For a long time after it was known that South America was severed, as Magellan proved, from Asia, the belief was still commonly held that North America and Asia were one and continuous. While no one ventures to suspect that Columbus had any prescience of these later developments, there are those like Varnhagen who claim a distinct insight for Vespucius; but it is by no means clear, in the passages which are cited, that Vespucius thought the continental mass of South America more distinct from Asia than Columbus did, when the volume of water poured out by the Orinoco convinced the Admiral that he was skirting a continent, and not an island. That Columbus thought to place there the region of the Biblical paradise shows that its continental features did not dissociate it from Asia. The New World of Vespucius was established by his own testimony as hardly more than a new part of Asia.
1525. Loyasa.
De Hoces discovers Cape Horn.
In 1525 Loyasa was sent to make further examination of Magellan's Strait. It was at this time that one of his ships, commanded by Francisco de Hoces, was driven south in February, 1526, and discovered Cape Horn, rendering the insular character of Tierra del Fuego all but certain. The fact was kept secret, and the map makers were not generally made aware of this terminal cape till Drake saw it, fifty-two years later. It was not till 1615-17 that Schouten and Lemaire made clear the eastern limits of Tierra del Fuego when they discovered the passage between that island and Staten Island, and during the same interval Schouten doubled Cape Horn for the first time. It was in 1618-19 that the observations of Nodal first gave the easterly bend to the southern extremity of the continent.
1535. Chili.
The last stretch of the main coast of South America to be made out was that on the Pacific side from the point where Magellan turned away from it up to the bounds of Peru, where Pizarro and his followers had mapped it. This trend of the coast began to be understood about 1535; but it was some years before its details got into maps. The final definition of it came from Camargo's voyage in 1540, and was first embodied with something like accuracy in Juan Freire's map of 1546, and was later helped by explorations from the north. But this proximate precision gave way in 1569 to a protuberant angle of the Chili coast, as drawn by Mercator, which in turn lingered on the chart till the next century.
Cartographical views.
We need now to turn from these records of the voyagers to see what impression their discoveries had been making upon the cartographers and geographers of Europe.