Note 35 — Chapter I · Why I went to Great Salt Lake City.—The various Routes.—The Line of Country traversed.—Diaries and Disquisitions. (continued 2)

Columbus and Vespucius both died in the conviction that they had only discovered portions of Asia. Indeed, as late as 1533, the astronomer Schöner maintained that Mexico was the Quinsai of Marco Polo. The early navigators called the aborigines of the New World “Indians,” believing that they inhabited the eastern portion of “India,” a term then applied to the extremity of Oriental Asia. Until the present century the Spaniards applied the names India and Indies to their possessions in America.