266 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OP 



It is sufficient to recal in a general manner, all that the 

 geography of the western hemisphere gained from the period, 

 when, at his country seat, Perga Naval, on the beautiful bay 

 of Sagres, the Infante Dom Henry the Navigator sketched his 

 first plan of discovery, to the epoch of the South Sea expedi- 

 tions of Gaetano and Cabrillo. The daring enterprizes of the 

 Portuguese, the Spaniards, and the English, testify how 

 powerfully the desire for the great and boundless in geogra- 

 phical .space had made itself felt, suddenly opening as it 

 were a new sense. The advances in the art of navigation, 

 and the application of astronomical methods to the correction 

 of a ship's reckoning, favoured the efforts which gave to this 

 age its peculiar character, and disclosed to men the true 

 features of the globe which they inhabit. The discovery of 

 the mainland of tropical America, which took place on the 1st 

 of August, 1498, was seventeen months later than Cabot's 

 arrival off the Labrador coast of North America. Columbus 

 first saw the Terra firma of South America, not as has been 

 hitherto believed on the mountainous coast of Paria, but in the 

 Delta of the Orinoco east of Cafio Macareo. ( 413 ) Sebastian 

 Cabot ( 414 ) landed on the 24th of June, 1497, on the coast 

 of Labrador between 56 and 58 of latitude. I have 

 shewn above that this inhospitable coast had been visited 

 five centuries earlier by the Icelander Leif Erikson. 



Columbus on his third voyage set more value on the 

 pearls of the islands of Margarita and Cubagua, than on the 

 discovery of the Terra firma ; as he was persuaded until his 

 death, that, in his first voyage, when at Cuba in November 

 1492, he had already touched a part of the continent 

 of Asia. ( 415 ) From hence (as his son Don Fernando, 

 and his friend the Cura de los Palacios, relate,) if he had 



