%6.  Why the Continent was called America.%—­But some great voyages meantime were made to South America.  In 1500 a Portuguese fleet of thirteen vessels, commanded by Cabral, started from Portugal for the East.  In place of following the usual route and hugging the west coast of Africa, Cabral went off so far to the westward that one day in April, 1500, he was amazed to see land.  It proved to be what is now Brazil, and after sailing along a little way he sent one of his vessels home to Portugal with the news.

[Illustration:  %DISCOVERY% ON THE EAST COAST OF %AMERICA%]

He did this because six years before, in June, 1494, Spain and Portugal made a treaty and agreed that a meridian should be drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and be known as “The Line of Demarcation” All heathen lands discovered, no matter by whom, to the east of this line, were to belong to Portugal; all to the west of it were to be the property of Spain.  Now, as the strange coast seemed to be east of the line of demarcation, and therefore the property of Portugal, Cabral sent word to the King that he might explore it.

Accordingly, in May, 1501, the King sent out three ships in charge of Americus Vespucius.  Vespucius sighted the coast somewhere about Cape St. Roque, and, finding that it was east of the line of demarcation, explored it southward as far as the mouth of the river La Plata.  As he was then west of the line, and off a coast which belonged to Spain, he turned and sailed southeastward till he struck the island of South Georgia, where the Antarctic cold and the fields of floating ice stopped him and sent him back to Lisbon.

The results of this great voyage were many.  In the first place, it secured Brazil for Portugal.  In the second place, it changed the geographical ideas of the time.  The great length of coast line explored proved that the land was not a mere island, but that Vespucius had found a new continent in the southern hemisphere,—­off the coast of Asia, as was then supposed.  This for a time was called the “Fourth Part” of the world,—­the other three parts being Europe, Asia, and Africa.  But in 1507 a German professor published a little book on geography, in which he suggested that the new part of the world discovered by Americus, the part which we call Brazil, should be called America.

As Columbus was not supposed to have discovered a new world, but merely a new route to Asia, this suggestion seemed very proper, and soon the word “America” began to appear on maps as the name of Brazil.  After a while it was applied to all South America, and finally to North America also.

%7.  The Pacific discovered; the Mexican Gulf Coast explored.%—­A few years after the publication of the little book which gave the New World the name of America, a Spaniard named Balboa landed on the Isthmus of Panama, crossed it (1513), and from the mountains looked down on an endless expanse of blue water, which he called the South Sea, because when he first saw it he was looking south.