OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 26b 



already touched a portion of the continent ci Asia when on 

 his first voyage he reached Cuba, in November, 1492.* From 

 this point, as his son Don Fernando, and his friend the Cura 

 de los Palacios, relate, he proposed, if he had provisions enough, 

 " to continue his course westward, and to return to Spain 

 either by water, by way of Ceylon (Taprobane) rodeando todo 

 la tierra de los JSegros, or by land, through Jerusalem and 

 Jaffa."! Such were the projects by which the admiral, in 

 1494, proposed to circumnavigate the globe, four years before 

 V"asco de Gama, and twenty-seven years before Magellan and 

 Sebastian de Elcano. The preparations for Cabot's second 

 voyage, in which he penetrated through blocks of ice to 67° 

 30' north latitude, and endeavored to find a northwest passage 

 to Cathai (China), led him to think at " some future time of 

 an expedition to the north pole" (d lo del polo arctico).t The 

 more it became gradually recognized that the newly-discover^ 

 ed land constituted one connected tract, extending from Lab- 

 rador to the promontory of Paria, and as the recently-found 

 map of Juan de la Cosa (1500) testified, beyond the equator, 

 far into the southern hemisphere, the more intense became the 

 desire of finding some passage either in the south or in the 

 norch. Next to the rediscovery of the continent of America 

 and the knowledge of the extension of the new hemisphere 

 southward from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, discovered by 

 Garcia Jofre de Loaysa,^ the knowledge of the South Pacific, 



* In a j)ortioii of Columbus's Journal, Nov. 1, 1492, to which but little 

 attention has been directed, it is stated, " I have (in Cuba) opposite, 

 and near to me, Zayto y Gainsay (Zaitun and Quinsay, Marco Polo, ii., 

 77) of the Gran Can." — Navarrete, Viages y Descubrim. de los Espa- 

 noles, t. i., p. 4G. The curvature toward the south, which Columbus, 

 on his second voyage, remarked in the most western part of the coast 

 of Cuba, had an important influence, as I have elsewhere observed, on 

 the discovery of South America, and on that of the Delta of the Orinoco 

 ind Cape Paria. See Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 246-250. Anghiera 

 (Epist., clxviii., ed. Amst., 1670, p. 96) writes as follows : " Putat 

 (Colonus) regiones has (Pariae) esse Cubae contiguas et adhaerentes : 

 ita quod utraeque sint Indiae Gangetidis continens ipsum " 



t See the important manuscript of Andres Bernaldez, Cura de la villa 

 de los Palacios {Hisioria de los Reyes Catolicos, cap. 123). This history 

 comprises the years from 1488 to 1513. Bernaldez had received Colum- 

 bus into his house, in 1496, on his return from his second voyage. 

 Through the special kindness of JNI. Ternaux Compans, to whom the 

 History of the Conquista owes much important elucidation, T was ena- 

 bled at Paris, in Dec, 1838, to make a free use of this manuscript, which 

 was in the possession of my distinguished friend the historiographer 

 Don J aan Bautista Munoz. (Compare Fern. Colon, Vida del AhniranUi, 

 cap. 56.) t Examen Crit., t. iii., p. 244-248. 



i Cape Ho'-n was discovered bv Francisco de Hocesin February, 1526 

 Vol. TI -M 



