on had equally
succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought
for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and
Dutch attempted a northeasterly route. In both directions the icy
barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall
see, for the present century to complete the North-West Passage
under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with
quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners
of England, France, and Holland within the Arctic Circle.

The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to
wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to
add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World
intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern
shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New
World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European
nations.

[_Authorities:_ Cooley and Beazeley, _John and Sebastian Cabot_,
1898.]

CHAPTER IX

THE PARTITION OF AMERICA

We have hitherto been dealing with the discoveries made by Spanish
and Portuguese along the coast of the New World, but early in the
sixteenth century they began to put foot on _terra firma_ and explore
the interior. As early as 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa ascended the
highest peak in the range running from the Isthmus of Panama, and
saw for the first time by European eyes the great ocean afterwards
to be named by Magellan the Pacific. He there heard that the country
to the south extended without end, and was inhabited by great nations,
with an abundance of gold. Among his companions who heard of this
golden country, or El Dorado, was one Francisco Pizarro, who was
destined to test the report. But a similar report had reached the ears
of Diego Velasquez, governor of Cuba, as to a great nation possessed
of much gold to the north of Darien. He accordingly despatched
his lieutenant Hernando Cortes in 1519 to investigate, with ten
ships, six hundred and fifty men, and some eighteen horses. When
he landed at the port named by him Vera Cruz, the appearance of
his men, and more especially of his horses, astonished and alarmed
the natives of Mexico, then a large and semi-civilised state under
the rule of Montezuma, the last representative of the Aztecs, who
in the twelfth century had succeeded the Toltecs, a people that had
settled on the Mexican tableland as early probably as the seventh