The period which witnessed, among other great achievements, the discovery of a new hemisphere, and included the voyages of Columbus, Gama, and Magellan, besides many of an importance only secondary to these, has been called the most brilliant in human history. The exaggeration, if such it be, is excusable; certainly in the department of geographical history no other period shares the peculiar lustre of this. Christopher Columbus (1446–1506) was born of humble parentage at Genoa. He went early to sea, and was attracted to Lisbon no doubt by the reputation of the Portuguese as navigators. He had voyaged to the eastern Mediterranean, to the Guinea Coast, and in the north as far, perhaps, as Iceland. It is not until 1484 that we find his great scheme of the crossing of the Atlantic to Asia matured and laid before the King of Portugal. It was refused by him; it was rejected also in Genoa, Venice, England, and France. Then he presented it at Madrid, and it was examined by a quasi-expert committee, which pronounced against it; but at last it came under the notice of Queen Isabella, and by her was taken up. Columbus obtained three ships, and sailed on August 3, 1492, from Palos, himself in command of one vessel, the others under Martin Alonzo and Vicente YaÑez Pinzon. The expedition touched at the Canaries in September, and the story of its subsequent progress is well known—how difficulties were encountered in the Sargasso Sea, how the hearts of the crew failed them, how Columbus was driven to give them false reckonings of the position of the ships, but was at last enabled to point out to them signs of neighbouring land in the flotsam of the waters, and how at length land was actually sighted on October 11, and on the following day a landing in state was effected on an island to which the name of San Salvador was given, and which is now usually identified with Watling Island of the Bahamas. Columbus did not then, or at any time afterwards, suppose that he had done otherwise than reach some part of the archipelago off Asia. On the present voyage he observed a number of the West Indian islands, and he returned to Spain in March, 1493, to meet with a magnificent reception.

Among the effects of Columbus’s discoveries was the necessity which was immediately found for delimiting the spheres in which Portuguese and Spanish explorations respectively should be prosecuted. In the existing state of geographical theory it may be supposed that a satisfactory delimitation was no easy matter to obtain, and, indeed, the line which was chosen was found, in fact, impossible to demarcate. It was determined under the treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), which followed upon a pronouncement contained in two papal bulls of the previous year, that to Spain should belong islands discovered west of a north-and-south line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, and that Portugal might claim all lands lying east of this line. The rule gave rise to such difficulties that Portugal is found later making a claim upon Brazil, while Spain did the same upon the Moluccas. In 1493 Columbus led a new and much larger expedition to the scene of his triumph. There was now no lack of enthusiasm to be of his company. On November 3 Dominica was reached; the Antilles were subsequently surveyed, and Hispaniola or Haiti, which had been discovered on the first expedition, was again visited. Jamaica was found, the south coast of Cuba was traced—though this island was taken for a peninsula—and it is possible that the mainland of Central America was seen. Columbus returned in 1496 to Spain, and set out on his third voyage in 1498. Holding a more southerly course than before, he came to Trinidad, and subsequently recognized the neighbourhood of continental land by observing a current of fresh water of considerable strength in the open sea; this was from the mouth of the Orinoco. The settlers in the new colonies met with many difficulties, and created more. There was much hostility towards Columbus, and he was doubtless restrained from accomplishing much which might have been accomplished if his followers had been wholly loyal. On his last voyage, in 1502–4, his aim was to penetrate right through the archipelago and to complete the circumnavigation of the world. After coasting along Cuba he turned south, and came upon the coast of Honduras, which he followed for nearly four months before he was compelled to return to Spain. Within a few days of his arrival there, he lost his great patroness by the death of Isabella, and he himself passed the remaining months of his life in comparative neglect.

Voyagers hastened to follow him across the Atlantic. The work of those who, like Cabot and Cortereal, added a knowledge of the north-eastern coasts of the new continent to the discoveries of the time, will be considered more appropriately in connection with the exploration of the arctic region, and the attempt to solve the long-lived problem of the north-west passage (Chapter VIII). The year 1500 and the first few years of the new century were only less notable than that of Columbus’s discovery.

