III
Having, in the interval between the second Columbian expedition and the discovery of the African route by Vasco da Gama, induced Spain to agree to the extension of the Papal meridian 370 leagues farther west, the Portuguese continued their activities with renewed ardor. In March, 1500, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman in command of an expedition intended to resume the work begun by Da Gama, was blown across the Atlantic to the coasts of Brazil, where he touched at a point in the southern part of what is now the State of Bahia. Under the impression that it was an island, and assuming that it lay east of the Tordesillas treaty line, he landed and took possession in the name of his King. The news having reached Portugal in the Fall of the same year, no time was lost in asserting title and sending out a small fleet to ascertain the extent and resources of the region, also in the hope that a wealthy and civilized people like that of Hindustan would be found.
This expedition was placed under the command of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine astronomer and navigator, who had already made two voyages for Spain and skirted the coast of Yucatan and the northern continent, around Florida, as far north as the Chesapeake. Setting sail now to the south, he made a systematic examination of the Brazilian coast for two thousand miles. All he found that seemed to have any immediate commercial value were immense quantities of a dyewood known in Europe as “brazil” (the color of fire); it was from this, of course, that the country took its name. The Portuguese, being by that time, however, too engrossed in their African mines and sugar plantations and East Indian trade to think it worth while to found colonies in such a region, did nothing to develop it until thirty years had passed by and it became necessary for them to protect their rights, particularly from the French, who had been tempted by the great demand for the dyewood to engage in coastwise poaching on a large scale.
For this reason, to his contemporaries, the most interesting feature of Vespucci’s report was the conviction he expressed that this country south of the equator was neither Asia nor an island, but a new continent, or, as he himself called it, a “new world”—“for it transcends the ideas of the ancients,” he said in a letter to his friend Soderini, “since most of them declare that, beyond the equator to the south, there is no continent but only the sea which they call the Atlantic; but this last voyage of mine has proved that this opinion of theirs is erroneous, because in these southern regions I have found a continent more thickly inhabited by peoples and animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa, and, moreover, a climate more temperate and agreeable than any known to us.” In 1504 this letter was published under the title “Mundus Novus.” The term “new world” caught the popular fancy, and although, in 1497, Columbus first of all, and later Vespucci himself with Alonso de Ojeda, had cruised along and touched at points on its Caribbean coast, by virtue of his Brazilian explorations Vespucci was acclaimed the discoverer.
And therein was the source of the confusion that gave to South America, and eventually to the northern continent as well, the name they bear rather than one commemorative of Columbus. No one suspected that there were two oceans instead of only the Atlantic between Europe and Asia; that the land Amerigo Vespucci had explored south of the equator was of a piece with that discovered by Columbus to the north. It was conceived to be entirely detached from and to the south of Cathay, which Columbus was still supposed to have reached, and to lie in a position somewhat similar to that which Australia was afterward found to occupy. Consequently, when in 1507 Mathias Ringmann published his “Introductio Cosmographie,” he proposed that this (as he estimated it) “fourth part of the globe” be called “Amerigo.” The following year Martinus Waldseemüller published his map, whereon for the first time the name “America” appeared. Investigation has made it clear that there was no attempt, as Vespucci’s maligners charged, to immortalize his name at the expense of Columbus. The southern continent was not named for Columbus simply because it was thought to be distinct from his discoveries; the northern, because it was thought already to have been named Cathay.
At last, when the existence across the Atlantic of a continuous stretch of land had been comprehended, and when, in the light of the Portuguese discoveries by way of the African route, it was realized that these strange coasts did not in the least coincide with the ideas formed of them by those who had assumed them to be Asiatic, the conviction grew that the fabulous treasure lands of the Orient had not been reached by this western route at all. The whole stretch must be embraced in the new world, it was concluded; there must be another ocean than the Atlantic beyond. “Rumors of it had been heard, or glimpses caught, perhaps, at one time or another,” says Hawthorne, “before the actual fact was understood. Meanwhile Spain was very anxious to get through or around this singular barrier of islands, or whatever it was that was keeping her from sharing the profits that Da Gama had brought to Portugal from Hindustan, and she sent out expeditions to accomplish it.” In 1505 Amerigo Vespucci (who had returned to the Spanish flag), with La Cosa, explored the Gulf of Darien and penetrated two hundred miles up the Atrato, thinking it might prove a strait leading to the Asiatic waters. Juan de Solis was trying to find it when he explored the Rio de la Plata and met his death at the hands of the natives. Jacques Cartier was seeking it when he explored the St. Lawrence, D’Ayllon when he tried the Chesapeake and James, and Hendrik Hudson when he ascended the river that bears his name.
In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, Governor of Darien, a valiant adventurer who had been prominent in the conquest and colonization of the Isthmus, undertook by means of an expedition by land to ascertain whether such an ocean did really exist. Starting with a company of about a hundred and ninety Spaniards and a few Indians, he skirted the coast of Panama to a point near Cape Tiburon, and there disembarked and headed inland. For twenty days his party persevered over forest-clad swamps, valleys, and mountains, fought a pitched battle with the natives, and finally cut its way through the dense undergrowth to the heights overlooking what is now known as the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific side, and thus resolved all doubt into certainty and completed an event which, declares Dawson, “was second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus’ first voyage.” Balboa dubbed it the Southern Sea, little thinking that it was a body of water more vast than the Atlantic that he had found to bar the way to Cathay. “So elated was he over his epoch-making discovery,” says Mozans, quoting from an early chronicler, that—
“With no lesse manlye courage than Hannibal of Carthage shewed his souldiers Italye and the promontories of the Alps, he exhorted his men to lyft up theyre hartes and to behoulde the land even now under theyre feete and the sea before theyre eyes, which shoulde bee unto them a full and juste reward of theyre great laboures and trauayles now ouerpassed. When he had sayde these woordes, he commanded them to raise certeine heapes of stones in the steede of altars for a token of possession. Then, descendynge from the toppes of the mountaynes, lest such as might come after hym shoulde argu hym of lyinge and falshod, he wrote the Kyng of Castelles his name here and there on the barkes of the trees, both on the ryght hande and on the lefte, and raysed heapes of stones all the way that he went untyll he came to the region of the nexte Kynge towarde the south, whose name was Chiapes.”
