After Columbus had returned from his second voyage, Yanez Pinzon succeeded in fitting out a fleet to go to the New World. In 1499 he sailed with four caravels from Palos, the same port from which Columbus had sailed. Pinzon took with him some of the sailors who had been with Columbus, and also his three principal pilots. These pilots were men who understood how to use the astrolabe and to tell the course of the ship at sea. Pinzon's fleet sailed toward the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and after passing them its course was southwest across the Atlantic. At length the fleet crossed the equator, and Pinzon was the first explorer to cross the line in the western Atlantic. The fleet sailed on for nearly five hundred miles to the southward. Here Pinzon met a terrific storm, which came very near sending his whole fleet to the bottom. He was now not far from the coast, and after the storm was over he discovered land. The land proved to be the most eastern point of South America. This was in the month of January, in the year 1500. Pinzon and a company of his men went ashore. They did not remain long, however, as they found the Indians very hostile. The Indians attacked the Spaniards and killed several of their number. They were so furious that, after chasing the Spaniards to their boats, they waded into the sea and fought to get the oars. The Indians captured one of the rowboats, but the Spaniards at last got off to their vessels. Pinzon then set sail and steered northward along the coast. When his fleet came near the equator, he noticed that the water was very fresh. Accordingly he gave orders to fill the water casks of his fleet. The freshness of the water of the sea led him to sail in toward the shore. At length he discovered whence the large volume of fresh water came. It flowed out of the mouth of a great river. It was the mouth of the river Amazon, and so great is the volume of water which it pours into the sea that its current is noticed in the ocean two hundred miles from the shore. This fact is not so surprising when we learn that the main mouth of this great river is fifty miles wide, that the river is four thousand miles long, including its windings, and that, besides many smaller branches, it has five tributaries, each over a thousand miles long, and one over two thousand miles long, flowing into it. Pinzon anchored in the mouth of the river, and found the natives peaceful. In this respect they were unlike those he had met farther south. They came out to his ships in a friendly way in their canoes. But when Pinzon, a short time later, left the river, he cruelly carried off thirty-six of the Indians who had been friendly to him. While Pinzon's fleet was in the mouth of the river, it came a second time near being wrecked.