is as early as 1499!), and then
joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
by a German printer (Walzmueller) at the little Alsatian University of
St. Die. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.]

The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.[10] They may
even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
banks of Newfoundland--an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
codfish.

[Footnote 10: _Bacalhao_ in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
stickfish.]

As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
command to Gaspa