Columbus himself made two other voyages, in the course of which he discovered Jamaica and the Island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco, reached the southern shores of Cuba, and, having heard rumors of another ocean to the west, coasted along the Central American mainland in search of a passage through. There he found stone houses and towns and what appeared to be a semi-civilized people, who wore clothes and knew how to weave cotton, embalm their dead, and carve ornaments on their tombs, and who had plenty of gold; and all this only confirmed his conviction that he was drawing nearer the countries of his quest. During this period, however, his fame was in turn overshadowed by that of Vasco da Gama, who had at last succeeded in discovering the African route to the Orient and had actually seen some of those spice islands and mighty cities that Columbus was still only searching for on the other side of the world so many thousands of miles away. In 1506, soon after his return from his fourth expedition, he died at Valladolid, discredited and defrauded of his viceregal powers, a victim of treachery, jealousy, and intrigue, yet still believing that he had found the western route to the Indies. Even then “nobody had the faintest idea of what he had accomplished,” says Professor Fiske. “Nothing like it was ever done before and nothing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for future Columbuses to conquer. The era of which this great Italian was the most illustrious representative had closed forever.” III Having, in the interval between the second Columbian expedition and the discovery of the African route by Vasco da Gama, induced Spain to agree to the extension of the Papal meridian 370 leagues farther west, the Portuguese continued their activities with renewed ardor. In March, 1500, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman in command of an expedition intended to resume the work begun by Da Gama, was blown across the Atlantic to the coasts of Brazil, where he touched at a point in the southern part of what is now the State of Bahia. Under the impression that it was an island, and assuming that it lay east of the Tordesillas treaty line, he landed and took possession in the name of his King. The news having reached Portugal in the Fall of the same year, no time was lost in asserting title and sending out a small fleet to ascertain the extent and resources of the region, also in the hope that a wealthy and civilized people like that of Hindustan would be found.