The family of Cortereal was not without position in the Portuguese kingdom. Ioâo Vaz Cortereal had been appointed, some years before this time, hereditary governor of the Island of Terceira; and his sons had perhaps learned there the secrets of navigation. It has been even asserted by some Portuguese writers that this Ioâo Vaz had himself discovered some part of America nearly thirty years before the first voyage of Columbus, and had received his governorship as the reward of the discovery; but there is no evidence for this claim. It is known, however, that in the year 1500 a son of Ioâo Vaz, Gaspar Cortereal, having obtained from the King a grant or license to discover new islands, fitted out one, or perhaps two, vessels, with the help of his brother Miguel, and sailed from Lisbon early in the summer for a voyage to the northwest. The accounts say that he touched at the family island of Terceira, and in due time returned to Portugal with a report of having landed in a country situated in a high degree of latitude, now supposed to have been Greenland, which name, indeed (or rather its equivalent, _Terra Verde_), he is said to have given to the country. The details of the voyage are scanty, and have been confused with those of the second expedition; but it was so far successful that the enterprise was renewed the next year. Miguel Cortereal again contributed to the expenses of this second voyage. It appears, indeed, from a letter of his dated August 6, and preserved in the State archives at Lisbon, that he had prepared a vessel with the expectation of sharing personally in the expedition, but was delayed by a royal order to increase the number of his crew, and afterward by contrary winds, until it was too late in the season to follow Gaspar with any hope of success. Gaspar had sailed with three ships, May 15, 1501, and had directed his course west-northwest. After sailing in this direction two thousand miles from Lisbon, he discovered a country quite unknown up to that time. This he coasted six or seven hundred miles without finding any end to the land; so he concluded that it must be connected with the country discovered to the north the year before, which country could not now be reached on account of the great quantity of ice and snow. The number of large rivers encountered, encouraged the navigators in their belief that the country was no island. They found it very populous, and brought away a number of the natives; and those savages who safely arrived in Portugal were described as “admirably calculated for labor, and the best slaves I have ever seen.” A piece of a broken sword, and two silver earrings, evidently of Italian manufacture, found in the possession of the natives, were probably relics of the visit of Cabot to the country three years earlier. One of the vessels reached Lisbon on its return, October 8, and brought seven of the kidnapped natives. It reported that another ship had fifty more of these. This