“The act of taking possession was so typical of similar formalities of the Conquistadores,” continues Mozans, “that I transcribe from Oviedo his account of the manner in which Balboa and his companions claimed for his sovereign the Sea of the South, all islands in it and all lands bordering on it, in what part of the world soever. Armed with his sword and bearing aloft a banner on which were painted an image of the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child and the arms of Castile and Leon, Balboa, followed by his associates, entered the water until it rose above his knees, when in a loud voice he said:
“‘Long live the high and mighty monarchs, Don Ferdinand and Doña Juana, Sovereigns of Castile, of Leon and of Aragon, in whose name and for the royal crown of Castile, I take real and corporal and actual possession of these seas and lands and coasts and ports and islands of the south, and all thereunto annexed, and of the kingdoms and provinces which do or may appertain to them, in whatever manner or by whatever right or title, ancient or modern, in times past, present or to come, without any contradiction; and if other prince or captain, Christian or infidel, or of any law, sect or condition whatsoever, shall pretend any right to these islands and seas, I am ready and prepared to maintain and defend them in the name of the Castilian Sovereigns, present and future, whose is the empire and dominion over these Indias, islands and terra firma, northern and southern, with all their seas, both at the arctic and antarctic poles, on either side of the equinoctial line, whether within or without the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, both now and at all times so long as the world shall endure and until the final judgment of all mankind.’ And then the Notary, who always accompanied such expeditions, was ordered to make on the spot an exact record of what had been said and done, which was duly signed and authenticated by all present.”
It was to the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan in the English rendering of the name) that the honor finally fell of being the first, not alone to find the passage through the new continent that was being so eagerly sought, but to cross by the western route to the East Indies and thereby blaze the way to making geography an exact science. He had already been to the Moluccas by the African route, and, disgusted by the failure of his King suitably to reward his services, had transferred his allegiance to Spain and managed to secure from the Emperor Charles V a commission and five ships, the largest of but 120 tons’ burden. On the 20th of September, 1419, he sailed from the Guadalquivir, with a crew numbering 280, all told, and, having entered the Plata River and satisfied himself that it was not a strait, ran down the Patagonian coast through many storms until he found shelter in the harbor of St. Julian, where, on Easter Sunday, a mutiny broke out that only a man of such remarkable courage and resourcefulness as Magellan possessed could have suppressed. It had been a hard voyage, the chances of finding the strait seemed slim, there was only the prospect that there they must remain throughout the antarctic winter in idleness and discomfort; it is small wonder that they wanted to desert.
However, during the last week in August spring began (the seasons are reversed south of the equator, it must be remembered) and the fleet, without the Santiago, which had been wrecked, proceeded to the south. After experiencing much more bad weather, they made Cape Virgins on the 21st of October and entered a large bay, which was flanked by lofty mountains, crowned with glaciers and snow. This at last was the entrance to the passage, but at that very point one of the vessels, the San Antonio, seized an opportunity to make its escape and return to Spain. “For five weeks,” as Hawthorne relates, “the remaining three ships wound along through the tortuous channel. Provisions were running short, yet Magellan would not turn back ‘even if he had to eat the leather off the ships’ yards.’ At length his persistence was rewarded by a sight of the open sea. ‘When,’ to quote Richard Eden, ‘the Capitayne was past the strayght and saw the way open to the mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell from his eyes and he named the poynte of the lande from whense he first saw that sea Cape Desiderato.’ And the broad ocean which lay before him was so calm, after his many stormful days, that he called it the Pacific.”
“But months of a voyage as trying as any they had encountered still lay before them,” Hawthorne goes on. “Could the planet be so vast? Until December they kept a northerly course, then struck out boldly across the unknown waste. They ran across one or two islands, but erelong were swallowed up in the seemingly endless immensity of ocean. They were reduced to the utmost extremities for food and water; scurvy broke out; nineteen men died and thirty were too ill to work. Finally, on the 6th of March, they reached the Ladrone Islands, so named because of the thievishness of the natives. Here they got fruit and other food, and the worst was over. Ten days later the Philippines were sighted and Magellan knew the extent of his achievement. He had sailed round the world. Happier than Columbus, he did not survive this mightiest exploit of his time; in a fight with the natives the great sailor was killed.”
Only one of the little vessels ever got back to Spain. Returning by way of Africa, she arrived at the Guadalquivir in September, a year after she had set out, and with but eighteen survivors of the expedition. “What a picture!” the historian exclaims—“those eighteen seaworn mariners in their battered craft, survivors of the greatest feat of navigation that has ever been performed. What a poem is their story, what an event in the history of mankind! What reward did Magellan have? None that mortal could bestow. He was dead and his wife and son had also died. Del Cano, the captain of the ship, was given a crest, with the legend, on a terrestrial globe, ‘Primus circumdedisti me,’ together with a pension of five hundred ducats, and Espinosa was likewise pensioned and ennobled. But every mariner who sails the seas knows Magellan and the story of his exploit, and mankind accords him the honor that Spain could not bestow. Of all the great explorers, he is perhaps the one whose character and deeds we can contemplate with the most unalloyed satisfaction.”