the vast Pacific which he crossed without sighting any of its innumerable
island groups. This was unquestionably the greatest of
the voyages which followed from the impulse of Prince Henry, and it
was rendered possible only by the magnificent courage of the commander
in spite of rebellion, mutiny and starvation. It was the
6th of March 1521 when he reached the Ladrone Islands. Thence
Magellan proceeded to the Philippines, and there his career ended
in an unimportant encounter with hostile natives. Eventually a
Biscayan named Sebastian del Cano, sailing home by way of the
Cape of Good Hope, reached San Lucar in command of the “Victoria”
on the 6th of September 1522, with eighteen survivors;
this one ship of the squadron which sailed on the quest succeeded
in accomplishing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Del Cano
was received with great distinction by the emperor, who granted
him a globe for his crest, and the motto Primus circumdedisti me.
While the Spaniards were circumnavigating the world and completing their knowledge of the coasts of Central and South America, the Portuguese were actively engaged on similar work as regards Africa and the East Indies.Portuguese in Africa and the East.
With Abyssinia the mission of Covilhão led to further intercourse. In April 1520 Vasco da Gama, as viceroy of the Indies, took a fleet into the Red sea, and landed an embassy consisting of Dom Rodriguez de Lima and Father Francisco Alvarez, a priest whose detailed narrative is the earliest and not the least interesting account we possess of Abyssinia. It was not until 1526 that the embassy was dismissed; and not many years afterwards the negus entreated the help of the Portuguese against Mahommedan invaders, and the viceroy sent an expeditionary force, commanded by his brother Cristoforo da Gama, with 450 musketeers. Da Gama was taken prisoner and killed, but his followers enabled the Christians of Abyssinia to regain their power, and a Jesuit mission remained in the country. The Portuguese also established a close connexion with the kingdom of Congo on the west side of Africa, and obtained much information respecting the interior of the continent. Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese settled in the country, was sent on a mission to Rome by the king of Congo, and Pope Sixtus V. caused him to recount to his chamberlain, Felipe Pigafetta, all he had learned during the nine years he had been in Africa, from 1578 to 1587. This narrative, under the title of Description of the Kingdom of Congo, was published at Rome by Pigafetta in 1591. A map was attached on which several great equatorial lakes are shown, and the empire of Monomwezi or Unyamwezi is laid down. The most valuable work on Africa about this time is, however, that written by the Moor Leo Africanus in the early part of the 16th century. Leo travelled extensively in the north and west of Africa, and was eventually taken by pirates and sold to a master who presented him to Pope Leo X. At the pope’s desire he translated his work on Africa into Italian.
In Further India and the Malay Archipelago the Portuguese acquired predominating influence at sea, establishing factories on the Malabar coast, in the Persian Gulf, at Malacca, and in the Spice Islands, and extending their commercial enterprises from the Red sea to China. Their missionaries were received at the court of Akbar, and Benedict Goes, a native of the Azores, was despatched on a journey overland from Agra to China. He started in 1603, and, after traversing the least-known parts of Central Asia, he reached the confines of China. He appears to have ascended from Kabul to the plateau of the Pamir, and thence onwards by Yarkand, Khotan and Aksu. He died on the journey in March 1607; and thus, as one of the brethren pronounced his epitaph, “seeking Cathay he found heaven.”
The activity and love of adventure, which became a passion for two or three generations in Spain and Portugal, spread to other countries. It was the spirit of the age; and England, Holland and France were fired by it. English enterprise was first aroused by John and Sebastian Cabot, fatherEnglish, Dutch and French. and son, who came from Venice and settled at Bristol in the time of Henry VII. The Cabots received a patent in 1496, empowering them to seek unknown lands; and John Cabot discovered Newfoundland and part of the coast of America. Sebastian afterwards made a voyage to Rio de la Plata in the service of Spain, but he returned to England in 1548 and received a pension from Edward VI. At his suggestion a voyage was undertaken for the discovery of a north-east passage to Cathay, with Sir Hugh Willoughby as captain-general of the fleet and Richard Chancellor as pilot-major. They sailed in May 1553, but Willoughby and all his crew perished on the Lapland coast. Chancellor, however, was more fortunate. He reached the White Sea, performed the journey overland to Moscow, where he was well received, and may be said to have been the founder of the trade between Russia and England. He returned to Archangel and brought his ship back in safety to England. On a second voyage, in 1556, Chancellor was drowned; and three subsequent voyages, led by Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, in small craft of 50 tons and under, carried on an examination of the straits which lead into the Kara sea.
