Chapter XVI: The Third Voyage (2)

It was not a pleasant task for Columbus to brook the presence of Roldan and his victorious faction in Santo Domingo. The reinstated alcalde had no occasion to be very complaisant after he had seen the Admiral cringe before him. Columbus endeavored, in making the grants of lands, to separate the restored rebels as much as he could, in order to avoid the risks of other mutinous combinations. He agreed with the caciques that they should be relieved from the ordinary tribute of treasure if they would furnish these new grantees with laborers for their farms. Thus at the hands of Columbus arose the beginning of that system of _repartimientos_, with all its miseries for the poor natives, which ended in their extermination. The apologists of Columbus consider that the exigencies of his situation forced him into these fiendish enactments, and that he is not to be held responsible for them as of his free will. They forget the expressions of his first letter to Santangel, which prefigured all the misery which fell upon myriads of these poor creatures. The record, unfortunately, shows that it was Columbus who invariably led opinion in all these oppressions, and not he who followed it. His artfulness never sprang to a new device so exultingly as when it was a method of increasing the revenue at the cost of the natives. When we read, in the letter written to his sovereigns during this absence, of his always impressing on the natives, in his intercourse with them, "the courtesy and nobleness of all Christians," we shudder at the hollowness of the profession.

[Sidenote: Roldan's demands.]

The personal demands of Roldan under the capitulation were also to be met. They included restoration of lands which he called his own, new lands to be granted, the stocking of them from the public herds; and Columbus met them, at least, until the grants should be confirmed at Court. This was not all. Roldan visited Bonao, and made one of his late lieutenants an assistant alcalde,--an assumption of the power of appointment at which Columbus was offended, as some tell us; but if the _Historie_ is to be depended on, the appointment invited no unfavorable comment from Columbus. When it was found that this new officer was building a structure ostensibly for farm purposes, but of a character more like a fortress, suitable for some new mutiny to rally in, Columbus at last rose on his dignity and forbade it.

[Sidenote: 1499. October. Caravels sent to Spain.]

[Sidenote: Columbus sends Ballester to support his cause in Spain.]

In October, 1499, the Admiral dispatched two caravels to Spain. It did not seem safe for him to embark in them, though he felt his presence was needed at Court to counteract the mischief of his enemies and Roldan's friends. Some of the latter went in the ships. The most he could do was to trust his cause to Miguel Ballester and Garcia de Barrantes, who embarked as his representatives. They bore his letters to the monarchs. In these he enumerated the compulsions under which he had signed the capitulation with Roldan, and begged their Majesties to treat it as given under coercion, and to bring the rebels to trial. He then mentioned what other assistants he needed in governing the colony, such as a learned judge and some discreet councilors. He ended with asking that his son, Diego, might be spared from Court to assist him.

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[Sidenote: Royal infringements of Columbus's privileges.]

[Sidenote: 1499. Ojeda's voyage.]

While Columbus was making these requests, he was ignorant of the way in which the Spanish Court had already made serious trespasses upon his prerogatives as Admiral of the Indies. He had said in his letter to the sovereigns, "Your Majesties will determine on what is to be done," in consequence of these new discoveries at Paria. He was soon to become painfully conscious of what was done. The real hero of Columbus's second voyage, Alonso de Ojeda, comes again on the scene. He was in Spain when the accounts which Columbus had transmitted to Court of his discoveries about the Gulf of Paria reached Seville. Such glowing descriptions fired his ambition, and learning from Columbus's other letters and from the reports by those who had returned of the critical condition of affairs in Española, he anticipated the truth when he supposed that the Admiral could not so smother the disquiet of his colony as to venture to leave it for further explorations. He saw, too, the maps which Columbus had sent back and the pearls which he had gathered. He acknowledged all this in a deposition taken at Santo Domingo in 1513. So he proposed to Fonseca that he might be allowed to undertake a private voyage, and profit, for himself and for the Crown, by the resources of the country, inasmuch as it must be a long time before Columbus himself could do so. Fonseca readily commended the plan and gave him a license, stipulating that he should avoid any Portuguese possession and any lands that Columbus had discovered before 1495. It was the purpose, by giving this date, to throw open the Paria region.

[Sidenote: Vespucius with Ojeda.]

[Sidenote: Juan de la Cosa.]

[Sidenote: 1499. May 20. Ojeda sails.]

[Sidenote: At Venezuela.]

