General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

In 1487 the most southern point of the continent was reached, and was named the Cape of Good Hope, as the possibility of reaching India by sea now seemed assured. A decade later Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese admiral, doubled the Cape, crossed the Indian Sea, and landed on the coast of Malabar (1498).

The discovery of a water-path to India effected, as we have already noticed (see p. 467), most important changes in the traffic of the world. It made the ports of Portugal and of other countries on the Atlantic seaboard the depots of the Eastern trade. "The front of Europe was suddenly changed." The Italian merchants were ruined. The great warehouses of Egypt and Syria were left empty. The traffic of the Mediterranean dwindled to insignificant proportions. Portugal established trading-posts and colonies in the East, and built up there a great empire,—like that which England is maintaining in the same region at the present day.

THE VOYAGE AROUND THE GLOBE (1519-1522).—Upon the return of Columbus from his successful expedition, Pope Alexander VI., with a view to adjusting the conflicting claims of Spain and Portugal, divided the world by a meridian line drawn about midway through the Atlantic, and gave to the Spanish sovereigns all unclaimed pagan lands that their subjects might find west of this line, and to the Portuguese kings all new pagan lands discovered by Portuguese navigators east of the designated meridian.

The determination on the part of the king of Spain to acquire title under the papal grant to the valuable Spice Islands of the Pacific by reaching them through sailing westward, led him to organize an expedition of discovery in the western seas. The little fleet was entrusted to the command of Magellan, a Portuguese admiral.

Magellan directed his fleet in a southwesterly course across the Atlantic, hoping to find towards the south a break in the land discovered by Columbus. Near the most southern point of Patagonia he found the narrow strait that now bears his name, through which he pushed his vessel into the sea beyond. From the calm, unruffled face of the new ocean, so different from the stormy Atlantic, he gave to it the name Pacific.

After a most adventurous voyage upon the hitherto untraversed waters of the new sea, the expedition reached the Spice Islands, and eventually arrived home, after an absence of over three years. For the first time men had gone around the globe that they had so long lived upon. The achievement of course settled forever the question as to the shape of the earth. It pushed aside all the old narrow geographical ideas, and broadened immensely the physical horizon of the world.

CONQUEST OF MEXICO (1519-1521).—Soon after the discovery of the New World, Spanish settlements were established upon the islands in front of the Gulf of Mexico. Among the colonists here were constantly spread reports of a great and rich Indian monarchy upon the mainland to the west. These stories inflamed the imagination of the more adventurous among the settlers, and an expedition was organized and placed under the command of Hernando Cortez, for the conquest and "conversion" of the heathen nation. The expedition was successful, and soon the Spaniards were masters of the greater part of Mexico.

The state that the conquerors destroyed was hardly an "empire," as termed by the Spanish writers, but rather a confederacy, somewhat like the Iroquois confederacy in the North. It embraced three tribes, of which the Aztecs were leaders. At the head of the league was a war-chief, who bore the name of Montezuma.

The Mexican Indians had taken some steps in civilization. They employed a system of picture-writing, and had cities and temples. But they were cannibals, and offered human sacrifices to their gods. They had no knowledge of the horse or of the ox, and were of course ignorant of the use of fire-arms.

THE CONQUEST OF PERU (1532-1536).—Shortly after the conquest of the Indians of Mexico, the subjugation of the Indians of Peru was also effected. The civilization of the Peruvians was superior to that of the Mexicans. Not only were the great cities of the Peruvian empire filled with splendid temples and palaces, but throughout the country were magnificent works of public utility, such as roads, bridges, and aqueducts. The government of the Incas, the royal, or ruling race, was a mild, parental autocracy.