OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 265 



already touched a portion of the continent of 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 JVegros, or by land, through Jerusalem and 

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

 1494, proposed to circumnavigate the globe, four years before 

 Vasco 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 j^olo arctico).X 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 

 north. 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)ortion of Columbus's Journal, Nov. I, 1492, to which but little 

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

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

 77) of the Gran Can." — Navarre te, Viages y Descuhrim. de los Espa- 

 Holes, t. i., p. 46. The curvature toward the south, w^hich Columbus, 

 on his second vo3^age, 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 

 and 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 (Parisc) esse Cubse contiguas et adhgerentes : 

 ita quod utrasque sint Indias Gangetidis continens ipsum " 



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

 de los Palacios (Hisioria de los Reyes Catolicos, cb,^. 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 M. Ternaux Compans, to whom the 

 History of the Conquista owes much important elucidation, I 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 Juan Bautista Munoz. (Compare Fern. Colon, Vida del Almirante, 

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



$ Cape Horn was discovered bv Francisco de Hocesin S^bruary, 1526 



Vol. II.— M 