The ships were fitted out at Seville in the early part of 1499, and some men, famous in these years, made part of the company which sailed on them. There was Americus Vespucius, who was seemingly now for the first time to embark for the New World, since it is likely that out of this very expedition the alleged voyage of his in 1497 has been made to appear by some perversion of chronology. There was Juan de la Cosa, a famous hydrographer, who was the companion of Columbus in his second Cuban cruise. Irving says that he was with Columbus in his first voyage; but it is thought that it was another of the same name who appears in the registers of that expedition. Several of those who had returned from Española after the Paria cruise of Columbus were also enlisted, and among them Bartholomew Roldan, the pilot of that earlier fleet. The expedition of Ojeda sailed May 20, 1499. They made land 200 leagues east of the Orinoco, and then, guided by Columbus's charts, the ships followed his track through the Serpent's and the Dragon's Mouths. Thence passing Margarita, they sailed on towards the mountains which Columbus had seen, and finally entered a gulf, where they saw some pile dwellings of the natives. They accordingly named the basin Venezuela, in reference to the great sea-built city of the Adriatic. It is noteworthy that Ojeda, in reporting to their Majesties an account of this voyage, says that he met in this neighborhood some English vessels, an expedition which may have been instigated by Cabot's success. It is to be observed, at the same time, that this is the only authority which we have for such an early visit of the English to this vicinity, and the statement is not credited by Biddle, Helps, and other recent writers. Ojeda turned eastward not long after, having run short of provisions. He then approached the prohibited Española, and hoped to elude notice while foraging at its western end.

[Sidenote: 1499. September 5. Ojeda touches at Española.]

It was while here that Ojeda's caravels were seen and tidings of their presence were transmitted to Santo Domingo. Ignorance of what he had to deal with in these intruders was one of the reasons which made it out of the question for Columbus to return to Spain in the ships which he had dispatched in October. Ojeda had appeared on the coast on September 5, 1499, and as succeeding reports came to Columbus, it was divulged that Ojeda was in command, and that he was cutting dyewoods thereabouts.

[Sidenote: Columbus sends Roldan to warn Ojeda off.]

Now was the time to heal the dissensions of Roldan, and to give him a chance to recover his reputation. So the Admiral selected his late bitter enemy to manage the expedition which he thought it necessary to dispatch to the spot. Roldan sailed in command of two caravels on September 29, and, approaching unobserved the place where Ojeda's ships were at anchor, he landed with twenty-five men, and sent out scouts. They soon reported that Ojeda was some distance away from his ships at an Indian village, making cassava bread. Ojeda heard of the approach, but not in time to prevent Roldan getting between him and his ships. The intruder met him boldly, said he was on an exploring expedition, and had put in for supplies, and that if Roldan would come on board his ships, he would show his license signed by Fonseca. When Roldan went on board, he saw the document. He also learned from those he talked with in the ships--and there were among them some whom he knew, and some who had been in Española--that the Admiral's name was in disgrace at Court, and there was imminent danger of his being deprived of his command at Española. Moreover, the Queen, who had befriended him against all others, was ill beyond recovery. Ojeda promising to sail round to Santo Domingo and explain his conduct to the Admiral, Roldan left him, and carried back the intelligence to Columbus.

The Viceroy waited patiently for Ojeda's vessels to appear, and to hear the explanation of what he deemed a flagrant violation of his rights. Ojeda, having got rid of Roldan, had accomplished all that he intended by the promise. When he set sail, it was to pass round the coast easterly to the shore of Xaragua, where he anchored, and opened communication with the Spanish settlers, remnants of Roldan's party, who had not been quite satisfied to find their reinstated leader acting as an emissary of Columbus. Ojeda, with impetuous sympathy, listened to their complaints, and had agreed to be their leader in marching to Santo Domingo to demand some redresses, when Roldan, sent by Columbus to watch him, once more appeared. Ojeda declined a conference, and kept on his ship.

[Sidenote: 1500. June. Ojeda reaches Cadiz.]

Roldan had harbored a deserter from one of Ojeda's fleet, and as he refusedto give him up, Ojeda watched his opportunity and seized two of Roldan's men to hold as hostages. So the two wary adventurers watched each other for an advantage. After a while, Ojeda, in his ships, stood down the coast. Roldan followed along the shore. Coming up to where the ships were anchored, Roldan induced Ojeda to send a boat ashore, when, by an artifice, he captured the boat and its crew. This game of stratagems ended with an agreement on Ojeda's part to leave the island, while Roldan restored the captive boat. The prisoners were exchanged. Ojeda bore off shore, and though Roldan heard of his landing again at a distant point, he was gone when the pursuers reached the spot. Las Casas says that Ojeda made for some islands, where he completed his lading of slaves, and set sail for Spain, arriving at Cadiz in June, 1500.