Vicente YaÑez Pinzon came of a wealthy Andalusian family, of which several members were well-known navigators—Vicente himself and two brothers, Martin and Francisco, had assisted Columbus. He, in command of an expedition in 1499–1500, was the first Spaniard to cross the Equator, discovered the Brazilian coast at Cape San Agostinho, added 300 miles to the known coast of South America, and found the mouth of the Amazon. The Portuguese Cabral, who has been commonly hailed as the discoverer of Brazil, actually reached its coast some three months after Pinzon, having been driven far from his course round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian seas in the wake of Vasco da Gama (Chapter VII). In the following years many expeditions crossed the Atlantic for discovery and conquest. Pinzon continued his travels in 1507–09, and in the course of them, in company with Juan Diaz de Solis, sailed south along the Brazilian coast, and is said to have passed without recognizing the great estuary of the Rio de la Plata.

Into this period fall the much-discussed voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, who, if he were indeed a geographical charlatan, as the greater weight of opinion (though it is rather delicately balanced) appears to stigmatize him, is one of the most remarkable examples of a type which, at periods of keen public interest in exploration, has been not uncommon; even modern instances may come into the memory. Vespucci, a native of Florence (1451–1512), came into Spanish service as a naval contractor, and claimed to have himself made a voyage in 1497, which, if the distances and positions quoted by him were accurate, would have extended into the Pacific and as far as the coast now belonging to British Columbia, and would moreover have brought him within sight of the American mainland before any other navigator of this period. He also gave accounts of three later voyages (two in Portuguese service), abundant in equally or more improbable statements, as that he approached within thirteen degrees of the south pole. If he lied, he was rewarded with something more than the transient fame which others of his kind have usually had to exchange for notoriety. Martin WaldseemÜller, professor of cosmography at St. DiÉ, is credited with the first suggestion that the new continent should take its name from Amerigo, while the hero himself died in the enjoyment of the Spanish office of chief pilot. It must be remembered that at this period of constant fresh discoveries it was almost impossible to form any true conception of the relative importance of the work of different men; and as it was not then the habitual practice of explorers to address themselves immediately on their return to the task of writing down their experiences, Vespucci’s narratives were eagerly seized upon as furnishing a trustworthy account of the new world.

It was not until after the first decade of the sixteenth century that the Spaniards, who were to play so large a part in the history of America, began to interest themselves in the penetration of the continent itself, as distinct from the islands in the Caribbean Sea. The voyage of Juan Ponce de Leon, who was obsessed with one of the romantic stories of the period, telling of an island to the north which held the secret of eternal youth, resulted in the acquisition of Florida in 1512—the first Spanish possession in North America. In the next year, 1513, Vasco NuÑez de Balboa, a Spanish adventurer who had conquered an American kingdom with his sword, almost accidentally made the great discovery of the Pacific Ocean from the elevation of “a peak in Darien.” After NuÑez had triumphantly taken possession of the whole sea in the name of Spain, and had returned with his news, others hastened to follow him, the most successful being Gil GonÇalez de Avila, who arrived at Nicaragua in 1523. The discovery of the Gulf of Mexico and of Yucatan was delayed even longer than that of the Pacific shore: it was not until 1517 that Hernandez de Cordova touched at the peninsula. But in the next year it and the gulf were explored with some thoroughness by Juan de Grisalva, who brought back to the governor of Cuba the first news of a civilized race living in Mexico, building great cities and rich in gold, to awaken the cupidity of the Spanish adventurers.

