[Illustration:  Coat of arms of Columbus]

During ten days he sailed among these islands.  Then, turning southward, he coasted along Cuba to the eastern end, and so to Haiti, which he named Hispaniola, or Little Spain.  There the Santa Maria was wrecked.  The Pinta had by this time deserted him, and, as the Nina could not carry all the men, forty were left at Hispaniola, to found the first colony of Europeans in the New World.  Giving the men food enough to last a year, Columbus set sail for Spain on the 3d of January, 1493, and on March 15 was safe at Palos.

Of the greatness of his discovery, Columbus had not the faintest idea.  That he had found a new world; that a continent was blocking his way to the East, never entered his mind.  He supposed he had landed on some islands off the east coast of Asia, and as that coast was called the Indies, and as the islands were reached by sailing westward, they came to be called the West Indies, and their inhabitants Indians; and the native races of the New World have ever since been called Indians.  Although Columbus in after years made three more voyages to the New World, he never found out his mistake, and died firm in the belief that he had discovered a direct route to Asia.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Columbus began his second voyage in September, 1493, and discovered Jamaica, Porto Rico (por’-to ree’-co), and the islands of the Caribbean Sea.  On his third voyage, in 1498, he discovered the island of Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela, and saw South America at the mouth of the Orinoco River.  During his fourth and last voyage, 1502-1504, he explored the shores of Honduras and the Isthmus of Panama in search of a strait leading to the Indian Ocean.  Of course he did not find it, and, going back to Spain, he died poor and broken-hearted on May 20, 1506.]

%5.  The Atlantic Coast explored.%—­And now that Columbus had shown the way, others were quick to follow.  In 1497 and 1498 came John and Sebastian Cabot (cab’-ot), sailing under the flag of England, and exploring our coast from Labrador to Cape Cod; and Pinzon and Solis, with Vespucius[2] for pilot, sailing under the flag of Spain along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, around the peninsula of Florida, and northward to Chesapeake Bay.  Between 1500 and 1502 two Portuguese navigators named Cortereal (cor-ta-ra-ahl’) went over much the same ground as the Cabots.  For the time being, however, these voyages were fruitless.  It was not a new world, but China and Japan, the Indian Ocean, and the spice islands, that Europe was seeking.  When, therefore, in 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon, passed around the end of Africa, reached India, and came back to Portugal in 1499 with his ship laden with the silks and spices of the East, all explorers turned southward, and for eleven years after the visit of the Cortereals no voyages were made to North America.

[Footnote 2:  As this man was an Italian, his name was really Amerigo Vespucci (ah-ma’-ree-go ves-poot’-chee), but it is usually given in its Latinized form, Americus Vespucius (a-mer’-i-cus ves-pu’-she-us).]