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[Sidenote: Niño's voyage to the pearl coast.]

[Sidenote: Guerra aids him.]

While Columbus was congratulating himself on being well rid of this dangerous visitor, he was not at all aware of the uncontrollable eagerness which the joyous reports of pearls had engendered in the adventurous spirits of the Spanish seaports. Among such impatient sailors was the pilot, Pedro Alonso Niño, who had accompanied Columbus on his first voyage, and had also but recently returned from the Paria coast, having been likewise with the Admiral on his third voyage. He found Fonseca as willing, if only the Crown could have its share, as Ojeda had found him, and just as forgetful of the vested rights of Columbus. So the license was granted only a few days after that given to Ojeda, and of similar import. Niño, being a poor man, sought the aid of Luis Guerra in fitting out a small caravel of only fifty tons; and in consideration of this assistance, Guerra's brother, Cristoval, was placed in command, with a crew, all told, of thirty-three souls. They sailed from Palos early in June, 1499, and were only fifteen days behind Ojeda on the coast. They had some encounters and some festivities with the natives; but they studiously attended to their main object of bartering for pearls, and when they reached Spain on their return in April, 1500, and laid out the shares for the Crown, for Guerra, and for the crew, of the rich stores of pearls which they had gathered, men said, "Here at last is one voyage to the new islands from which some adequate return is got." And so the first commensurate product of the Indies, instead of saving the credit of Columbus, filled the pockets of an interloping adventurer.

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[Sidenote: V. Y. Pinzon's voyage.]

[Sidenote: 1499. December.]

[Sidenote: Pinzon crosses the equator.]

[Sidenote: The southern sky.]

But a more considerable undertaking of the same illegitimate character was that of Vicente Yañez Pinzon, the companion of Columbus on his first voyage. Leaguing with him a number of the seamen of the Admiral, including some of his pilots on his last voyage, Pinzon fitted out at Palos four caravels, which sailed near the beginning of December, 1499, not far from the time when Columbus was thinking, because of the flight of Ojeda, that an end was at last coming to these intrusions within his prescribed seas. Pinzon was not so much influenced by greed as by something of that spirit which had led him to embark with Columbus in 1492, the genuine eagerness of the explorer. He was destined to do what Columbus had been prevented from doing by the intense heat and by the demoralized condition of his crew,--strike the New World in the equatorial latitudes. So he stood boldly southwest, and crossed the equator, the first to do it west of the line of demarcation. Here were new constellations as well as a new continent for the transatlantic discoverer. The north star had sunk out of sight. Thus it was that the southern heavens brought a new difficulty to navigation, as well as unwonted stellar groups to the curious observer. The sailor of the northern seas had long been accustomed to the fixity of the polar star in making his observations for latitude. The southern heavens were without any conspicuous star in the neighborhood of the pole: and in order to determine such questions, the star at the foot of the Southern Cross was soon selected, but it necessitated an allowance of 30° in all observations.

[Sidenote: 1500. January 20. Sees Cape Consolation.]

[Sidenote: Coasts north.]

It was on January 20, 1500, or thereabouts, that Pinzon saw a cape which he called Consolation, and which very likely was the modern Cape St. Augustine,--though the identification is not established to the satisfaction of all,--which would make Pinzon the first European to see the most easterly limit of the great southern continent. A belief like this requires us, necessarily, to reject Varnhagen's view that as early as the previous June (1499) Ojeda had made his landfall just as far to the east. Pinzon took possession of the country, and then, sailing north, passed the mouth of the Amazon, and found that even out of sight of land he could replenish his water-casks from the flow of fresh waters, which the great river poured into the ocean. It did not occur to his practical mind, as it had under similar circumstances to Columbus, that he was drinking the waters of Paradise!

[Sidenote: 1500. June. Pinzon at Española.]

[Sidenote: Reaches Palos, September, 1500.]

