The conclusion which the Portuguese King so eagerly accepted was meanwhile confirmed by every western voyage. Beyond the islands which Columbus had discovered, an interminable barrier everywhere blocked the way. In 1498, the admiral himself had touched the mainland near Trinidad, and in 1502 he explored the Bay of Honduras. Hojeda and Pinzon, in 1499 and 1500, sailed along nearly the whole northern coast of South America, while in 1501 Americus Vespucci followed the eastern coast from the point of Brazil as far as 35 deg. south latitude. It could no longer be doubted, by those at least who had seen the great mouths of the Amazon and the Plate Rivers, that behind this long stretch of coast lay an immense continent; a projection of Asia, doubtless, separated from it by some narrow strait, perhaps, or possibly by an unknown sea: at any rate, a "boundless land to the south," as Columbus reported; and which "may be called a new world, since our ancestors had no knowledge of it," as Vespucci thought; "a fourth part of the world," said Waldseemueller in his _Introduction to Cosmography_, published in 1507, "which since Americus discovered it may be called Amerige--i.e., Americ's land or America." In 1506 Bartholomew Columbus prepared the earliest extant map showing this _Mondo Novo_, represented as a projection of southern Asia and extending three fourths of the distance to the shoulder of Africa. This new world of America, a seemingly impenetrable barrier, lay between Spain and the Indies--the real Indies from which the Portuguese were yearly bringing home a rich freightage of gems and spices. In 1509 their ships first reached Malacca; two years later that "golden Chersonese" was taken by Albuquerque; and in 1512 D'Abreu returned with the first cargo of cloves from Amboina and Banda, the very "isles where the spices grow." To find a passage through the _Mondo Novo_, which Columbus had discovered, became therefore the aim of future Spanish exploration--inspiring the second voyage of Pinzon in 1508, the expedition of Balboa across the Isthmus in 1513, the fatal last cruise of Solis to the mouth of the Plate River, and the final triumphant venture of Ferdinand Magellan.