The Voyage of the Cabots.--In the same year that Columbus discovered the Orinoco, Sebastian Cabot, of Italian parentage, like Columbus, secured ships from the king of England, hoping to reach China and Japan by sailing west on a northern route. What he did discover was a rugged and uninviting coast, with stormy headlands, cold climate, and gloomy forests of pine reaching down to the sandy shores. For nine hundred miles he sailed southward, but everywhere this unprofitable coast closed the passage to China. It was the coast of Labrador and the United States. Yet for years and years it was not known that a continent three thousand miles wide and the greatest of all oceans lay between Cathay and the shore visited by Cabot's ships. This land was thought to be a long peninsula, an island, or series of islands, belonging to Asia. No one supposed or could suppose that there was a continent here. Naming the New World.--But in a few years Europe did realize that a new continent had been discovered in South America. If you will look at your maps, you will see that South America lies far to the eastward of North America and in Brazil approaches very close to Africa. This Brazilian coast was visited by a Portuguese fleet on the African route in 1499, and two years later an Italian fleet traversed the coast from the Orinoco to the harbor of Rio Janeiro. Their voyage was a veritable revelation. They entered the mighty current of the Amazon, the greatest river of the earth. They saw the wondrous tropical forests, full of monkeys, great snakes, and stranger animals. They dealt and fought with the wild and ferocious inhabitants, whose ways startled and appalled the European. All that they saw filled them with greatest wonder. This evidently was not Asia, nor was it the Indies. Here, in fact, was a new continent, a veritable "Mundus Novus." The pilot of this expedition was an Italian, named Amerigo Vespucci. On the return this man wrote a very interesting letter or little pamphlet, describing this new world, which was widely read, and brought the writer fame. A few years later a German cosmographer, in preparing a new edition of Ptolemy's geography, proposed to give to this new continent the name of the man who had made known its wonders in Europe, So it was called "America." Long after, when the northern shores were also proved to be those of a continent, this great land was named "North America." No injustice was intended to Columbus when America was so named. It was not then supposed that Columbus had discovered a continent. The people then believed that Columbus had found a new route to India and had discovered some new islands that lay off the coast of Asia.