Reaching the Gulf of Paria, Pinzon passed out into the Caribbean Sea, and touched at Española in the latter part of June, 1500. Proceeding thence to the Lucayan Islands, two of his caravels were swallowed up in a gale, and the other two disabled. The remaining ships crossed to Española to refit, whence sailing once more, they reached Palos in September, 1500.

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[Sidenote: 1500. January. Diego de Lepe's voyage.]

Meanwhile, following Pinzon, Diego de Lepe, sailing also from Palos with two caravels in January, 1500, tracked the coast from below Cape St. Augustine northward. He was the first to double this cape, as he showed in the map which he made for Fonseca, and doing so he saw the coast stretching ahead to the southwest. From this time South America presents on the charts this established trend of the coast. Humboldt thinks that Diego touched at Española before returning to Spain in June, 1500.

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[Sidenote: Portuguese explorations by the African route.]

We must now return to the further exploration of the Portuguese by the African route, for we have reached a period when, by accident and because of the revised line of demarcation, the Portuguese pursuing that route acquired at the same time a right on the American coast which they have since maintained in Brazil, as against what seems to have been a little earlier discovery of that coast by Pinzon, in the voyage already mentioned.

[Sidenote: 1500. March 9.]

[Sidenote: Cabral discovers the Brazil coast.]

[Sidenote: 1500. May 1.]

In the year following the return to Lisbon of Da Gama with the marvelous story of the African route to India, the Portuguese government were prompted naturally enough to establish more firmly their commercial relations with Calicut. They accordingly fitted out three ships to make trial once more of the voyage. The command was given to Pedro Alvarez Cabral, and there were placed under him Diaz, who had first rounded the stormy cape, and Coelho, who had accompanied Da Gama. The expedition sailed on March 9, 1500. Leaving the Cape de Verde Islands, Cabral shaped his course more westerly than Da Gama had done, but for what reason is not satisfactorily ascertained. Perhaps it was to avoid the calms off the coast of Guinea; perhaps to avoid breasting a storm; and indeed it may have been only to see if any land lay thitherward easterly of the great line of demarcation. Whatever the motive, the fleet was brought on April 22 opposite an eminence, which received then the name of Monte Pascoal, and is to-day, as then it became by right of discovery, within the Portuguese limits of South America, the Land of the True Cross, as he named it, Vera Cruz; later, however, to be changed to Santa Cruz. The coast was examined, and in the bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, formal possession of the country was taken for the crown of Portugal. Cabral sent a caravel back with the news, expressed in a letter drawn up by Pedro Vaz de Caminha. This letter, which is dated on the day possession was taken, was first made known by Muñoz, who discovered it in the archives at Lisbon. It was not till July 29 that the Portuguese king, in a letter which is printed by Navarrete, notified the Spanish monarchs of Cabral's discovery, and this letter was printed in Rome, October 23, 1500.

It seems to have been the apprehension of the Portuguese, if we may trust this letter, that the new coast lay directly in the route to the Cape of Good Hope, though on the right hand.

[Sidenote: Cabral at Calicut, September 13, 1500.]

Leaving two banished criminals to seek their chances of life in the country, and to ascertain its products, Cabral set sail on May 22, and proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope. Fearful gales were encountered and four vessels were lost, and his subordinate, Diaz, found an ocean grave off the stormy cape of his own finding. But Calicut was at last reached, September 13.

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[Sidenote: Date of Cabral's discovery.]

[Sidenote: His landfall.]

There is a day or two difference in the dates assigned by different authorities for this discovery of Cabral. Ramusio, quoting a pilot of the fleet fourteen months after the event, says April 24, and leading Portuguese historians have followed him; but the letter which Cabral sent back to Portugal, as already related, says April 22. The question would be a trifling one, as Humboldt suggests, except that it bears upon the question of just where this fortuitous landfall was made, involving estimates of distance sailed before Cabral entered the harbor of Porto Seguro. It is probable that this was at a point a hundred and seventy leagues south of the spot reached earlier (January, 1500) by Pinzon and De Lepe. Yet on this point there are some differences of opinion, which are recapitulated by Humboldt.

[Sidenote: Cabral and Pinzon.]

The most impartial critics, however, agree with Humboldt in giving Pinzon the lead, if not to the extent of the forty-eight days before Cabral left Lisbon, as Humboldt contends.

If Barros is correct in his deductions, it was not known on board of Cabral's fleet that Columbus had already discovered in the Paria region what he supposed an extension of the Asiatic main. The first conclusion of the Portuguese naturally was that they had stumbled either on a new group of islands, or perhaps on some outlying members of the group of the Antilles. Of course nothing was known at the time of the discoveries of Pinzon and Lepe.

