Note VI-1 — Chapter VI · THE GOVERNMENTS OF NUEVA ANDALUCÍA AND CASTILLA DEL ORO. 1506-1510.

The world was at a loss at first what to call the newly found region to the westward. It was easy enough to name the islands, one after another, as they were discovered, but when the Spaniards reached the continent they were backward about giving it a general name. Everything was so dark and uncertain; islands were mistaken for continent, and continent for islands. The simple expression New World that fell with the first exclamations of wonder from the lips of Europeans on learning of the success of Columbus sufficed for a time as a general appellation. More general and more permanent was the name India, arising from the mistake that this was the farther side or eastern shore of India, applied at first to the continent as well as to the islands, and which fastened itself permanently on the people as well as on the country. 'Segun la opinion mas probable, que penetró hasta aquellos parages, y tambien mas comunmente se da à este nuevo mundo descubierto, el nombre de Indias Occidentales, para distinguirlas de las verdaderas que están situadas en la Asia à nuestro Oriente entre el Indo, y el Ganges.' Nueva España, Brev. Res., MS. i. 3. As the coast line of the continent extended itself and became known as such it was very naturally called by navigators tierra firme, firm land, in contradistinction to the islands which were supposed to be less firm. And, indeed, not the islands only, but the people of the islands are inconstant, the moon being mistress of the waters. As Las Casas, Hist. Indias, iii. 395, puts it, 'La naturaleza dellos no les consiente tener perseverancia en la virtud, quier por ser insulares, que naturalmente tienen ménos constancia, por ser la luna señora de las aguas.' The name Tierra Firme, thus general at first, in time became particular. As a designation for an unknown shore it at first implied only the Continent. As discovery unfolded, and the magnitude of this Firm Land became better known, new parts of it were designated by new names, and Tierra Firme became a local appellation in place of a general term. Paria being first discovered, it fastened itself there; also along the shore to Darien, Veragua, and on to Costa Rica, where at no well defined point it stopped, so far as the northern seaboard was concerned, and in due time struck across to the South Sea, where the name marked off an equivalent coast line. Lopez Vaz, in Purchas, His Pilgrimes, iv. 1433, says, 'From this Land of Veragua vnto the Iland of Margereta, the Coast along is called the firme Land, not for that the other places are not of the firme Land, but because it was the first firme Land that the Spaniards did conquer after they had past the Ilands.' In the Recop. de Indias, i. 324, is a law dated 1535, and repeated 1537, 1538, 1563, 1570, 1571, and 1588, which places within the limits of the kingdom of Tierra Firme the province of Castilla del Oro. As a political division Tierra Firme had existence for a long time. It comprised the provinces of Darien, Veragua, and Panamá, which last bore also the name of Tierra Firme as a province. The extent of the kingdom was 65 leagues in length by 18 at its greatest breadth, and nine leagues at its smallest width. It was bounded on the east by Cartagena, and the gulf of Urabá and its river; on the west by Costa Rica, including a portion of what is now Costa Rica; and on the north and south by the two seas. On the maps of Novvs Orbis seu descriptionis Indiæ Occidentalis by De Laet, 1633, and of Ogilby's America, 1671, the Isthmus is called Tierra Firme. Villagutierre writes in 1701, Hist. Conq. Itza, 12, 'Tierra-Firme de la Costa de Paria, ò Provincia, que llamò de Veragua; principio de los dilatados Reynos de aquel Nuevo, y Grande Emisferio.' Neither Guatemala, Mexico, nor any of the lands to the north were ever included in Tierra Firme. English authors often apply the Latin form, Terra Firma, to this division, which is misleading.

The early Spanish writers were filled with disgust by the misnomer America. Pizarro y Orellana, Varones Ilvstres, in his preface speaks of the 'Nueva, y riquissima Parte del Mundo, que se llama vulgarmẽte America, y nosotros llamamos Fer-Isabelica;' and throughout his book the author persists, where 'Nuovo Mundo' is not employed, in calling America Fer-Isabelica, that is to say Ferdinand and Isabella, an attempt at name-changing no less futile than bungling. This was in 1639. If with these seventeenth-century writers the name Columbia, the only appropriate one for the New World, smacked too strongly of Genoa, they might have called it Pinzonia, which would have been in better taste, at least, than in bestowing the honor on the cold and haggling sovereigns. Jules Marcou, like thousands of his class who seek fame through foolishness, writes in the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1875, to prove that the name America came from a mountain range in Nicaragua, called by the natives Americ, which became a synonym for the golden mainland, first at the islands and then in Europe, until it finally reached the foot of the Vosges, where Waldsee-Müller, or Hylacomylus of Saint Dié, confuses it with the name of Vespucci, and is led to print in the preface of Vespucci's Voyages:—'And the fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus may well be called Amerige, which is as much as to say, the land of Americus, or America.' Had the name been so early and so commonly applied to Tierra Firme, it is strange that some one of the many Spanish writers in the Indies or in Spain had not employed it or mentioned it. Villagutierre in 1701 endorses the effort made by Pizarro y Orellana in 1639, saying, Hist. Conq. Itza, 13, that the New World should have been called after the Catholic sovereigns, 'de cuya orden, y à cuyas expensas se descubrian.' He states further, on the authority of Simon, that the Council of the Indies as late as 1620 talked of changing the name, but were deterred by the inconvenience involved. Likewise Vetancurt, Teatro Mex., 13-15, in 1698 says that the name America should be erased from history, calling attention to the bull of partition issued by Pope Adrian VI., which alludes to the new lands as the Western Part—only it was not Adrian but Alexander VI. who perpetrated the bull, in which moreover there is no such term as Western Part used—arguing therefrom that Indias Occidentales was the most proper term. On the application and origin of the name America see cap. i. p. 123-5 of this volume.