Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE JEWS IN EARLY AMERICA Columbus, as has been said, died ignorant of his grand discovery, thinking to the last that the strange, flower-decked islands upon which his eyes had rested in rapturous delight were but a part of eastern coast of Asia, which was known as further India, hence to them were given the name of the West Indies, which they still retain. In all, Columbus made three voyages, looking for the first time on the mainland of the American continent on May 30, 1495. As soon as the hitherto unknown gates of the Western world were thrown open to the white man, Europe, in a frenzy of excitement, turned her gaze towards the new country from which Columbus and his sailors had brought glowing accounts, for in the perspective of ambition, she saw the possibilities it held and how she could use them to enrich herself. Hardy mariners from the Tiber to the Tagus launched their sharp-nosed barks on the vast ocean which had been robbed of its terrors since the daring Genoese had conquered it, and steered towards the land of the setting sun in quest of fame and gold. A list of these adventurers would read like a regimental roll-call. Of them all, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator, who made no less than seven voyages to the newly-discovered country, has had the honour of giving the name to the Western continent (America), though it is said John Cabot, the Englishman, was ahead of him in setting foot on the mainland. It is not to the purpose here to follow the different migrations from the European countries that settled down at various points on the maritime boundary of the new world. The Spaniards, of course, came over in great numbers and were the first colonisers to penetrate into the wooded and unknown regions of the West; they were followed by their neighb...