[Sidenote: The results of the African route.]

It has often been remarked that if Columbus had not sailed in 1492, Cabral would have revealed America in 1500. It is a striking fact that the Portuguese had pursued their quest for India with an intelligence and prescience which geographical truth confirmed. The Spaniards went their way in error, and it took them nearly thirty years to find a route that could bring them where they could defend at the antipodes their rights under the Bull of Demarcation. Columbus sought India and found America without knowing it. Cabral, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, stumbled upon Brazil, and preëmpted the share of Portugal in the New World as Da Gama has already secured it in Asia. Thus the African route revealed both Cathay and America.

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[Sidenote: The Columbus lawsuit.]

[Sidenote: La Cosa's map, 1500.]

For these voyages commingling with those of Columbus along the spaces of the Caribbean Sea, we get the best information, all things considered, from the testimonies of the participants in them, which were rendered in the famous lawsuit which the Crown waged against the heirs of Columbus. The well-known map of Juan de la Cosa posts us best on the cartographical results of these same voyages up to the summer of 1500.

La Cosa was, as Las Casas called him, the best of the pilots then living, and there is a story of his arrogating to himself a superiority to Columbus, even.

As La Cosa returned to Spain with Ojeda in June, 1500, and sailed again in October with Bastidas, this famous map was apparently made in that interval, since it purports in an inscription to have been drafted in 1500. In posting the geographical knowledge which he had acquired up to that date, La Cosa drew upon his own experiences in the voyages which he had already made with Columbus (1493-96), and with Ojeda (1499-1500). It is to be regretted that we have from his pencil no later draft, for his experience in these seas was long and intimate, since he accompanied Bastidas in 1500-2, led expeditions of his own in 1504-6 and 1507-8, and went again with Ojeda in 1509.

La Cosa, indeed, does not seem to have improved his map on any subsequent date, and that he puts down Cape St. Augustine so accurately is another proof of that headland being seen by Pinzon or Lepe in 1500, and that news of its discovery had reached the map makers.

[Sidenote: Objections to La Cosa's map.]

The objections to La Cosa's map as a source of historical information have been that (1) he gives an incorrect shape to Cuba, and makes it an island eight years before Ocampo sailed around it; and that (2) he gives an unrecognizable coast northward from where the Gulf of Mexico should be. Henry Stevens, in his _Historical and Geographical Notes_, undertakes to answer these objections.

[Sidenote: Insularity of Cuba.]

First, Stevens reverts to the belief of La Cosa that he did not imagine Cuba to be an island, because no one ever knew of an island 335 leagues long, as Columbus and he, sailing along its southern side, had found it to be, taking the distance they had gone rather than the true limits. Stevens depends much on the belief of Columbus that the bay of islands which he fancied himself within, when he turned back, was the Gulf of Ganges,--supposing that Peter Martyr quoted Columbus, when he wrote to that effect in August, 1495. If Varnhagen is correct in his routes of Vespucius, that navigator, in 1497, making the circuit of the Gulf of Mexico, had established the insularity of Cuba. Few modern scholars, it is fair to say, accept Varnhagen's theories. It became a question, after Humboldt had made the La Cosa chart public in 1833, how its maker had got the information of the insularity of Cuba. Humboldt was convinced that though a "complacent witness" to Columbus's ridiculous notarial transaction during his second voyage, La Cosa had dared to tell the truth, even at the small risk of having his tongue pulled out.

The Admiral's belief, bolstered after his own fashion by suborning his crew, was far from being accepted by all.

Peter Martyr not long afterward voiced the hesitancy which was growing. It was beginning to be believed that the earth was larger than Columbus thought, and that his discoveries had not taken him as far as Cathay. Every new report veered the vane on this old gossiper's steeple, and he went on believing one day and disbelieving the next.

We may perhaps question now if the official promulgation of the Cuban circumnavigation by Sebastian Ocampo in 1508 was much more than the Spanish acknowledgment of its insularity, when they could no longer deny it. Henry Stevens has claimed to put La Cosa's island of Cuba in accord with Columbus, or at least partly so. He finds this western limit of Cuba on the La Cosa map drawn with "a dash of green paint," which he holds to be a color used to define unknown coasts. He studied the map in Jomard's colored facsimile, and trusted it, not having examined the original to this end,--though he had apparently seen it in the Paris auction-room in 1853, when, as a competitor, he had run up the price which the Spanish government paid for it. He says that the same green emblem of unknown lands is also placed upon the coast of Asia, where a peninsular Cuba would have joined it. He seems to forget that he should have found, to support his theory, a gap rather than a supposable coast, and should rather have pointed to the vignette of St. Christopher as affording that gap.

