The first plan for sailing west was, perhaps, submitted to the Portuguese king in 1474, by Toscanelli, a Florentine physician. In 1492, as we all know, a Genoese navigator, Columbus (b. 1451), who had had much experience on the sea, got together three little ships and undertook the journey westward to Zipangu, which he hoped to reach in five weeks. After thirty-two days from the time he left the Canary Islands he came upon land, the island of San Salvador, and believed himself to be in the East Indies. Going on from there he discovered the island of Cuba, which he believed to be the mainland of Asia, and then Haiti, which he mistook for the longed-for Zipangu. Although he made three later expeditions and sailed down the coast of South America as far as the Orinoco, he died without realizing that he had not been exploring the coast of Asia.[247] [Sidenote: Magellan's expedition around the world.] After the bold enterprises of Vasco da Gama and Columbus, an expedition headed by Magellan succeeded in circumnavigating the globe. There was now no reason why the new lands should not become more and more familiar to the European nations. The coast of North America was explored principally by English navigators, who for over a century pressed north, still in the vain hope of finding a northwest passage to the spice islands. [Sidenote: The Spanish conquests in America.] Cortez began the Spanish conquests in the western world by undertaking the subjugation of the Aztec empire in Mexico in 1519. A few years later Pizarro established the Spanish power in Peru. It is hardly necessary to say that Europeans exhibited an utter disregard for the rights of the people with whom they came in contact, and treated them with contemptuous cruelty. Spain now superseded Portugal as a maritime power and her importance in the sixteenth century is to be attributed largely to the wealth which came to her from her possessions in the New World. [Sidenote: The Spanish main.] By the end of the century the Spanish main--i.e., the northern coast of South America--was much frequented by adventurous seamen, who combined in about equal parts the occupations of merchant, slaver, and pirate. Many of these hailed from English ports, and it is to them that England owes the beginning of her commercial greatness.[248] [Sidenote: Copernicus (1473-1543) discovers that the earth is not the center of the universe.] 128. While Columbus and the Portuguese navigators were bringing hitherto unknown regions of the earth to the knowledge of Europe, a Polish astronomer, Kopernik (commonly known by his Latinized name, Copernicus), was reaching the conclusion that the ancient writers had been misled in supposing that the earth was the center of the universe. He discovered that, with the other planets, the earth revolved about the sun. This opened the way to an entirely new conception of the heavenly bodies and their motions, which has formed the basis of modern astronomy.