The first place among these three undoubtedly belongs to Magelhães, the renegade Portuguese, who first guided a ship across the wide expanse of the Pacific. The second place is almost universally accorded to Columbus, whose unconscious discovery of a new world, fit to become the second home of the European races, was immensely more far-reaching in its consequences than the discovery of an ocean highway to India, now largely discarded in favour of the shorter route across the isthmus of Suez. It is maintained, in support of the claims of Columbus, that he was the originator of the scheme the success of which covered him with everlasting glory, whilst Vasco da Gama simply obeyed the behests of his King, when he took the lead of an expedition which was to crown the efforts made by little Portugal for generations past. There is much truth in this contention. The scheme of reaching the East by a westward course across the Atlantic had no doubt been entertained in Portugal in the reign of Affonso the African [1438-81]. Fernão Martinz, the Royal Chaplain, had discussed its prospects with Paolo Toscanelli, when in Italy, and had been instructed to apply for further particulars to the Florentine physician, in response to which he had received the famous letter of June 25th, 1474, and the chart which accompanied it. But practically nothing was done, except that an adventurer or two[4] were authorised to seek for the islands supposed to lie to the west of the Azores. Prince Henry the Navigator would perhaps have acted upon such a suggestion, had he been still alive, but the King’s resources were devoted to Africa, or wasted in two disastrous wars with Spain. Columbus, on the other hand, made the discarded scheme his own; he, too, applied to Toscanelli for counsel,[5] and found confirmation of that physician’s erroneous hypothesis as to the small breadth of the Atlantic by studying the _Imago Mundi_ of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, and other writings. Nor did he rest until he found in Queen Isabella the Catholic a patron who enabled him to put his theories to the test of practical experience. It was his good fortune that Providence had placed the new world as a barrier between him and Marco Polo’s Cipangu (Japan), which was his goal, or he might never have returned to claim the reward of his success. On the accession of D. João II, in 1481, the discovery of Africa was resumed with renewed vigour, and the councillors of that King acted wisely when they advised him to decline the offers of Columbus,[6] for the resources of Portugal were quite unequal to pursuing at one and the same time a search for a western route and continuing the efforts for opening a practical route around the southern extremity of Africa. And thus it happened that Columbus “discovered a new world for Castile and Leon”, and not for Portugal.