When the controversy was adjusted the Spaniards were left in possession of the Canaries, but the Portuguese were given by treaty the exclusive right to explore the coast of Africa. Following up sundry tentative efforts, the daring Portuguese navigator, Bartholomeo Dias, in the year 1487, passed to the southern-most extremity of Africa, which he christened the Cape of Good Hope. At last, then, it had been shown that Africa did not offer an interminable barrier to the passage to the fabled land of treasures in the East. Before anyone had ventured to follow out the clues which the discovery of the Cape had presented, however, Columbus had seemingly solved the problem in another way by sailing out boldly into the West and supposedly coming to the East Indies in 1492. The western route was barred to the Portuguese but the eastern one remained open to them, and before the close of the century Vasco da Gama had set out on the voyage that ultimately led him to India by way of the Cape (1497-1500 A.D.). Twenty years later another Portuguese navigator, Magellan by name, started on what must ever remain the most memorable of voyages, save only that of Columbus. Magellan rounded the southern point of South America and in 1521 reached the Philippines, where he died. His companions continued the voyage and accomplished ultimately the circumnavigation of the globe; and in so doing afforded the first unequivocal practical demonstration, of a character calculated to appeal to the generality of uncultured men of the time, that the world is actually round. Two routes from Europe to the Indies had thus been established, but both of them were open to the objection that they necessitated long detours to the South. To the geographers of the time it seemed more than probable that a shorter route could be established by sailing northward and coasting along the shores either of Europe to the East or--what seemed more probable--of America to the West. Toward the close of the sixteenth century the ships of the Dutch navigators had penetrated to Nova Zembla, and a few years later Henry Hudson visited Spitzbergen, thus inaugurating the long series of arctic expeditions. Then Hudson, still sailing under the Dutch flag, made heroic efforts to find the fabled northwest passage, only to meet his doom in the region of the Bay that has since borne his name. THE QUEST OF THE POLE This was in the year 1610. For long generations thereafter successors of Hudson were to keep up the futile quest; and when finally it had been clearly established that no northwest passage to the Pacific could be made available, owing to the climate, the zest for arctic exploration did not abate, but its goal was changed from the hypothetical northwest passage to the geographical pole.