In the very last year of the century the coast of South America was touched by two expeditions, one Spanish, the other Portuguese. The former had on board that Amerigo Vespucci who later wrote an account of the voyage and after whom America has its name. The expedition with which Amerigo sailed touched the coast of what we now call Brazil, and it seems to have been a surprise to discover that this part of the continent lay within the north and south line which had been drawn on the chart to define the westernmost possession of the Portuguese. [Sidenote: A circumnavigation] Within the first quarter of the following century the Spaniards exploring northward had proved the continuity of the great continent with that land which Cabot had reached. Southward a Portugee, Magellan, had sailed through the straits which bear his name, had rounded Cape Horn and come out into the Pacific. This boldest perhaps of all seamen, in an age of bold seamen, pressed still westward over the ocean, to meet his death from the spear of a native in the far west islands of the Philippines. He had, in fact, made {13} real the vision of Columbus--to reach the East by sailing west. His ship, the _Victoria_, returned safely to Europe, being the first to accomplish a circumnavigation, or voyage round the world, in 1522. The voyage had occupied three years all but a fortnight. [Illustration: SHIPS OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.] And by this time the coast of the Pacific on the western side of America had been reached at several points by travellers overland, and the extent and contour of the New World could be tolerably well mapped out except in its north-western quarter. {14} CHAPTER II THE STORIES OF THE OLD EAST AND OF THE NEW WEST The story of the New World before the coming of the Spaniards may be told shortly because we know so little of it. At its far north-westerly corner the Continent of America is divided from Asia by a narrow strait. It is a shallow strip of ocean, and there is no doubt that there was a time when it did not exist as a dividing barrier, and that animals--man among the rest--poured into America from Asia at what was then a point of junction between them.