Another companion of Vespucci worthy of note is the man called by Las Casas the best pilot of his day, Juan de la Cosa. He had been with Columbus on his first voyage, as owner and pilot of the _Santa Maria_, and also on his second, and may have had good grounds for believing himself as good a navigator as the Admiral, while as a cosmographer he was probably his superior. The historian, Peter Martyr, asserts that La Cosa and another pilot, Andres Morales, "were thought to be more cunning in that part of cosmography which teacheth the description and measurement of the sea" than any others in the world. In truth, the first map of importance made within a decade of the discovery of 1492 was that produced by La Cosa, in the summer of 1500, after his return from the voyage (his third to the New World) with Ojeda and Vespucci. It is thought that he embodied in that map the results of Vespucci's voyage of 1497-1498, as communicated to him during their intimate companionship of thirteen months. La Cosa, the Biscayan pilot, was a man cast in the same generous mould as Vespucci, and shared none of the narrow notions of Columbus. His great regard for Columbus is shown in the vignette to his map, which represents the giant Christopher (the "Christ-bearer") carrying the infant Jesus on his shoulders. Beneath this vignette is the legend, "Juan de la Cosa made this map, in the port of Santa Maria [near Cadiz], year 1500." It is the best map that had been put forth up to that date, and for a long time thereafter remained as a guide to mariners. His services were in great request at that time, and in the month of October, 1500, he was engaged by Rodrigo Bastidas, a lawyer of Seville, to pilot a small expedition he had fitted out to search for gold and pearls. This was the expedition in which Vasco Nunez de Balboa first embarked for the New World, and which was so profitable that the leaders returned (though their vessels had sunk at their anchors in a harbor of Haiti) with sufficient pearls to give them each a fortune. If they had been content to live at ease in Spain, they might have done so during the remainder of their days; but both Bastidas and La Cosa were lured back to the coast of Terra Firma by the prospect of further enrichment, and there they came to untimely ends.