book 10-18 (volume 2).

AMERICA: A. D. 1499-1500. The Voyages and Discoveries of Ojeda and Pinzon. The Second Voyage of Amerigo Vespucci.

One of the most daring and resolute of the adventurers who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage (in 1493) was Alonzo de Ojeda. Ojeda quarrelled with the Admiral and returned to Spain in 1498. Soon afterwards, "he was provided by the Bishop Fonseca, Columbus' enemy, with a fragment of the map which the Admiral had sent to Ferdinand and Isabella, showing the discoveries which he had made in his last voyage. With this assistance Ojeda set sail for South America, accompanied by the pilot, Juan de la Cosá, who had accompanied Columbus in his first great voyage in 1492, and of whom Columbus complained that, 'being a clever man, he went about saying that he knew more than he did,' and also by Amerigo Vespucci. They set sail on the 20th of May, 1499, with four vessels, and after a passage of 27 days came in sight of the continent, 200 leagues east of the Oronoco. At the end of June, they landed on the shores of Surinam, in six degrees of north latitude, and proceeding west saw the mouths of the Essequibo and Oronoco. Passing the Boca del Drago of Trinidad, they coasted westward till they reached the Capo de la Vela in Granada. It was in this voyage that was discovered the Gulf to which Ojeda gave the name of Venezuela, or Little Venice, on account of the cabins built on piles over the water, a mode of life which brought to his mind the water-city of the Adriatic. {56} From the American coast Ojeda went to the Caribbee Islands, and on the 5th of September reached Yaguimo, in Hispaniola, where he raised a revolt against the authority of Columbus. His plans, however, were frustrated by Roldan and Escobar, the delegates of Columbus, and he was compelled to withdraw from the island. On the 5th of February, 1500, he returned, carrying with him to Cadiz an extraordinary number of slaves, from which he realized an enormous sum of money. At the beginning of December, 1499, the same year in which Ojeda set sail on his last voyage, another companion of Columbus, in his first voyage, Vicente Yañez Pinzon, sailed from Palos, was the first to cross the line on the American side of the Atlantic. and on the 20th of January, 1500, discovered Cape St. Augustine, to which he gave the name of Cabo Santa Maria de la Consolacion, whence returning northward he followed the westerly trending coast, and so discovered the mouth of the Amazon, which he named Paricura. Within a month after his departure from Palos, he was followed from the same port and on the same route by Diego de Lepe, who was the first to discover, at the mouth of the Oronoco, by means of a closed vessel, which only opened when it reached the bottom of the water, that, at a depth of eight fathoms and a half, the two lowest fathoms were salt water, but all above was fresh. Lepe also made the observation that beyond Cape St. Augustine, which he doubled, as well as Pinzon, the coast of Brazil trended south-west."

_R. H. Major, Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, chapter 19._

ALSO IN: _W. Irving, Life and Voyages of Columbus, volume 3, chapter 1-3._

AMERICA: A. D. 1500. Voyages of the Cortereals to the far North, and of Bastidas to the Isthmus of Darien.

"The Portuguese did not overlook the north while making their important discoveries to the south. Two vessels, probably in the spring of 1500, were sent out under Gaspar Cortereal. No journal or chart of the voyage is now in existence, hence little is known of its object or results. Still more dim is a previous voyage ascribed by Cordeiro to João Vaz Cortereal, father of Gaspar. ... Touching at the Azores, Gaspar Cortereal, possibly following Cabot's charts, struck the coast of Newfoundland north of Cape Race, and sailing north discovered a land which he called Terra Verde, perhaps Greenland, but was stopped by ice at a river which he named Rio Nevado, whose location is unknown. Cortereal returned to Lisbon before the end of 1500. ... In October of this same year Rodrigo de Bastidas sailed from Cadiz with two vessels. Touching the shores of South America near Isla Verde, which lies between Guadalupe and the main land, he followed the coast westward to El Retrete, or perhaps Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Darien, in about 9° 30' North latitude. Returning he was wrecked on Española toward the end of 1501, and reached Cadiz in September, 1502. This being the first authentic voyage by Europeans to the territory herein defined as the Pacific States, such incidents as are known will be given hereafter."

_H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, volume 1, page 113._

"We have Las Casas's authority for saying that Bastidas was a humane man toward the Indians. Indeed, he afterwards lost his life by this humanity; for, when governor of Santa Martha, not consenting to harass the Indians, he so alienated his men that a conspiracy was formed against him, and he was murdered in his bed. The renowned Vasco Nuñez [de Balboa] was in this expedition, and the knowledge he gained there had the greatest influence on the fortunes of his varied and eventful life."

_Sir A. Helps, Spanish Conquest in America,