THE VOYAGERS 



Columbus had set the court of King Henry aflame 



with the promise that it offered of a direct route to 



Cathay, ' insomuch that all men, with great admiration, 



affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human, 



to sail by the West into the East, where the spices 



grow, by a way that was never known before.' Shortly 



after this it was ascertained that beyond America there 



lay a halcyon sea, yielding direct access to the promised 



land. In 15 13 Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from a height The Pacific 



above his colony at Darien, saw the Pacific Ocean ; and ^^^^^'^^^^^• 



in 1520 the Portuguese navigator, Magellan, rounded 



South America through the straits that bear his name, 



and sailed across the Pacific to the Philippines, where 



he met his death. 



From this time forward, for many years, the aim of 

 European navigators was not to explore or settle 

 America, rather to discover a passage whereby America 

 might be avoided, and a way opened to the lands 

 beyond. But the progress of investigation revealed no 

 break in that great barrier. The French voyagers, who. The French 

 like the English, followed the lead of a native of Italy, ^^y^S^^^^- 

 were long buoyed up by the hope of finding a better 

 route than the Straits of Magellan, which were far south, 

 dangerous to navigate, and, moreover, were in the 

 possession of Spain. In 1523, Giovanni Verazzano, 

 a Florentine in the service of King Francis I, explored 

 the coast of what is now the United States, from Georgia 

 northward, and of great part of Canada. He was 

 followed by the brothers Parmentier ; by Jacques Cartier, 

 who in 1535 sailed up the St. Lawrence and discovered 

 and named Montreal ; by the Sieur de Roberval ; and 

 many others. To the earliest voyagers, as in the earliest 



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