But for a long time afterwards the Spaniards still cast longing eyes upon the Spice Islands, and the Fuggers, the great bankers of Augsburg, who financed the Spanish monarch, for a long time attempted to get possession of Peru, with the scarcely disguised object of making it a "jumping-place" from which to make a fresh attempt at obtaining possession of the Moluccas. A modern parallel will doubtless occur to the reader. There are thus three stages to be distinguished in the successive discovery and delimitation of the New World:-- (i.) At first Columbus imagined that he had actually reached Zipangu or Japan, and achieved the object of his voyage. (ii.) Then Amerigo Vespucci, by coasting down South America, ascertained that there was a huge unknown land intervening even between Columbus' discoveries and the long-desired Spice Islands. (iii.) Magelhaens clinches this view by traversing the Southern Pacific for thousands of miles before reaching the Moluccas. There is still a fourth stage by which it was gradually discovered that the North-west of America was not joined on to Asia, but this stage was only gradually reached and finally determined by the voyages of Behring and Cook. [_Authorities:_ Justin Winsor, _Christopher Columbus_, 1894; Guillemard, _Ferdinand Magellan_, 1894.] CHAPTER VIII TO THE INDIES NORTHWARD--ENGLISH, FRENCH, DUTCH, AND RUSSIAN ROUTES The discovery of the New World had the most important consequences on the relative importance of the different nations of Europe. Hitherto the chief centres for over two thousand years had been round the shores of the Mediterranean, and, as we have seen, Venice, by her central position and extensive trade to the East, had become a world-centre during the latter Middle Ages. But after Columbus, and still more after Magelhaens, the European nations on the Atlantic were found to be closer to the New World, and, in a measure, closer to the Spice Islands, which they could reach all the way by ship, instead of having to pay expensive land freights. The trade routes through Germany became at once neglected, and it is only in the present century that she has at all recovered from the blow given to her by the discovery of the new sea routes in which she could not join. But to England, France, and the Low Countries the new outlook promised a share in the world's trade and affairs generally, which they had never hitherto possessed while the Mediterranean was the centre of commerce. If the Indies could be reached by sea, they were almost in as fortunate a position as Portugal or Spain. Almost as soon as the new routes were discovered the Northern nations attempted to utilise them, notwithstanding the Bull of Partition, which the French king laughed at, and the Protestant English and Dutch had no reason to respect. Within three years of the return of Columbus from his first voyage, Henry VII. employed John Cabot, a Venetian settled in Bristol, with his three sons, to attempt