Columbus and Vespucius.
Thus while Columbus was nurturing his deferred hopes, neglected and poor, and awaiting what after all was but a tantalizing revival of royal interest, the rival Portuguese, acting most probably under the influences of Columbus's own countryman, this Florentine, were stretching farther towards the true western route to the Moluccas than the Admiral had any conception of. Vespucius was also at the same time unwittingly asserting claims which should in the end rob the Great Discoverer of the meed of bestowing his name on the new continent which he had just as unwittingly discovered. The contrast is of the same strange impressiveness which marks so many of the improbable turns in the career of Columbus.
1500. Spanish purposes at the north.
Meanwhile, what was going on in the north, where Portugal was pushing her discoveries in the region already explored by Cabot? The Spaniards had been dilatory here. The monarchs, May 6, 1500, while they were distracted with the reports of the disquietude of Española, had turned their attention in this direction, and had thought of sending ships into the seas which "Sebastian Cabot had discovered." They had done nothing, however, though Navarrete finds that explorations thitherward, under Juan Dornelos and Ojeda, had been planned.
STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE, SHOWING SITE OF EARLY NORMAN FISHING STATION AT BRADORE.
[After Reclus's L'Amerique.]
MS. OF GASPAR CORTEREAL.
[From Harrisse's Cortereal, Postscriptum, 1883.]