It is not known when the idea originated of sailing westward in order to reach Cathay. Many.... sail explor

Many sailors set forth searching for islands in the west; and it was a commonplace among scientists that the east could be reached by sailing west, but to believe this a practicable voyage was an entirely different matter. Fair winds favoured him, the sea was calm, and, on October 12, landfall was made on the Bahama island of Guanahan which he renamed San Salvador (also called Watling Island, though Samana Cay and other islands have been identified as Guanahan With the help of the local Indians, the ships reached Cuba and then Haiti. On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus sighted Trinidad, entered the Gulf of Paria, on the coast of what is now Venezuela, and annexed for Spain a very great continent . On a fourth voyage, from 1502 to 1504, he explored the coast of Central America from Honduras to Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, seeking a navigable passage to the west. His project to sail west gained support, and with one small ship, the Matthew, he set out in May 1497, taki! ng a course due west from Dursey Head, Ireland. Little is known of John Cabot's first voyage, and almost nothing of his second, in 1498, from which he did not return, but his voyages in high latitudes represented almost as great a navigational feat as those of Columbus. In 1499 , an Italian merchant living in Sevilla (Seville), together with the Spanish explorer , explored the north coast of South America from Suriname to the Golfo de Venezuela. The land explored by Columbus on his third voyage and by Vespucci and de Ojeda in 1499 is shown at the bottom left of the map as a promontory of a great northern bulge of a continent extending far to the south. It runs: Christopher Columbus, Viceroy of Spain, sailing westwards, reached the Spanish islands after many hardships and dangers. His plan was in accord with Spanish hopes; five Spanish ships were fitted out in Sevilla, and in August 1519 they sailed under his command first to the Cape Verde Islands and thence to Brazil. Stan! ding offshore, they then sailed southward along the east coast! of South America; the estuary of the R de la Plata was explored in the vain hope that it might prove to be a strait leading to the . Magellan's ships then sailed south along the coast of Patagonia. The survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas; thus, sailing westward, they arrived at last in territory already known to the Portuguese sailing eastward. The remaining ship, the Vittoria, laden with spices, under the command of the Spanish navigator , sailed alone across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at Sevilla on September 9, 1522, with a crew of four Indians and only 17 survivors of the 239 Europeans who had set sail with the expedition three years earlier. sail explor