Suddenly, at the end of the fifteenth century, the persons of our story found the picture of the world which they carried in their minds wonderfully expanded, rather as if it were a closed fist widely opening. Columbus in 1492 "discovered America": Vasco da Gama, in 1487, "rounded the Cape of Good Hope."
That is the way in which most of the history books state it for us; but it is a statement which gives credit to Columbus for a little more than he actually did, and does not put enough to the credit of da Gama. For it was not what we call America at all which Columbus discovered in 1492, but only one of what we now know as the West Indies, or West Indian Islands: and the mere "rounding" of the Cape of Good Hope had been done by another before da Gama, but da Gama, after "rounding" and sailing up the eastern coast of Africa, struck across to the western coast of India. As a feat of navigation his voyage was far greater than that of Columbus.
Vasco da Gama
Thus Vasco da Gama, going eastward, reached the western coast of India, and Columbus, going westward, reached the "West Indies." The name is worth noting.
These islands, as further exploration showed them to be, were called "West Indies," because men had expected to reach India by sailing west. The geographers had no conception of the great continent of America and the vast ocean of the Pacific that lay between the land touched by Columbus and the land which he thought that he had touched.
No matter. He came back with a very marvellous story—a story which grew ever more marvellous as further exploration revealed the astonishing truth.
What made this discovery of America so intensely exciting was that it was discovery of a land wholly new and unexpected. Although the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India was a new and remarkable achievement in navigation, the people in the West, the only people with whom this "greatest story" has been concerned until this time, were tolerably informed about the East. But its story had never before come into their own and mingled itself with their own so that each should have an effect and make a change in the other, as did begin to happen now.
The "New World," as it was called, of America, unlike the East, scarcely had a story at all. A few, a very few, historical records were discovered by the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru. The inhabitants whom the Spaniards found there had been workers in gold and silver, and the riches which Spain obtained by robbery of this treasure and, later, by working the gold mines and silver mines from which the precious metals were taken, made a large difference, as we shall see, in the history of men in Europe. But for the rest the "New World" had no history, no activities, which worked into and altered the history of the old. The old world was vastly affected by the discovery nevertheless. Just because it was so new, and occupied by savages who were able to make very little resistance to invasion, it enlarged the actual size of the world both for men's imaginations and also as a place for them to live in. But except for the treasure which the Spaniards took, it had little to send back to the old world. All else was a going out of the old world to the new.
Da Gama did not discover a new world. He merely—but it made a vast difference to the story—proved possible a new and far more convenient route to a country already known. Thus he brought that known land into contact with Europe so that the story of the far East interpenetrated the European story as it never had done before. The whole, in fact, became one world-wide story.