Acceptance of the name. for the Spanish government was very secretive as to the discoveries made by its mariners; nor is there any reason to suppose that Americus Vespucius knew of their design. The proposed name found favor before long and was placed on South America on the maps of that time. Later, when it became certain that the American continents were one and were not connected with Asia, the name spread over the whole New World. Nuc yo & hę partes funt latius luftratæ/& alia quarta pars per Americũ Vesputiu(vt in fequenti bus audietur )inuenta eft/quã non video cur quis iure veterab Americo inuentore fagacis ingenij vi Ameri ro Amerigen quafi Americi terra/fiue Americam dicenda:cũ & Europa & Afia a mulieribus fua for tita fint nomina.Eius fitu & gentis mores ex bis bi nis Americi nauigationibus quæ fequunt liquide intelligi datur. са Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. *Winsor's ch. iii; Fiske's Discovery, II,365. Facsimile of Passage in the Cosmographiae Introductio 18. Discovery of the Pacific, 1513.- The discoverer of the Pacific was a Spanish adventurer named Vasco Nuñez America, II, de Balboa, who is usually called Balboa by writers of English. He had come to the western world in search of easily acquired wealth, and found himself a bankrupt and a rebel. A man of great energy, he soon became the leader of rebels. One day, while on an expedition, an Indian chief, observing the greed of the Spaniards for gold, told them that beyond. the mountains which lay inland was a great sea, on which were ships like those of the Europeans, and he declared that the lands bordering on this ocean abounded in gold and silver. Here was the opportunity for Vasco Nuñez to recruit his fortunes and by a great exploit to atone for his Discovery of rebellion. On July 25, 1513, he found himself on the crest the Pacific, of the Cordilleras. At the base of the mountains glittered 1513. 1513] Circumnavigating of the Globe 31 the waters of an unknown sea. The Isthmus of Panama extends from west to east; the new sea was therefore to the south of the isthmus. Accordingly, Vasco Nuñez called it the Mar del Sur, or South Sea, to distinguish it from the Mar del Norte, or North Sea, as the Spaniards termed the Caribbean. For a long time the great ocean was known to writers of English as the South Sea, but now it is generally called the Pacific. This name was given to it by a Portuguese, Fernando da Magalhaens, whom we call Magellan; he was the first European to reach it by water from the Atlantic. Vasco da Gama dis covers a sea route to India, 1497. Cortereal on the coast of Labrador, 1500. Cabral on the coast of Brazil, 1500. Magellan Winsor's America, II, ch. ix; Larned, 62. — 19. Circumnavigation of the Globe. The Portuguese were among the most daring seamen of that time. Before Columbus ventured to cross the Ocean Sea, some of them had sailed along the western coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope; in 1497 one of their greatest captains, Vasco da Gama, passed the Cape of Good Hope, sailed through the Indian Ocean, reached Calicut in India, and returned safely home. He had found a sea route to India, which Columbus had failed to do. In 1500 another Portuguese mariner, Gaspar de Cortereal, gained the shores of Labrador, and discovered the entrance to Hudson Strait, which it was hoped would prove to be a waterway leading to Cipango and Cathay. In the same year, still another Portuguese navigator, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, sailed from Portugal for India by the Cape of Good Hope. Steering somewhat to the westward of Vasco da Gama's track, he sighted the coast of Brazil to the southward of the point which had probably been discovered by Spanish voyagers not long before. Nineteen years later, Magellan, Portuguese born and bred, but now in the service of Spain, sailed in search of a strait leading to the South Sea. On the 28th of November, 1520, he sailed out of the western end of the strait which bears his name and found himself on the Pacific. Steering 1508] Mexico 33 covers boldly across that great water, he discovered the Philippine CircumnaviIslands, where he was killed in an encounter with the natives. gation of the globe. When his fleet left Spain, it had numbered five vessels; of these one had been cast away, another had been carried home by a mutinous crew, and two more were now abandoned. In the remaining vessel, the Victoria, the survivors made their way back to Spain around the Cape of Good Hope, circumnavigating the world for the first time. 20. Florida, 1513. — The Spaniards had known of the Ponce de mainland of the United States at least since 1500, because Leon disthe peculiar features of the continental outline are clearly Florida, 1513. shown on the early maps. The first Spanish voyager whose Winsor's name is associated with the land is Ponce de Leon. In 1513 he sailed from the Bahamas to explore a northern region which was said to be rich in gold and silver, and to have a perfect climate. On Easter Sunday he anchored in sight of the coast not far from the present St. Augustine. He called the new land Florida, from the Spanish name for Easter, Pascua Florida. From this point he sailed around the southern end of the peninsula of Florida and traced the western coast as far north as Tampa Bay. In 1521 Ponce de Leon again sought the shores of Florida and attempted to found a settlement on that coast; but the venture ended in disaster. Sickness among his men, hostile natives, and a serious wound drove him back; he reached Cuba only to die. Thus ended the first of a long series of attempts to plant a colony within the present limits of the United States. America, II, 232-236. First attempt to found a colony within United States, 1521. 21. Mexico. The conquest of Cuba was undertaken Cuba and soon after 1508. As the Cuban natives could not provide Yucatan. the labor required by the Spaniards, vessels were sent off to the north and to the west to capture slaves. One of these slavers, driven from its course by winds and currents, reached the coast of Yucatan (1517). This region had already been examined, but all remembrance of the earlier exploration seems to have disappeared. Mexico was soon afterward discovered, and its conquest intrusted to Hernando Cortez (1519-21). The story of this wonderful Mexico. Conquest of episode lies outside the limits of this work; it may be read in the homely words of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, whose America, II, Historia Verdadera, or True History of the Conquest, has been admirably rendered into English by Lockhart, or it may be studied in the more polished pages of Prescott, whose work is largely founded on the former. ch. vi. 22. The Atlantic Coast. In 1526 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon led an expedition of five hundred persons, among them a few negro slaves, to Chesapeake Bay and began a settlement on or near the site of the later Jamestown. Fever attacked the colonists; in a few months Ayllon and three hundred and fifty of the original five hundred were dead. The survivors abandoned the enterprise and returned to Santo Domingo. Meantime, not earlier than 1524, nor later than 1526, Estevan Gomez, one of the mutineers who had deserted Magellan on the threshold of his great discovery, is supposed to have sailed along the eastern coast of North America from Labrador to Carolina. If the voyage was made, which is at best doubtful, it was made in the service of the Spanish government. 23. The Verrazano Voyage, 1524. — Giovanni da Verrazano was a native of Florence, Italy. In 1524 he sailed for the American coasts under the direction of Francis I, king of France and the bitter enemy of Charles V, emperor and king of Spain. Verrazano sighted land somewhere near Cape Hatteras; he steered southward for a short time, then turned northward and left the coast in the vicinity of Nova Scotia. On his way north he entered New York and Newport harbors. The documents on which our knowledge of this voyage rests are a letter which Verrazano on his return wrote to the French king, and a map which his brother Hieronimo made in 1529. The map is preserved at Rome. Some students have pronounced the letter to be a forgery, and have argued that the map could have been constructed from the accounts of other explorers. At the present time, however, there is a disposition to believe in the genuineness of both pieces of evidence. |