SLEEP AND AWAKENING 21 
man in the street of those days could not fail to under- 
stand. 
From the last years of the fifteenth century the Church 
encouraged maritime exploration and it would be hard to 
say whether missionary zeal or commercial enterprise or 
political ambition was the strongest motive power in the 
great age of discovery which was now inaugurated. 
The voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497 gave a definite 
outline to Africa and shattered any lurking suspicion that 
the Terra Incognita of Ptolemy might possibly be at- 
tached to that continent. Columbus had meanwhile sailed 
westward and found what he believed to be a short cut 
to India, with some indications of an extensive land to 
the south of the West Indies which he supposed to be 
the extreme southeast of Asia. On his outward voyage 
Vasco da Gama discovered that by sailing southwest from 
Cape Verde he could make use of the northeast trade 
winds and then turning southward, get across the belt 
of calms where it was narrow, and into the westerly air 
current, which would carry him round the Cape of Good 
Hope, and he advised his successor, Cabral, to take that 
route. In following these instructions Cabral found him- 
self farther west than he had intended and discovered 
what he took to be a new island which he named Terra 
Santa Cruz. One of his ships returned to Lisbon with 
the news while Cabral continued his voyage to India. 
Two expeditions were sent out in 1501 and 1503 by 
the King of Portugal to explore the new island, and a 
Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci took part in each. 
Vespucci wrote an account of the voyages and although 
he was neither the leader of the expeditions nor a Por- 
tuguese his name became attached to the new land in the 
form America. Controversy has raged about the char- 
