A meeting of the leading pilots and cosmographers of Spain and Portugal, known as the Council of Badajoz, was convened for the purpose of settling disputed questions between the two governments. Failing in its primary purpose, the council nevertheless contributed largely to a better knowledge of New World geography. Indeed, from this time the European governments may be supposed to have had, and to have delineated on their official charts, tolerably accurate ideas of the general form of America and of its relation to Asia, except in the north-west, although the existence of a passage through the continent was still firmly believed in. Writers on cosmography and compilers of published maps did not, however, for a long time obtain the knowledge lodged in the hands of government officials. [1525.] The man who accompanied Magellan in 1519, but left him after entering the strait and returned with one vessel to Spain, was named Estévan Gomez. In 1525 this captain was sent by Spain to search for a corresponding strait in the north. Although an official expedition, and the only one ever sent by Spain to northern parts, no journal has been preserved, and only slight particulars derived from the old chroniclers are known. Gomez expected to find a strait somewhere between Florida and Newfoundland, probably not knowing the result of Verrazano's voyage of the preceding year. Cabot was at the time piloto mayor in Spain, and if Verrazano had, as is claimed for him by some, reached the southern United States coasts, it is not likely that Gomez would have looked there so confidently for his strait. This voyage lasted about ten months, and in it Gomez is supposed to have explored the coast from Newfoundland to a point below New York—possibly to Georgia or Florida. _Peter Martyr_, dec. vi. cap. x.; _Herrera_, _Hist. Gen._, dec. iii. lib. viii. cap. viii.; _Kohl's Hist. Discov._, pp. 271-81; _Navarrete_, _Col. de Viages_, tom. iv. p. viii.; _Kunstmann_, _Entdeckung Am._, pp. 70-1. According to Harrisse, _Fries_, _Auslegung der Mercarthen oder Cartha Marina_, Strasburg, 1525, contains a map of the world, including America, but Kohl states that this map, although made in 1525, was not published till 1530. Other publications of the year are: _Pietro Arias_ (Pedrarias Dávila), _Lettere di Pietro Arias Capitano generale, della conquista del paese del Mar Occeano_, written from Darien, and printed without place or date; _Pigafetta_, _Le voyage et nauigation faict par les Espaignolz es Isles de Mollucques_, an abridgment of the original account by the author, who was with Magellan; _Cortes_, _La quarta Relacion_, Toledo, 1525, dated October 15, 1524.