any event, when he started back
to Spain he sailed from the Atlantic coast somewhere between Capes
Charles and Canaveral. The outcome of this voyage was the first
discovery of Honduras, parts of the Mexican and Florida coasts, the
insularity of Cuba--which Columbus thought was part of the mainland of
Asia--and 4,000 miles of the coast line of North America. The remaining
three voyages have no bearing upon North American discovery. On the
second, he explored the northern coast of Brazil to the Gulf of
Maracaibo; on the third, he went again to the Brazilian coast and found
the Island of South Georgia, and on the fourth returned to Brazil, but
without making any discoveries of importance.

Mr. Fiske's luminous narrative lends significance to Mr. Thacher's
suggestion, for Vespucci discovered a large portion of the mainland of
the North American continent which Columbus had never seen. To this
extent his first voyage gave a new meaning to Columbus' work, without
diminishing, however, the glory of the latter's great achievement.
Americus, indeed, had his predecessors, for John and Sebastian Cabot,
sent out by Henry VII. of England a short time before his discovery, had
set foot upon Labrador, and probably had visited Nova Scotia. And even
before Cabot, the Northern Vikings, among them Leif Ericcson, had found
their way to this continent and perhaps set up their Vineland in
Massachusetts. And before the Vikings there may have been other
migrants, and before the migrants the aborigines, who were the victims
of all the explorers from the Vikings to the Puritans. But their
achievements had no meaning and left no results. As Prof. Fiske says:
"In no sense was any real contact established between the eastern and
western halves of our planet until the great voyage of Columbus in
1492." It was that voyage which inspired the great voyage of Americus in
1497. He followed the path marked out by Columbus, and he invested the
latter's discovery with a new significance. Upon the basis of merit and
historical fact, therefore, Mr. Thacher's suggestion deserves
consideration; and why should Italians be jealous, when Christopher
Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and John Cabot were all of Italian birth?

ALL WITHIN THE KEN OF COLUMBUS.

HYDE CLARKE, Vice-President Royal Historical Society of England, in
his "Examination of the Legend of Atlantis," etc. London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1886.

At the time when Columbus, as well as o