quarter of the globe was called after him.  Some authors, however, contend that Amerigo visited the coasts of Guiana and Terra Firma before Columbus; the more probable account is, that he examined them more carefully two years after their discovery by Columbus.  Amerigo was treated by the court of Spain with as little attention and gratitude as Columbus had been:  he therefore offered his services to Portugal, and in two voyages, between 1500 and 1504, he examined the coasts of that part of South America which was afterwards called Brazil.  This country had been discovered by Cabral, who commanded the second expedition of the Portuguese to India:  on his voyage thither, a tempest drove him so far to the west, that he reached the shores of America.  He called it the Land of the Holy Cross; but it was afterwards called Brazil, from the quantity of red wood of that name found on it.

For some time after the discovery of America it was supposed to be part of India:  and hence, the name of the West Indies, still retained by the islands in the Gulph of Mexico, was given to all those countries.  There were, however, circumstances which soon led the discoverers to doubt of the truth of the first conceived opinion.  The Portuguese had visited no part of Asia, either continent or island, from the coast of Malabar to China, on which they had not found natives highly civilized, who had made considerable progress in the elegant as well as the useful arts of life, and who were evidently accustomed to intercourse with strangers, and acquainted with commerce.  In all these respects, the New World formed a striking contrast:  the islands were inhabited by savages, naked, unacquainted with the rudest arts of life, and indebted for their sustenance to the spontaneous productions of a fertile soil and a fine climate.  The continent, for the most part, presented immense forests, and with the exception of Mexico and Peru, was thinly inhabited by savages as ignorant and low in the scale of human nature as those who dwelt on the islands.

The natural productions and the animals differed also most essentially from those, not only of India, but also of Europe.  There were no lemons, oranges, pomegranates, quinces, figs, olives, melons, vines, nor sugar canes:  neither apples, pears, plumbs, cherries, currants, gooseberries, rice, nor any other corn but maize.  There was no poultry (except turkeys), oxen, sheep, goats, swine, horses, asses, camels, elephants, cats, nor dogs, except an animal resembling a dog, but which did not bark.  Even the inhabitants of Mexico and Peru were unacquainted with iron and the other useful metals, and destitute of the address requisite for acquiring such command of the inferior animals, as to derive any considerable aid from their labour.

In addition to these most marked and decided points of difference between India and the newly discovered quarter of the globe, it was naturally inferred that a coast extending, as America was soon ascertained to do, many hundred miles to the northward and to the southward of the equator, could not possibly be that of the Indies.  At last, in the year 1513, a view of the Grand Ocean having been attained from the mountains of Darien, the supposition that the New World formed part of India was abandoned.  To this ocean the name of the South Sea was given.