  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 NiÑa, 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 WaldseemÜller, a professor of geography at the college of St. DiÉ, 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.
WaldseemÜller 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 WaldseemÜller'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 NuÑez Balboa was one of these. Balboa was a planter who had settled in EspaÑola. 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.
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