Next, however, the reader’s attention must be directed to the voyage of Estevan Gomez, who followed Verrazano in 1525. This adventurer was a Portuguese in the service of Spain. While Verrazano was abroad on his voyage, Gomez attended the nautical congress at Badajos, in Spain, when, we are told, Sebastian Cabot was present. At this congress Portugal opposed the plan presented for an expedition to the Indies, being very jealous, as usual, of the power of Spain. The differences of the two powers were nevertheless reconciled, and the king of Spain, with the aid of several merchants, fitted out a caravel and put Gomez in command. Gomez, if he did not stand as high as some men of his time, was a navigator of experience. In 1519 he sailed as chief pilot with Magellan, but incurred much odium by leaving him in the Straits which now bear Magellan’s name, and returning to Spain. Peter Martyr, who gives an account of the congress at Badajos, says: “It is decreed that one Stephanus Gomez, himself a skilful navigator, shall go another way, whereby, between Baccalaos and Florida, long since our countries, he says he will find out a way to Cataia. Only one ship, a caravel, is furnished for him,” and, the chronicler continues, “he will have no other thing in charge than to search out whether any passage to the great Chan from among the various windings and vast compassing of this our ocean is to be found.” Of the voyage out from Spain few particulars are now available, though the account of the return was penned by Martyr subsequently to November 13, 1525, and probably before the close of the year. The voyage was, upon the whole, a short one. Martyr, however, says that he returned at the end of “ten months,” while Navarrete states that he sailed in February. Galvano tells us that, having failed to obtain the command of an expedition to the Moluccas, he went on the coast of the new world in search of a passage to India, observing that “the Earl Don Fernando de Andrada, and the doctor Beltram, and the merchant Christopher de Serro, furnished a galleon for him, and he went from Groine, in Gallicia, to the Island of Cuba, and to the Cape of Florida, sailing by day because he knew not the land.” Galvano tells us, likewise, that he passed the Bay of Angra and the river Enseada, and so “went over to the other side, reaching Cape Razo in 46° N.” This means that he sailed up from Florida past the coast of Maine. Martyr, writing after the return of Gomez, indulges in a strain of ridicule, and says: “He, neither finding the Straight, nor Cataia, which he promised, returned back in ten months after his departure;” and continues: “I always thought and supposed this worthy man’s fancies to be vain and frivolous. Yet he wanted not for suffrages and voices in his favor and defense.” Still, Martyr admits that “he found pleasant and profitable countries agreeable with our parallels and degrees of the pole.”