the Indians call Ayte and the Monicongos, Cipango." It was not until 1508, two years after his death, that Cuba was circumnavigated, and thus found not to be a part of the mainland; though it may be that Amerigo Vespucci, in 1497-8, practically achieved that enterprise without realising its significance, by sailing around the Gulf of Mexico from Yucatan to Florida.

It is true that upon the Admiral's coat-of-arms was placed the well-merited inscription, "A Castilla y á Leon, Nuevo mundi dio Colon"-To Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a New World. But it is not certain that Columbus himself was the author of that inscription, or of the phrase "New World." Peter Martyr seems to have been the first to speak of the lands discovered by Columbus as the "New World," in a letter written by him in 1494, while Amerigo Vespucci, in 1503, was probably the first to use the phrase in a published book; but Vespucci cherished the same delusions that Columbus did. Writing to Lorenzo de Medici, on July 18, 1500, after his voyage to America, he reported that about a month. before he had "arrived from the Indies;" of the Venezuelan and Colombian coast, which he had explored, he said he had concluded that "this land was a continent, which might be

bounded by the eastern parts of Asia, this being the commencement of the western part of the continent;" he spoke of having discovered "a very large country of Asia ;" and he promised in his next voyage to discover "the Island of Taprobane, between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of the Ganges." Orontius Finæus, in 1531, upon a geographical globe, indicated Florida as the eastern coast of Asia, and Mexico, Central America, and South America as an enormous peninsula extending south and east from the continent of Asia.

Centuries afterward, the illustrious scientist, Alexander von Humboldt, in his "Personal Narrative," spoke of the oldest existing map of America as that of John Ruysch; a map of the world, annexed to a Roman edition of Ptolemy in 1508. "We there," said Humboldt, "find Yucatan and Honduras figured as an island, by the name of Culicar. There is no Isthmus of Panama, but a passage, which permits of a direct navigation from Europe to India. The great southern island bears the name of Terra de Parias." That map was dated two years after the death of Columbus, and probably embodied the best conception of American geography which he and his contemporaries had been able to form.

Since Humboldt's time, however, there has come to light another map, of an earlier date. This is a map of the world drawn by Martin Waldseemüller (also known as Ilacomilus, or Hylacomylus, his own translation of his name into Greek), in 1507. This map follows in general the theories of Ptolemy, but of course shows much that was unknown to that earlier geographer. It is especially interesting in connection with the subject now in hand, for the reason that it indicates North America and South America as entirely separate continents, with a broad seaway between them, connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific. The North American continent is called on it Parias, and the southern continent bears the name of America. This map apparently accompanied a little Latin book, written by Waldseemüller and published in April, 1507, in which it was suggested that the New World