for conducting their voyage to such a happy issue. Colum->bus named the island he had discovered San Salvador . TheEnglish call it Cat Island, and the natives Guanhahin, it beingone of that cluster of islands denominated the Bahama Isles.

This country was for a long time considered as forming apart of the Old Indian Continent, and was therefore calledthe West Indies , which appellation it retains to the presentday. It received the name of America from Amerigo Ves­ pucci , a Florentine gentleman , who in 1499, accompaniedsome adventurers to the New World, and having on hisreturn to Europe , drawn up, with some elegance, an amusinghistory of his voyage, together with some judicious observa-tions upon the natural productions, the inhabitants, and thecustoms of the country which he had visited, the countryitself became gradually to be called after him : " thus thebold pretensions of a fortunate impostor have robbed the dis-coverer of the New World, of a distinction which belongedto him; the name of Amerigo has supplanted, by the uni-versal consent of nations, that of Columbus , and mankindmay regret an act of injustice, which having received thesanction of time, it is now too late to redress.” The firstcolony on the American Continent was established at SantaMarie il Antigua, in the Gulf of Darien, 1510, under thecommand of Vasco Mingez de Balboa, who afterwardscrossed the Isthmus, and in the year 1513, discovered theSouthern Ocean , near Panama , to which place, in 1517he removed the colony. Mexico was subdued by Cortes in1521; Peru , by Pizarro, in 1532; Brasil was discovered byPedro Alvarez Cabral , a Portuguese , in the year 1500; but aregular settlement was not formed at San Salvador beforethe year 1649.

North America and Newfoundland were discovered bySebastian Cabot , under a commission from our Henry VII. in June 1497, and the first British Colony was esta-blished at Virginia , August 25th, 15S5. In the year 1774,