The French followed closely on the track of John Cabot, and Norman and Breton fishermen frequented the banks of Newfoundland at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1524 Francis I. sent Giovanni da Verazzano of Florence on an expedition of discovery to the coast of North America; and the details of his voyage were embodied in a letter addressed by him to the king of France from Dieppe, in July 1524. In 1534 Jacques Cartier set out to continue the discoveries of Verazzano, and visited Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year he made another voyage, discovered the island of Anticosti, and ascended the St Lawrence to Hochelaga, now Montreal. He returned, after passing two winters in Canada; and on another occasion he also failed to establish a colony. Admiral de Coligny made several unsuccessful endeavours to form a colony in Florida under Jean Ribault of Dieppe, René de Laudonnière and others, but the settlers were furiously assailed by the Spaniards and the attempt was abandoned.
The reign of Elizabeth is famous for the gallant enterprises that were undertaken by sea and land to discover and bring to light the unknown parts of the earth. The great promoter of geographical discovery in the Elizabethan period was Richard Hakluyt (1553–1616), who was active in the formationThe Elizabethan era. of the two companies for colonizing Virginia in 1606; and devoted his life to encouraging and recording similar undertakings. He published much, and left many valuable papers at his death, most of which, together with many other narratives, were published in 1622 in the great work of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, entitled Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes.
It is from these works that our knowledge of the gallant deeds of the English and other explorers of the Elizabethan age is mainly derived. The great and splendidly illustrated collections of voyages and travels of Theodorus de Bry and Hulsius served a similar useful purpose on the continent of Europe. One important object of English maritime adventurers of those days was to discover a route to Cathay by the north-west, a second was to settle Virginia, and a third was to raid the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Nor was the trade to Muscovy and Turkey neglected; while latterly a resolute and successful attempt was made to establish direct commercial relations with India.
The conception of the north-western route to Cathay now leads the story of exploration, for the first time as far as important and sustained efforts are concerned, towards the Arctic seas. This part of the story is fully told under the heading of Polar Regions, and only the names of Martin Frobisher (1576), John Davis (1585), Henry Hudson (1607) and William Baffin (1616) need be mentioned here in order to preserve the complete conspectus of the history of discovery. The Dutch emulated the British in the Arctic seas during this period, directing their efforts mainly towards the discovery of a north-east passage round the northern end of Novaya Zemlya; and William Barents or Barendsz (1594–1597) is the most famous name in this connexion, his boat voyage along the coast of Novaya Zemlya after losing his ship and wintering in a high latitude, being one of the most remarkable achievements in polar annals.
Many English voyages were also made to Guinea and the West Indies, and twice English vessels followed in the track of Magellan, and circumnavigated the globe. In 1577 Francis Drake, who had previously served with Hawkins in the West Indies, undertook his celebrated voyage round the world. Reaching the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, Drake proceeded northward along the west coast of America, resolved to attempt the discovery of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The coast from the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula to Cape Mendocino had been discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. Drake’s discoveries extended from Cape Mendocino to 48° N., in which latitude he gave up his quest, sailed across the Pacific and reached the Philippine Islands, returning home round the Cape of Good Hope in 1580.
Thomas Cavendish, emulous of Drake’s example, fitted out three vessels for an expedition to the South sea in 1586. He took the same route as Drake along the west coast of America. From Cape San Lucas Cavendish steered across the Pacific, seeing no land until he reached the Ladrone Islands. He returned to England in 1588. The third English voyage into the Pacific was not so fortunate. Sir Richard Hawkins (1593) on reaching the bay of Atacames, in 1° N. in 1594, was attacked by a Spanish fleet, and, after a desperate naval engagement, was forced to surrender. Hawkins declared his object to be discovery and the survey of unknown lands, and his voyage, though terminating in disaster, bore good fruit. The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins in his Voyage into the South Sea, published in 1622, are very valuable. It was long before another British ship entered the Pacific Ocean. Sir John Narborough took two ships through the Strait of Magellan in 1670 and touched on the coast of Chile, but it was not until 1685 that Dampier sailed over the part of the Pacific where Hawkins met his defeat.
The exploring enterprise of the Spanish nation did not wane after the conquest of Peru and Mexico, and the acquisition of the vast empire of the Indies. It was spurred into renewed activity by the audacity of Sir John Hawkins in the West Indies, and by the appearance of Drake, Cavendish and Richard Hawkins in the Pacific.
In the interior of South America the Spanish conquerors had explored the region of the Andes from the isthmus of Panama to Chile. Pedro de Valdivia in 1540 made an expedition into the country of the Araucanian Indians of Chile, and was the first to
