vians, after 
Greenland 
red A. as 
ar to New 
ts. These 
neighbour- 
ly through 
and, main- 
r down to 
not appear 
haracter or 
more akin, 
> ages, than 
scheme of 
the Scandi- 
Columbus, 
sited by a 
Cambria it 
Gwynnedd, 
170 with a 
ral weeks, 
n its inha- 
Madoc is 
f Virginia, 
ier Scandi- 
ave formed 
e red man 
the north- 
heir heroic 
pe for the 
cience and 
pe for its 
> astrolabe 
t of land ; 
iristendom, 
iment, and 
2 position 
n from the 
st foothold 
only a few 
nterprise to 
s crown of 
; at which 
ly interest- 
>n broader, 
Columbus 
ies to the 
d attempt ; 
ssisted by a 
ts, speedily 
by carrying 
sent, to the 
very of A., 
entional as 
s the East 
urse, hopes 
the misap- 
Indian and 
owledge of 
> desire of 
- discovery. 
. of Davis, 
f Magellan, 
h, to say 
Balboa on 
a similar 
ascending 
highway to 
times may 
he eastern 
of Asia, as 
of oriental 
d forgotten, 
of a passage 
  
  
AMERICA. 
   
  
  
between the two oceans, surveyed every nook and 
cranny of A. from Columbia River to Behring’s 
Strait. Nor yet have the aspirations of Columbus 
and his noble band of successors and imitators 
been altogether disappointed. That same continent 
which, in their case, barred a westward advance 
along nearly the whole interval between the arctic 
and antarctic circles, has to us already become, 
or is gradually becoming, more than a substitute 
for the ocean which it was found so extensively 
to displace. By means of the railway across the 
Isthmus of Panama, the Caribbean Sea, whether 
for passengers or for goods, is virtually nearer to 
the Pacific than an open channel could have 
rendered it to any sea-going vessels. Nor is it 
merely across the scanty span of Central A. that 
art is outstripping nature in the race. For, to 
take one instance, the Grand Trunk Railway runs 
a steeple-chase over every obstacle, St Lawrence 
not excepted, for 1000 miles from the Atlantic to 
Lake Huron, fully one-third of the entire distance to 
be accomplished. Since October 11,1492, the date of 
Columbus’s first discovery, little more than three 
and a half centuries have elapsed ; and if we look 
at the future in the light of the past, it seems not 
unreasonable to suppose, that, by 1892, the locomo- 
tive will, within three days, connect together oceans 
physically as distant from each other as are the 
Bahamas from the Canaries. 
But Columbus found something better than what 
he himself or his successors and imitators looked for. 
He had discovered a land which, besides eclipsing 
India in the richness and variety of its commerce, 
was to confer on Europe a still more solid benefit. 
Colonisation, which, since the early ages of Greece, 
had slumbered for 2000 years, received an impetus, 
which, after building up empires in the West, was 
to build up others in an East richer far than that 
which was so long the loadstar of European naviga- 
tors—an east where, almost without a metaphor, the 
grass was to be wool, and the stones to be gold. 
The first-fruits of Columbus’s enterprise were the 
Bahamas, Guanahani, or Cat Island, being the spot 
where he landed on the 11th of October 1492. With- 
out attempting, in so summary a sketch as this, to 
distinguish the results of each of his four voyages 
from each other, it may be sufficient to state that 
this great man, besides Hispaniola, or St Domingo, 
Cuba, Jamaica, and others of the Antilles, discovered 
and explored Central A. from Honduras southward 
along the coast of Veragua, and South A. from the 
mouths of the Orinoco westward, as far as Margarita. 
It was on this last-mentioned scene of his operations 
that he +was followed by Hojeda, whose pilot, 
AmerigoVespucci (q.v.), has been allowed to wrest 
from Columbus the glory of giving his name to the 
new world. Within twenty years after Columbug’s 
first discovery, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida ; 
and, what was certainly of far more consequence, 
he ascertained that, through the strait which separ- 
ated that peninsula from the Bahamas, there con- 
stantly ran a strong current to the north-east. In 
1513, again, just one year later, Vasco Nunez de 
Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien to the Great 
South Sea, or, as it was afterwards named, the Pacific 
Ocean. About thirteen years before this last event, 
almost immediately after Columbus’s own continental 
explorations, the interval left between his most 
southerly point from Honduras, and his most westerly 
point from the Orinoco, was, in a great measure, 
filled up by the voyage of Bastidas. To the south, 
again, of the Orinoco, Pinzon and Solis sailed along 
the continent down to 40° S. lat., between the years 
1500 and 1514. The former, after anticipating, by a 
few months, the Portuguese on the shores of Brazil, 
had seen the Amazon ; and the latter, sent out for 
  
