Although these were grave blunders in geography and in navigation, the discoveries really made in the rich tropical zones, the acquirement of a new world, and the rich products continually reaching Europe from it, for a time aroused Spain from her lethargy. The world opened east and west. The new routes poured their spices, silks, and drugs through new channels into all the Teutonic countries. The strong purposes of having near access to the East were deepened and perpetuated doubly strong, by the certainties before men's eyes of what had been attained. Balbao, in 1513, gained from a height on the Isthmus of Panama the first proof of its separation from Asia; and Magellan enters the South Sea at the southern extremity of the country, now first proven to be thus separate and a continent. Men in those days began to think that creation was doubled, and that such discovered lands must be separate from India, China, and Japan. And the very successes of the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, bringing from their eastern course the expectancy of Asia's wealth, intensely excited the Spaniards to renew their western search. The Portuguese, led around the Cape of Good Hope, had brought home vast treasures from the East, while the Spanish discoverers, as yet, had not reached the countries either of Montezuma or of the Inca. Their success "troubled the sleep of the Spaniards." Everything, then, of personal ambition and national pride, the thirst for gold, the zeal of religious proselytism, and the cold calculations of state policy, now concurred in the disposition to sacrifice what Spain already had of most value on the American shores in order to seize upon a greater good, the Indies, still supposed to be near at hand. And since it was now certain that the new lands were not themselves Asia, the next aim was to find the secret of the narrow passage across them which must lead thither. The very configuration of the isthmus strengthened the belief in the existence of such a passage by the number of its openings, which seemed to invite entrance in the expectancy that some one of them must extend across the narrow breadth of land.