Brief History of the United States | Page 6

exhibited at the World's Fair in Chicago.
[9] The ideas of geography held by the unlearned of those days are very curious to us. They believed that near the equator was a fiery zone where the sea boiled and no life existed; that hydras, gorgons, chimeras, and all sorts of horrid monsters inhabited the Sea of Darkness; and that in the Indian Ocean was a lodestone mountain that could draw nails out of ships. Because of the way in which ships disappeared below the horizon, it was believed that they went down hill, and that if they went too far they could never get back.
[10] The object of Columbus was not to let the sailors know how far they were from home.
[11] Columbus was not the first European to reach the New World. About six hundred years earlier, Vikings from Norway settled in Iceland, and from the Icelandic chronicles we learn that about 986 A.D. Eric the Red planted a colony in Greenland. His son, Leif Ericsson, about 1000 A.D., led a party south-westward to a stony country which was probably the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland. Going on southward, they came at last to a spot where wild grapes grew. To this spot, probably on the New England coast, Leif gave the name Vinland, spent the winter there, and in the spring went back to Greenland with a load of timber. The next year Leif's brother sailed to Vinland and passed two winters there. In later years others went, but none remained long, and the land was soon forgotten. Iceland and Greenland were looked upon as part of Europe; and the Vikings' discoveries had no influence on Columbus and the explorers who followed him. Read Fiske's Discovery of America Vol. I, pp. 148-255; and Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor.
[12] Nobody knows just which of the Bahamas Columbus discovered. Three of the group--Cat, Turks and Watling--each claim the honor. At present Watling is believed to have been San Salvador. A good account of the voyage is given in Irving's _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, Vol. I, Book iii, and in Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I, pp. 408-442.
[13] When Columbus on his second voyage returned to Hispaniola, he found that every one of the forty colonists had perished. They had been killed by the natives.
[14] Despite the great thing he did for Spain. Columbus lost favor at court. Evil men slandered him; his manner of governing the new lands was falsely represented to the king and queen; a new governor was sent out, and Columbus was brought back in chains. Though soon released, he was never restored to his rights.
[15] Columbus was buried at Valladolid, in Spain, but in 1513 his body was taken to a monastery at Seville. There it remained till 1536, when it was carried to Santo Domingo in Haiti. In 1796 it was removed and buried with imposing ceremonies at Havana in Cuba. In 1898, when Spain was driven from Cuba, his bones were carried back to Seville.

CHAPTER II
THE ATLANTIC COAST AND THE PACIFIC DISCOVERED
THE ATLANTIC COAST LINE EXPLORED.--Columbus having shown the way, English, Spanish, and Portuguese explorers followed. Some came in search of China or the Spice Islands; some were in quest of gold and pearls. The result was the exploration of the Atlantic coast line from Labrador to the end of South America.
SOME FAMOUS VOYAGES.--In 1497 John Cabot, sailing from England, reached Newfoundland, which he believed to be part of China. [1] In 1498 John Cabot and his son Sebastian, while in search of the Spice Islands, sailed along the coast from Newfoundland to what is now South Carolina. [2]
[Illustration: RECORD OF PAYMENT OF JOHN CABOT'S PENSION FOR 1499. [3] Photographed from the original accounts of the Bristol customs collectors, now in Westminster Abbey, London.]
[Illustration: DISCOVERY ON THE EAST COAST OF AMERICA.]
Before 1500 Spaniards in search of gold, or pearls, or new lands had explored the coast line from Central America to Cape St. Roque. [4]
In 1500 Cabral, while on his way from Portugal to India by Da Gama's route (p. 11), sailed so far westward that he sighted the coast of the country now called Brazil. Cabral went on his way; but sent back a ship to the king of Portugal with the news that the new-found land lay east of the Line of Demarcation. The king dispatched (1501) an expedition which explored the coast southward nearly as far as the mouth of the Plata River.
SOME RESULTS OF THESE VOYAGES.--The results of these voyages were many and important. They furnished a better knowledge of the coast; they proved the existence of a great mass of land called the New World, but still supposed to be a part of Asia; they secured Brazil for Portugal, and led to the naming of our continent.
WHY THE NEW WORLD