IN 1498 the news of the discovery of Paria and the pearl fisheries reached Spain; and during the next year a number of expeditions was fitted out at private expense for trade and exploration. The first to set sail was commanded by Alonso de Ojeda, the quondam captor of Caonabo, who, with Juan de la Cosa—a mariner scarcely inferior in his own estimation to the Admiral himself—and with Morigo Vespuche, as Ojeda calls him, left the Bay of Cadiz toward the end of May, 1499. Ojeda, provided with a copy of the track-chart sent home by Columbus, easily found his way to the coast of South America, a few degrees north of the equator. Thence he coasted northward by the mouth of the Rio Dulce (Essequibo) into the Gulf of Paria, which he left by the Boca del Drago. He then passed to the Isla Margarita and the northern shores of Tierra Firme, along which he sailed until he came to a deep gulf into which opened a large lagoon. The gulf he called the Golfo de Venecia (Venezuela), from the fancied resemblance of a village on its shores to the Queen of the Adriatic; while to the lagoon, now known as the Lake of Maracáibo, he gave the name of S. Bartoloméo. From this gulf he sailed westward by the land of Coquibacoa to the Cabo de la Vela, whence he took his departure for home, where, after many adventures, he arrived in the summer of the following year. Close in his track sailed Cristóbal Guerra and Pedro Alonso Niño, who arrived off the coast of Paria a few days after Ojeda had left it. Still following him, they traded along the coast as far west as Caucheto, and tarried at the neighboring islands, especially Margarita, until their little vessel of fifty tons was well loaded; when they sailed for Spain, where they arrived in April, 1500, “so laden with pearls that they were in maner with every mariner as common as chaffe.” About four months before Guerra’s return, Vicente Yañez Pinzon, the former captain of the “Niña,” sailed from Palos with four vessels; and, pursuing a southerly course, was the first of Europeans to cross the equator on the American side of the Atlantic. He sighted the coast of the New World in eight degrees south latitude, near a cape to which he gave the name of Santa Maria de la Consolacion (S. Augustin). There he landed; but met with no vestiges of human beings, except some footprints of gigantic size. After taking possession of the country with all proper forms, he reimbarked; and proceeding northward and westward, discovered and partially explored the delta of an immense river, which he called the Paricura, and which, after being known as the Marañon or Orellana, now appears on the maps as the Amazon. Thence, by the Gulf of Paria, Española (Hispaniola), and the Bahamas, he returned to Spain, where he arrived in the latter part of September, 1500.[619] [Illustration: HISPANIOLA.