Brief History of the United States | Page 7

WAS CALLED AMERICA.--In the party sent by the king of Portugal to explore the coast of Brazil, was an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci (ah-ma'ree-go ves-poot'chee), or Americus Vespucius, who had twice before visited the coast of South America. Of these three voyages and of a fourth Vespucius wrote accounts, They were widely read, led to the belief that he had discovered a new or fourth part of the world, and caused a German professor of geography to suggest that this fourth part should be called America. The name was applied first to what is now Brazil, then to all South America, and finally also to North America, when it was found, long afterward, that North America was part of the new continent and not part of Asia.
[Illustration: THE FIRST PRINTED SUGGESTION OF THE NAME AMERICA. [5] Part of a page from Waldseem��ller's book _Cosmographie Introductio_, printed in 1507, now in the Lenox Library, New York.]
BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC.--The man who led the way to the discovery that America was not part of Asia was Balbo'a. [6] He came to the eastern border of Panama (1510) with a band of Spaniards seeking gold. There they founded the town of Darien and in time made Balboa their commander. He married the daughter of a chief, made friends with the Indians, and heard from them of a great body of water across the mountains. This he determined to see, and in 1513, with Indian guides and a party of Spaniards, made his way through dense and tangled forests and from the summit of a mountain looked down on the Pacific Ocean, which he called the South Sea. Four days later, standing on the shore, he waited till the rising tide came rolling in, and then rushing into the water, sword in hand, he took possession of the ocean in the name of Spain. [7]
[Illustration: SPANISH HELMET AND SHIRT OF MAIL FOUND IN MEXICO. Now in Essex Hall, Salem, Mass.]
THE PACIFIC CROSSED; THE PHILIPPINES DISCOVERED.--The Portuguese meantime, by sailing around Africa, had reached the Spice Islands. So far beyond India were these islands that the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan took up the old idea of Columbus, and maintained that they could be most easily reached by sailing west. To this proposition the king of Portugal would not listen; so Magellan persuaded the king of Spain to let him try; and in 1519 set sail with five small ships. He crossed the Atlantic to the mouth of the Plata, and went south till storms and cold drove him into winter quarters. [8] In August, 1520 (early spring in the southern hemisphere), he went on his way and entered the strait which now bears his name. One of the ships had been wrecked. In the strait another stole away and went home. The three remaining vessels passed safely through, and out into an ocean so quiet compared with the stormy Atlantic that Magellan called it the Pacific. Across this the explorers sailed for five months before they came to a group of islands which Magellan called the Ladrones (Spanish for _robbers_) because the natives were so thievish. [9] Ten days later they reached another group, afterward named the Philippines. [10]
On one of these islands Magellan and many of his men were slain. [11] Two of the ships then went southward to the Spice Islands, where they loaded with spices. One now started for Panama, but was forced to return. The other sailed around Africa, and in 1522 reached Spain in safety. It had sailed around the world. The surviving captain was greatly honored. The king ennobled him, and on his coat of arms was a globe with the motto "You first sailed around me."
[Illustration: MAGELLAN'S SHIP THAT SAILED AROUND THE WORLD.]
RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE.--Of all the voyages ever made by man up to that time, this of Magellan and his men was the greatest. It gave positive proof that the earth is a sphere. It revealed the vast width of the Pacific. It showed that America was probably not a part of Asia, and changed the geographical ideas of the time. [12]
THE COAST OF FLORIDA EXPLORED.--What meantime had happened along the coast of North America? In 1513 Ponce de Leon [13] (pon'tha da la-on'), a Spaniard, sailed northwest from Porto Rico in search of an island which the Indians told him contained gold, and in which he believed was a fountain or stream whose waters would restore youth to the old. In the season of Easter, or Pascua Florida, he came upon a land which he called Florida. Ponce supposed he had found an island, and following the coast southward went round the peninsula and far up the west coast before going back to Porto Rico. [14]
[Illustration: SPANISH EXPLORATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA TO 1600.]
THE GULF COAST