t announced to the world, in a book
which he published in 1507 (three years after Christopher Columbus had
died in loneliness and poverty), that the new lands were indeed a
great new continent, and not Asia or Africa at all. People later on
said that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered a new continent, and that it
ought to be called by his name. This is how the name _America_ came
into use; but of course the work of Vespucci was not to be compared
with that of the great adventurer who first sailed across the "Sea of
Darkness," and was the real discoverer of the New World.

Though it was the Spaniards who discovered North America, it was the
English who chiefly colonized it.

It is interesting to notice the names which the early English
colonists scattered over the northern continent. We might gather from
them that, just as the love of their Church was the great passion of
the sixteenth-century Spaniards, so the love of their country was the
ruling passion of the great English adventurers. (Of course the
Spaniards had shown their love for their old country in some of the
names they gave, as when Columbus called one place _Isabella_, in
honour of the noble Spanish queen who had helped and encouraged him
when other rulers of European countries had refused to listen to what
they thought were the ravings of a madman.)

The English in Reformation days had a very different idea of religion
from the Spanish. Naturally they did not sprinkle the names of saints
over the new lands. But the English of Elizabeth's day were filled
with a great new love for England. The greatest of all the Elizabethan
adventurers, Sir Francis Drake, when in his voyage round the world he
put into a harbour which is now known as San Francisco, set up "a
plate of brass fast nailed to a great and firm post, whereon is
engraved Her Grace's name, and the day and the year of our arrival
there." The Indian king of these parts had freely owned himself
subject to the English, taking the crown from his own head and putting
it on Drake's head. Sir Francis called his land _New Albion_, using
the old poetic name for England.

But the colonization of North America was not successfully begun until
after the death of Elizabeth, though one or two attempts at founding
colonies, or "plantations," as they were then called, were made in
her time. Sir Walter Raleigh tried to set up one colony in North
America, and called it _Virginia_, after the virgin queen whom all
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