Ruysch in 1507 marked in his map this unknown western limit with a conventional scroll, while he made his north coast not unlike the Asiatic coast of Mauro (1457) and Behaim (1492), and with no gap. Stevens also interprets the St. Dié map of 1508-13 as showing this peninsular Cuba in what is there placed as the main, with a duplicated insular Cuba in what is called Isabella. The warrant for this supposition is the transfer under disguises of the La Cosa and Ruysch names of their Cuba to the continental coast of the St. Dié map, leaving the "Isabella" entirely devoid of names.

Stevens ventures the opinion that La Cosa may have been on the first voyage of Columbus as well as on the second, and his reason for this is that the north coast of Cuba, which Columbus then coasted, is so correctly drawn; but this opinion ignores the probability, indeed the certainty, that this approximate accuracy could just as well be reached by copying from Columbus's map of that first voyage.

It should be borne in mind, however, that Varnhagen, who had faith in the 1497 voyage of Vespucius as having settled the insular character of Cuba, interprets this St. Dié map quite differently, as showing a rudimentary Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi mouth instead of the Gulf of Ganges.

[Sidenote: La Cosa's coast of Asia.]

Second, Stevens grasps the obvious interpretation that La Cosa simply drew in for this northern coast that of Asia as he conceived it. This hardly needs elucidation. But his opinion is not so well grounded that the northern part of this Asiatic coast, where La Cosa intended to improve on the notions which had come from Marco Polo and the rest, is simply the _northern_ coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence as laid down by the explorations of Cabot. If it be taken as giving from Cabot's recitals the trend of the coasts found by him, it seems to show that that navigator knew nothing of the southern entrance of that gulf. This adds further to the uncertainty of what is called the Cabot mappemonde of 1544. That La Cosa intended the coasts of the Cabots' discoveries to belong to inland waters Stevens thinks is implied by the sea thereabouts being called _Mar_ instead of _Mar oceanus_. It is difficult to see the force of these supplemental views of Stevens, and to look upon the drawing of La Cosa in this northern region as other than Asia modified vaguely by the salient points of the outer coast lines as glimpsed by Cabot.

If the Spanish envoy in England carried out his intention of sending a copy of Cabot's chart to Spain, it could hardly have escaped falling into the hands of La Cosa. We have already mentioned the chance of John Cabot having visited the peninsula in the interval between his two voyages.

[Sidenote: Columbus and the Cabot voyages.]

The chief ground for believing that Columbus ever heard of the voyages of the Cabots--for there is no plain statement that he did--is that we know how La Cosa had knowledge of them; and that upon his map the vignette of St. Christopher bearing the infant Christ may possibly have been, as it has sometimes been held to be, a direct reference to La Cosa's commander, who may be supposed in that case to have been acquainted with the compliment paid him, and consequently with the map's record of the Cabots.

[Sidenote: The Cantino map.]

Whether La Cosa understood the natives better than Columbus, or whether he had information of which we have no record, it is certain that within two years rumor or fact brought it to the knowledge of the Portuguese that the westerly end of Cuba lay contiguous to a continental shore, stretching to the north, in much the position of the eastern seaboard of the United States. This is manifest from the Cantino map, which was sent from Lisbon to Italy before November, 1502, and which prefigured the so-called Admiral's map of the Ptolemy of 1513. There will be occasion to discuss later the over-confident dictum of Stevens that this supposed North American coast was simply a duplicated Cuba, turned north and south, and stretching from a warm region, as the Spaniards knew it, well up into the frozen north. Cosa's map seems to have exerted little or no influence on the earliest printed maps of the New World, and in this it differs from the Cantino map.

[Sidenote: Minor expeditions.]

We know not what unexpected developments may further have sprung from obscure and furtive explorations, which were now beginning to be common, and of which the record is often nothing more than an inference. Stories of gold and pearls were great incentives. The age was full of a spirit of private adventure. The voyages of Ojeda, Niño, and Pinzon were but the more conspicuous.