Chapter XV: Others Help in the Discovery of the New World

THE RACE TO THE INDIES. The discovery of all the lands which make
what we call the New World came very slowly. It was the work of many
different explorers. Most of the expeditions sent out to the new islands
went in search of a passage to India. It was a fine race. Each nation
was eager to see its ships the first to reach India by the westward
route. All were disappointed at finding so much land between Europe and
Asia. It seemed to them to be of little value and to block the way to
the richer countries of the East. Gradually, however, they discovered
the great continents which we know as North and South America. Columbus
had done more than he dreamed, and his discovery was a turning-point
in history.

JOHN CABOT. John Cabot, an Italian mariner at this time in the
service of England, left Bristol in 1497 on a voyage of discovery. This
was five years after Columbus discovered the West Indies. Cabot had
heard that the sailors of Portugal and of Spain had occupied unknown
islands. He planned to do the same for King Henry VII of England. For
his voyage he had a single vessel no larger than the _Nina_, the
smallest ship in the fleet of Columbus. Eighteen men made up his crew.
He passed around the southern end of Ireland, and sailed north and west
until he came to land, which proved to be the coast of North America
somewhere between the northern part of Labrador and the southern end of
Nova Scotia.

CABOT'S DISCOVERY. John Cabot saw no inhabitants, but he found
notched trees, snares for game, and needles for making nets, which
showed plainly that the land was inhabited by human beings. Like
Columbus, Cabot thought he was off the coast of China.

THE CABOT VOYAGES FORGOTTEN. Before the end of 1497 John Cabot was
back in Bristol. It is almost certain that he and his son, Sebastian
Cabot, made a second voyage to the new found lands in the following
year. The Cabot voyages, however, were soon almost forgotten by the
people of England.

THE NAMING OF THE NEW LANDS. Why was our country named America
rather than Columbia or New India? Both the southern and northern
continents which we call the Americas were named for Americus Vespucius
rather than for Christopher Columbus. This seems the more strange since
we know so little about the life of Americus. Americus Vespucius was
born in Florence, Italy, and like many other young Italians of that day
entered the service of neighboring countries. He went to Spain and
accompanied several Spanish expeditions sent to explore the new
continent which Columbus had discovered on his third voyage.

Perhaps Americus went as a pilot; he certainly was not the leader in any
expedition. But he seems to have written to his friends interesting
accounts of what he had seen. In one of these letters Americus seems to
have written boastfully of how he had found lands which might be called
a new world. He said that the new continent was more populous and more
full of animals than Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and that the climate
was even more temperate and pleasant than any other region. This was
clearly a new world.

WHY AMERICUS WAS REGARDED AS THE DISCOVERER OF AMERICA. The
statement of Americus was scattered widely by the help of the newly
invented printing press. It was written in Latin, and so could be read
by the learned of all countries. They were impressed by the belief of
Americus that he had seen a new world and not simply the Indies. This
was especially true of men living outside of Spain who had heard little
of Columbus or his discovery.

Columbus for his part had written as if his great discovery was a way to
the Indies and the finding of islands on the way thither less important.
Besides, when he saw what we call South America he had no idea that it
was a new world. The people of Europe either never knew that he had
discovered the mainland or had forgotten it altogether. But they heard a
great deal about Americus and his doings. It is not strange that
Americus rather than Columbus was long regarded as the true discoverer
of America.

TWO NAMES FOR THE NEW LANDS. Even then the new continent might not
have been called America but for the suggestion of a young scholar of
the time. Martin Waldseemueller, a professor of geography at the college
of St. Die, now in eastern France, wrote a book on geography. In his
description of the parts of the world unknown to the ancients, he
suggested naming the continent stretching to the south for Americus.

The facsimile's transcription reads as follows:

Nunc Vero et hae partes sunt latius lustratae, et alia quarta
pars per Americum Vesputium (ut in sequentibus audietur) inventa
est quam non video cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore
sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sive Americam
dicendam: cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint
nomina. Ejus situm et gentis mores ex bis binis Americi
navigationibus quae sequuntur liquide intelligidatur.

Waldseemueller thought Americus had been the real discoverer of this
continent. He said, "Now, indeed, as these regions are more widely
explored, and another fourth part has been discovered by Americus
Vespucius, I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to be named
Amerige--that is, Americ's Land, from Americus, the discoverer."

Others adopted Waldseemueller's suggestion and the name America came into
general use outside of Spain. But the Spaniards continued to call all
the new lands by the name which Columbus had given them--the Indies.
America was at first the name for South America only, but later was also
used by writers for the other continent which was soon found to the
north. It was natural to distinguish the two continents as South and
North America.

BALBOA. The successors of Columbus kept up a ceaseless search for
the real Indies, but the more they explored the more they saw that a
great continental barrier was lying across the sea passage to Asia. A
few began to suspect that after all America was not a part of Asia.
Vasco Nunez Balboa was one of these. Balboa was a planter who had
settled in Espanola. He fell deeply into debt, and to escape his
creditors had himself nailed up in a barrel and put aboard a vessel
bound for the northern coast of South America. From there he went to the
eastern border of Panama with a party of gold seekers. The Indians told
him of a great sea and of an abundance of gold on its shores to be found
a short distance across the isthmus. It is probable that the Indians
wished to get rid of the Spaniards as neighbors.

