Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1878 — The Discovery of North America. [ARTICLE]

The Discovery of North America.

A Wall street broker laid a wager the other day that Christopher Columbus discovered the continent of North America, and, of course, lost it. It is surprising how many intelligent persons entertain the same error. Knowing that he discovered a number of islands in the Western hemisphere, they think that he must of necessity have discovered this continent also. They forget that he died in ignorance of the grandeur of his achievement, believing Cuba, Terra Firma, and the other lands he had found to be remote parts of Asia. Amerigo Vespucci, after whom North and South America is named, did not discover this continent proper either. The land he discovered lay near the equator, and he, too, was deluded with the notion that it was a portion of Asia. John Cabot was the discoverer of North America (some time in May, 1497), which he likewise supposed to belong to the dominions of the Grand Cham. He sailed along the coast for 300 leagues, and went ashore, without finding any human being, though he believed the country inhabited. It is remarkable that the three great discoverers of the Western world should all have been Italians: Columbus having been bom in Genoa, Vespucci in Florence, and Cabot, presumably, in Venice. The birth of Cabot is uncertain, as are his age and the place and time of his death. But the fact that the license granted him by Henry VII. calls him Kabotto, Venetian, would seem to determine the questian of his nativity. The discoverers had a sorry fortune. Columbus, as we are aware, was treated with the blackest ingratitude by the King of Spain. When officers of the vessel in which he was carried a prisoner to Spain offered to remove his chains, imposed upon him by royal order, he replied, “ I will wear them as a reminder of the gratitude of Princes. ” He died, as everybody knows, neglected, in extreme poverty, of a broken heart. Vespucci had many trials and died poor, and Cabota fell into sudh obscurity that no one can tell where or when or how he died. Surely the auguries attendant on the birth of the Western world were not favorable, and in a superstitious age might have led to the belief that its history would never be marked by good fortune. —New York Times.