the express purpose of entering, if possible, Balboa’s 
Great South Sea, found his way into the La Plata or 
Plate, being there slain by the neighbouring natives. 
Moreover, to return to the northward, by the year 
1519, different navigators had between them com- 
pleted the examination of the Gulf of Mexico. 
Within twenty-seven years, therefore, after Colum- 
bug’s first departure from Spain, the eastern shores 
of South and Central A. had been almost continu- 
ously explored by the Spaniards down to within 
15° of the southern extremity of the continent. 
Nor had other nations been idle in the north. The 
Cabots, on behalf of England, had discovered New- 
foundland, and portions of the adjacent continent, 
in 1497. In 1500, the Portuguese, under the Cor- 
tereals, sailed along the coast of Labrador nearly up 
to Hudson’s Bay, having, it is supposed, entered the 
Gulf of St Lawrence, long known among them as 
the Gulf of the Two Brothers. Thus gradually 
there grew up the opinion, since proved to have 
been the true and sound one, that any practicable 
passage between the two oceans must be looked for 
towards the south of the Plate. Accordingly, in 
1519, Magellan, a Portuguese in the service of 
Spain, undertook the voyage in which was dis- 
covered the strait that bears his name—a voyage 
which furnished the first instance of the circumna- 
vigation of the globe. Thus there remained little to 
be done, unless in the extreme north and the extreme 
south. In the extreme south, Schouten, a Dutch 
navigator, discovered, in 1610, the passage round 
Cape Horn ; while, six years thereafter, Lemaire, a 
mariner of the same nation, passed through the 
strait of his own name between Staten Land and 
Tierra del Fuego. Towards the north, again, the 
French and English divided the labours and honours 
of the enterprise between them. Scarcely had 
Magellan’s companions—for he had himself been 
killed —returned to Europe, when Vexazzano, 
under the auspices of Francis I. of France, sailed 
along what are now the Atlantic shores of the 
United States, thereby connecting the discoveries 
of the Cabots with those of Ponce de Leon; and 
again, about ten years later, Jacques Cartier, in the 
service also of the same prince, explored the gulf 
and river of St Lawrence, penetrating as far to the 
westward as the island of Montreal. In the extreme 
north, however, the English may be said to have 
been without a rival. It is unnecessary, in this 
summary sketch, to do more than mention names 
which tell their own story on every map—Davis, 
Baffin, Lancaster, and Hudson. (See these Heads.) 
To pass now to the western coast of A. The con- 
querors of Mexico and Peru effected, in a few years, 
more perhaps than they left behind them for future 
ages to effect, ranging along the coast from the 
southern extremity of Chili to the peninsula and Gulf 
of California. Beyond Lower California, the only direc- 
tion in which there was much to do, the English 
Drake, whose voyage took place in 1578, divided with 
the Spaniards the credit of having discovered Upper 
California. For nearly two centuries, excepting the 
half-fabulous voyages of Fonte and Fuca, the 
Spaniards and the English alike slumbered over their 
task; and it was not till towards the close of the 
last century, that Cook and Vancouver co-operated 
with Spanish and American navigators in dispelling | 
  
the mystery that had so long hung over the north- l 
west coast of A. 
To advert to nland discoveries: As early as 
1537, within six years after the landing of Pizarro 1 
in Peru, and within two after the founding of | 
Buenos Ayres, the Spaniards met each other on the 
eastern borders of Peru, from the opposite shores of 
the continent; and, in 1540, within three years more, 
they sent forth that eastward expedition which ended