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and kingdom were alike disappointed. Columbus had crossed the ocean, but he had discovered no gold; and although he was so

COLUMBUS

(From the statue in Fairmount

bus was

Park, Philadelphia)

sure that the islands were off the coast of India that he called them the Indies, no great oriental cities had been found, and there seemed no reason to expect any great wealth to come from the new lands. He fell into loneliness and suffering. The queen died, and he was friendless. Again the children in the streets pointed their fingers at him, the admiral of the lands of deceit and disappointment," as they called him. He died neglected and forgotten. Seven years after his death, King Ferdinand built him a handsome tomb, but it would have been better to have treated him kindly when he was alive.

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Columbus was a great man, neither because he was the first to sail across an unknown sea, nor because he thought the world was round, for a

Why Colum- wise man named Aristotle believed that eighteen hundred years before Columbus's time; he was great because he knew what was true, and was ready to risk his life for truth's sake.

great

SUMMARY.

Four hundred years ago most people thought the Atlantic could not be crossed.

New difficulties in getting goods from the Indies made Europeans wish to find a shorter route to Eastern Asia.

Columbus believed that ships could reach Asia by sailing west.

In vain he appealed for aid to Genoa and to Portugal. Finally, Queen Isabella became interested in his plan, and by the aid of Spain he set out on the voyage.

October 12, 1492, he landed on one of the Bahamas, but because he thought he was off the coast of India, he named the islands the West Indies.

Spain was disappointed that he found neither gold nor cities. Columbus died not knowing that he had discovered a new continent.

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITTEN WORK.

Describe Columbus and Diego at the gate of La Rabida.

Give the conversation between Columbus and the prior.

What would a frightened sailor have said to Columbus to try to persuade

him to return?

What would Columbus have answered?

II

THE EARLY FOLLOWERS OF COLUMBUS

the Cabots

Now that Columbus had shown the way, others were ready to Voyages of follow, and within fifty years Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, and Frenchmen visited different

[graphic]

parts of the land across the sea.

An Italian merchant named John

Cabot was living in England when

Columbus made his first voyage. He

was eager to cross the longed, as he tells us,

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ocean, for he

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to attempt

some notable thing." The English
king was much interested, but he
did not care to spend the neces-
sary money. Moreover, he was
trying to arrange a marriage
between his ten-year-old son and
the little daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella, and the Spanish am-
bassador told him there would be

ENGLISH SHIP OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[graphic]

North America discovered

CABOT DESCRIBING HIS VOYAGE TO THE ENGLISH KING
(From an old engraving)

trouble with Spain if he should send out explorers. After a while,
however, he gave John Cabot the royal permission to cross the
ocean on condition that he received one fifth of the profits of the
enterprise. In 1497, just before Columbus went on his third voy-
age, John Cabot set sail. He is thought to have steered almost
directly west and to have been the first European to have a
glimpse of North America, though whether he sighted land first at
Labrador, at Newfoundland, or at Cape Breton, no one can tell.,

When he came home he was received in England with as much rejoicing as Spain had made over Columbus. An Italian who was living in England wrote to his friends in Italy, "Honors are heaped upon Cabot, he is called Grand Admiral, he is dressed in silk, and the English run after him like mad men."

The next year Cabot and his son made another voyage and cruised along the coast perhaps as far as South Carolina. These explorations were interesting, but no cities were found and no new opportunities for trade opened. England was disappointed, and sent out no more expeditions for nearly eighty years.

The land across the sea was not forgotten, however. Another Italian named Americus Vespucius sailed as a pilot, first in the Why our service of Spain and then in that of Portugal. "What a thing country is

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SPAIN

ROPE

named it is to seek unknown lands!" he said. He followed down the America eastern coast of South America, and finally went a long way east of Cape Horn. When he came home and told where he had been, there was much ex- Z citement. More than fifteen hundred years before this time a Spanish geographer had taught that south of Asia and Africa was a great body of land. People thought that

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INDIA

FRICA

SOUTHERN

CONTINENT

THE IDEA OF A SOUTHERN CONTINENT
BEFORE VESPUCIUS'S TIME

Columbus had found India, and now that Vespucius had discovered a wide extent of country so far south of where Columbus had been, they thought it must be this southern continent which no one had visited, though most people believed it existed. In a little book on geography written soon after Vespucius's voyage it was suggested that this land should be named for him. That is why our country is named America; but Columbus is not forgotten, for in our songs it is almost always called Columbia.

Ponce de

Twelve years after the voyage of Vespucius, there was another expedition, the story of which seems like a fairy-tale. It was led

the Fountain by a wealthy Spanish nobleman named Ponce de Leon, who had

Leon seeks

of Youth

Florida

been with Columbus on one of his voyages. His
hair was growing white, and he longed to be a
young man again. There was an old story that
somewhere in Asia was a magical fountain whose
waters would make an old man young. So many
things were new and strange and mysterious in
those days that this seemed no more impossible

than anything else; and when De Leon heard SPANISH HELMET
that the Indians declared there was such a fountain in their
land, he could not rest till he had tried to find it.

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He had been living in Porto Rico as governor, and therefore the Discovery of voyage to the mainland was a short one. He landed on the coast of Florida on Easter Sunday, and as the Spanish word for Easter is "Pascua Florida," or Flowery Easter, he gave the name of Florida to the new land. It was a beautiful country, full of bright green trees, and flowers of many colors. There were rivers and lakes and springs. "Surely among all these," thought De Leon, we shall find the Fountain of Youth." However, though he drank the water now of one and now of another, and hoped at each draught that he would feel himself becoming stronger and younger, nowhere did he find the magical fountain. Instead of growing young in Florida, it was there that he met his death, for the Spaniards had treated the Indians so badly that they hated the white people whose coming with Columbus had been so welcome, and on De Leon's

PISTOL OF
DE LEON'S TIME

second visit he died by an Indian arrow.

The year 1519 had come. Many different voyagers had sailed to America. They had landed on islands, or had explored the

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