One great question, however, remained unsolved: the western route to Asia was still to seek. To the voyagers of the early sixteenth century it must have seemed as though the oceans of the world were divided in two by a mighty land barrier, stretching from pole to pole. Apart from the unexpected glimpse of the seas on the other side obtained at the isthmus, nothing was known of the length or width of the new continent, until the problem was solved by Fernao de MagalhÃes (Magellan) in one of the most remarkable voyages recorded. He set sail from Spain in 1519, and after arriving at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, which was already known, he began a careful search of the unknown coast to the south, always looking for the opening which might lead him to the west. In November of the same year Magellan rounded the southern extremity of the mainland, and sailed joyfully through the straits which bear his name, between the continent and the Fuegian archipelago. He and his men believed that now their journey lay behind them; a few days more with a favouring wind, and they expected to see again lands known to men, some point of the islands of eastern Asia. The wind favoured them indeed, and the name “Pacific,” given by Magellan5 to the ocean, records his gratitude; but the land was far to seek, and it was not until ninety-nine days had passed, and his crew were come to the last stages of starvation, that he reached the Mariannes, and from thence came in ten days to the Philippines. Not only had he sailed half round the globe since he left the shores of the New World, but he had passed among the many scattered groups of islands in that part of the ocean without ever sighting land. He was not destined to enjoy his success, for he died in a skirmish on Matan, one of the Philippine Islands, and the news of the first circumnavigation of the globe was brought home by his subordinate, Sebastian del Cano.

Now that the sea-way to the western coasts of America was pointed out, the outline of the continent became fairly known, and the interior was being gradually covered with landmarks, by the end of the sixteenth century. Under the energetic direction of Cortez, the Spaniards had conquered Mexico. By 1533 his emissaries had arrived at the Gulf of California; in 1541 New Mexico was explored, and by 1571 it was possible to construct the admirable map of Mexico which figures in Ortelius’s Atlas (1579). In South America Francisco Pizarro and his three brothers, with Diego Almagro and Hernando de Luque, had worked with such daring good-fortune that the whole of the Empire of the Incas was conquered for Spain, and in 1535 Chile was added to it. After the first conquest, great tracts of country were explored and taken possession of—first the valleys of the Andes and the country which was named New Granada, then the whole coast between the Straits of Magellan and Peru; and in 1541 Francisco de Orellana, who had separated himself from a disastrous expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro over the Andes from Quito, made a stupendous journey right down the River Amazon. In 1539 Hernandez de Soto, longing for another Peru to conquer, and full of the fables of treasure and precious metals which were rife everywhere in those days of great discoveries, started on a long and courageous battle to win for himself and his followers the land lying between the Gulf of Mexico and the River Ohio. He penetrated Arkansas; but he was eventually killed, and his followers driven from the country.

Other nations were working to conquer territories for themselves in other parts of the continent. The King of France, Francis I, sent Jacques Cartier on four separate voyages between 1533 and 1543, and he sailed up the river of St. Lawrence to the spot where Montreal now stands; but little colonization was done till the beginning of the following century. From France also came several colonies of Huguenots, sent out by Admiral Coligny between 1555 and 1564, one to Brazil and two to Florida, which were all attacked and destroyed. To England belongs the honour of the second circumnavigation of the world. Francis Drake rounded Cape Horn, and proved that Tierra del Fuego did not form part of the southern continent, as suggested by Magellan’s discovery. He sailed up and down the whole of the western coast, and across the Pacific to the Philippines, returning to England in 1580. He was followed in 1585 by another Englishman, Sir Thomas Cavendish, who also sailed round the world.

Although there remained vast tracts unknown in America, the main features of the continent had been determined. The French, under the able guidance of Samuel Champlain, were rapidly settling in Canada, and exploring far and wide, from Hudson Bay to Louisiana. England was occupying the country between the Alleghany mountains and the sea. The Spaniards were multiplying in South America. But the only expedition undertaken in a scientific spirit which resulted in the acquisition of valuable knowledge was the exploration of the Amazon by Pedro Texeira in 1639. The history of America after the end of the sixteenth century is concerned rather with colonization than with discovery. It was rapidly partitioned among English, French, Spaniards, and Portuguese. Occupation of North America was slowly pushed forward, and the continent more or less provisionally mapped. For many years the United States and Canada have had their regular surveys, and in time the northern half of America will be as well mapped as Europe. The States of South America, with the exception of the Argentine and Chile, are much more backward, and there remain, notwithstanding the work of Humboldt (1799–1804) and other scientific explorers in later years, especially around the Upper Amazon, large areas which are still a virgin field for the explorer.