148 : The Atlantic 



course. Such a diversity of passages can hardly have been achieved 

 by mere accident. It seems natural to infer that this pattern represents 

 a realistic and scientific attempt to investigate the Atlantic Ocean 

 itself. 



His most northerly route was the returning voyage in 1493 when 

 he left the north coast of Santo Domingo-Haiti, which he called 

 Hispaniola — and sailed in a northeasterly direction, skirted the 

 Azores, and came to the port of Lisbon. His most southerly route was 

 the outgoing passage in 1498 when he went south past the Cape 

 Verde Islands and closed with the South American coast at Trinidad. 

 Undoubtedly his motive in setting these courses on the way west- 

 ward was to find a direct passage to India but in each case he could 

 have returned home more directly. 



It seems reasonable, therefore, to credit him also with a desire to 

 find the best conditions of wind and weather and current for ocean 

 passages and also with the intention of discovering any intervening 

 islands in the Atlantic that had not been previously reported. Of 

 course, from a scientific point of view, the fact that he did not find 

 intervening islands is almost as important as if he had. His com- 

 bined voyages served to reveal and define the characteristics of the 

 Atlantic Ocean in its broadest middle section from approximately 10 

 degrees north to 40 degrees north. His most southerly point would 

 touch the line Caracas-Freetown, and the most northerly the line New 

 York-Lisbon. 



The voyages of Columbus were immediately followed up by scores 

 of transatlantic crossings. Despite the fact that Columbus tried to con- 

 tinue in his faith that he had gone near to Asia, the extent and char- 

 acter of the other voyages soon made it clear that new lands of great 

 extent lay in the western ocean. 



1497 was the date of the first voyage of John Cabot, already referred 

 to in a previous chapter, and the succeeding year of 1498 was the voy- 

 age in which his vessels coasted along the North American shores and 

 the voyage on which he was apparently lost. This was the year in 

 which the Portuguese sent out Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Pereira ap- 

 pears to have sailed extensively along the South American coast. His 

 account of his voyage, written by the year 1505, speaks of a large con- 

 tinent which he says extends from 70 degrees north latitude to 28 

 degrees south latitude, or roughly from Davis Strait to a point on 

 the coast below Santos, Brazil. 



In 1499 Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian, sailing from Spain, explored 

 the coasdine of South America from 5 degrees south to 15 degrees 