BALBOA'S DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC. Balboa resolved to make a name
for himself and to be the discoverer of the other sea. He set off in
1513. The land is not more than forty-five miles wide at Panama, but it
is almost impassable even to this day. For twenty-two days the hardy
adventurers advanced through a forest, dense with thickets and tangled
swamps and interlacing vines--so thick that for days the sun could not
be seen--and over rough and slippery mountain-sides until they came to
an open sea stretching off to the south and west. Balboa called it the
South Sea, but it is usually called the Pacific Ocean, the name given it
afterward.

Balboa had made the important discovery that the barrier of land was
comparatively narrow. This gave the impression that North America, too,
was narrower than it proved to be, and the search for the passage to the
Indies was pushed with greater vigor.

MAGELLAN. A Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, had really won the
race begun by Prince Henry's navigators and Columbus for India, the land
of cloves, pepper, and nutmegs. He had won in 1497 by going around the
Cape of Good Hope. Another explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, finally,
reached the Indies in a long westward voyage lasting two years, from
1519 to 1521.

THE BEGINNING OF MAGELLAN'S VOYAGE. Magellan, himself a Portuguese,
tried in vain like Columbus to persuade the king of Portugal to aid him
in his project. He succeeded better in Spain, and sailed from there in
1519 with a small fleet given him by the young king Charles. The five
ships in his fleet were old and in bad repair, and the crews had been
brought together from every nation. They sailed directly to South
America, and spent the first year searching every inlet along the coast
for a passage.

They found that the natives of South America used for food vegetables
that "looked like turnips and tasted like chestnuts." The Indians called
them "patatas." In this way the potato, one of the great foods of
to-day, was found by Europeans. A whole winter was passed on the cold
and barren coast of Patagonia. Magellan called the natives "Patagones,"
the word in his language meaning big feet, from the large foot-prints
which they left on the sand.

THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. Magellan finally found a strait, since
named for him the Strait of Magellan, and sailed his ships through it
amid the greatest dangers. The change from the rough waters of the
strait to the calm sea beyond made the word Pacific or Peaceful Sea seem
the most suitable name for the vast body of water which they
had entered.

THE FIRST VOYAGE ACROSS THE PACIFIC. From the western coast of
South America Magellan struck boldly out into the Pacific Ocean on his
way to Asia. The crews suffered untold hardships. The very rats which
overran the rotten ships became a luxurious article of food which only
the more fortunate members of the crews could afford. The poorer seamen
lived for days on the ox-hide strips which protected the masts. These
were soaked in sea-water and roasted over the fire.

Magellan was fortunate enough to chance upon the Isle of Guam, where
plentiful supplies were obtained. He called the group of small islands,
of which Guam is one, the Ladrones. This was his word for robbers, used
because the natives were such robbers. The expedition discovered a group
of islands afterwards called the Philippines. There Magellan fell in
with traders from the Indies and knew that the remainder of the voyage
would be through well-known seas and over a route frequently followed.
Poor Magellan did not live to complete his remarkable voyage. He was
killed in the Philippine Islands in a battle with the natives.

Only one of the five ships found its way through the Spice Islands,
across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and so back to
Spain; but this one carried home twenty-six tons of cloves, worth more
than enough to pay the whole cost of the expedition. Such was the value
of the trade Europe was so eagerly seeking.

WHAT MAGELLAN HAD SHOWN THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE. Magellan's voyage
had, however, been a great event. Historians are agreed that it was the
greatest voyage in the history of mankind. It had shown in a practical
way that the earth is a globe, just as Columbus and other wise men had
long taught, for a ship had sailed completely around it.

But Magellan had also proved some things that they had not dreamed. He
had shown that two great oceans instead of one lay between Europe and
Asia; he had made clear that the Indies which the Spanish explorers had
found, and which other people were beginning to call the Americas, were
really a new world entirely separate from Asia, and not a part of Asia
as Columbus had thought.

QUESTIONS

1. Why were the early American explorers disappointed at finding two
continents between Europe and Asia?

2. What land did John Cabot discover? Where did he think this land
was? Why did the English people take little interest in this voyage?

3. Why was our country named America? Do you think that Americus
Vespucius deserved so great an honor? By what name did the Spaniards
continue to call the new region? Why did the Spaniards have one name
and the other Europeans another name for a long time?

4. How did Balboa come to find the Pacific Ocean? Why did men search
for a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific more vigorously
after Balboa's expedition?

5. Why has Magellan's voyage been called the greatest one in
history? What three things had Magellan shown the European world?

EXERCISES

1. Make out a list of the explorers mentioned in this chapter who
helped in the discovery of the New World, and place opposite the
name of each the name of the land he discovered.

2. Trace Magellan's voyage on the map and make a list of the lands
or countries he passed. Look at the map of North America on this old
map, and at the one in mentioned Chapter XIX. How do you account for
the queer shape of North America on the old map?

_Important date_--1519-21. Magellan's ship made the first voyage
around the world.