landed to cut dye-wood, and then passing by the Boca del Drago, steered for the island of Margarita where he obtained a considerable quantity of pearls by barter. Nino and his companions skirted the opposite coast of Cumana, trading cautiously and shrewdly from port to port: they were convinced that this was a part of Terra Firma. After proceeding westward somewhat farther, they returned to Cumana and sailed for Spain. The little bark anchored safely at Bayonne in Gallicia about the middle of April 1500; after performing the richest voyage yet made to the new world.*

Vicente Yañez Pinzon, one of three brave brothers who aided Columbus in his first voyage, sailed from Palos with an armament of four caravels in the beginning of December 1499. In the eighth degree of southern latitude he beheld land afar off on the 28th of January, to which he gave the name of Santa Maria de la Consolacion, from the sight of it having consoled him in the midst of doubts and perplexities. It is now called Cape St. Augustine, and forms the most prominent part of the empire of Brazil. After taking formal possession of the territory for the Castilian crown, Pinzon sailed to the northwest until he came to the mouth of a river too shallow to receive his ships. After a hostile engagement here with the natives, he stood forty leagues to the northwest until he arrived in the neighbourhood of the equinoctial line, where he saw a number of fresh and verdant islands in the mouth of an immense river. It was the renowned Muranon, since known

* Voyages of Companions of Columbus, p. 28 to 32. Irving's Columbus, p. 61.

as the Orellana and the Amazon. He continued along the coast, passing the mouths of the Oronoco, and entering the gulf of Paria, where he landed and cut Brazil wood. Sallying forth by the Boca del Drago, he reached the island of Hispaniola about the 23d of June, whence he sailed for the Bahamas. Here, in a hurricane in July, two of the caravels with their crews were swallowed up. The other two made the best of the way to Hispaniola, to repair damages sustained in the gale. Sailing thence for Spain, they anchored in the river before Palos about the end of September.*

Scarcely had Vicente Yañez Pinzon departed on the voyage just mentioned, when his townsman Diego de Lepe likewise set sail with two vessels from the busy little port of Palos on a like expedition. No particulars of this voyage are known, except that Lepe doubled Cape St. Augustine, and beheld the southern continent stretching far to the southwest.†

Another contemporary adventurer was Rodrigo de Bastides, a wealthy notary of Teraria, a suburb of Seville, who associated with him Juan de la Cosa, a veteran pilot who had sailed with Columbus and Ojeda. Their voyage extended the discoveries of the coast of Terra Firma from Cape de Vela quite to the port of Nombre de Dios. The vessels of Bastides being nearly destroyed by the worm, he had great difficulty in reaching Xaragua in Hispaniola, where he lost his two vessels, and proceeded with his crew by land to San Domingo. Here he was seized

* Voyages of Companions of Columbus, p. 33 to 41. Irving's Columbus, vol. 2, p. 61, 2. Id. p. 42, 3 of former, and 62, 3 of latter.

and imprisoned by Bobadilla, under pretext that he had traded for gold with the natives of Xaragua.*

The expeditions mentioned in this chapter were undertaken by enterprising individuals under a general license granted by the Spanish sovereigns, who thus had their territories extended free of cost, and yet had their treasury benefitted by a share of the proceeds of the voyages, which was reserved as a kind of duty to the crown.

* Voyages of Companions of Columbus, p. 42, 3. Irving's Columbus, vol. 2, p. 61, 2.

CHAPTER XI.

Of the accidental discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1500; the voyage of Americus Vespucius, under the king of Portugal, to_that province in 1501; the voyage of Cortereal in the same year to the northwest; and the patents obtained from Henry the Seventh of England in 1501 and 1502 by Portuguese to enable them to make discoveries.

The design, which Prince Henry of Portugal had, in his lifetime, so much at heart, that of opening a route to India by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, had been accomplished at last by Vasco de Gama in 1497. Soon after Gama's return a fleet of thirteen sail was fitted out from Portugal to visit the countries of which he brought accounts. It sailed on the 9th of March 1500, for Calicut under the command of Pedro Alvarez de Cabral. Having passed the Cape de Verd islands, Cabral sought to avoid the calms prevalent on the coast of Guinea, by stretching far to the west. Suddenly, on the 25th of April, he came in sight of land unknown to any one in his squadron ; for as yet they had not heard of the discoveries of Pinzon and Lepe. After coasting it for some time, he became persuaded that it must be part of a continent. Having ranged along it, somewhat beyond the fifteenth degree of southern latitude, he landed at a harbour which he called Porto Securo. He gave ano

ther name to the country. Having a cross placed at the top of a tree, with great solemnity, and blessed by the priests that he had with him, he named the province Sancta Cruz (Sainte Croix); for it was the 3d of May, the day on which the church celebrates the invention of the Holy Cross. After taking possession for the crown of Portugal, he dispatched a ship to Lisbon with the important tidings. Subsequently this province received the name of Brazil, because the wood brought from it for dying was red and resembled brass. The original name and its change are mentioned in a volume entitled,

"Histoire de la Provence de Sancta-Cruz que nous nommons ordinairement Le Brasil, par Pero de Magalhanes de Gandavo dédiée au tres illustre seigneur D. Lionis Pereirra ancien gouverneur de Malacca et de plusieurs parties & l'inde meridionale," published at Lisbon in 1576, and republished at Paris in 1837, by Henri Ternaux in his collection of original voyages, relations and memoirs.

Dr. Robertson, in recording this voyage of Cabral, concludes with one of his just and elegant remarks: "Columbus' discovery of the new world," he observes, "was the effort of an active genius, guided by experience and acting upon a regular plan, executed with no less courage than perseverance. But from this adventure of the Portuguese, it appears that chance might have accomplished that great design, which it is now the pride of human reason to have formed and perfected. If the sagacity of Columbus had not conducted mankind to America, Cabral, by a fortunate accident, might have led them, a few