THE AGE OF EXPANSION 319

Calicut in 1498. When he returned to Lisbon he carried
with him a cargo worth sixty times the cost of his expedi-
tion, and was rewarded by the King of Portugal with the
title of 4 Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce
of Ethiopia, Persia, and India1. Java and the Moluccas
were reached by the Portuguese in 1512.

But the most surprising discovery of the age, however,
was that of America by Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci
after whom the continent has taken its name. The former, a
Genoese adventurer, reached the West Indies in 1492, start-
ing on a voyage intended to reach the East by the shortest
route ! The globe prepared by the German geographer,
Martin Behaim, in 1490, had shown Cipango (Japan) just
where Columbus landed, little suspecting the intruding
obstacle of America. Amerigo sailed after 1497, but was
lucky enough to have his name immortalised by a German
map-maker. Columbus made fcur voyages in all (1492,
1493, 1,498, and 1503) to the * Indies' only to die in Spain
a discredited, dishonoured, and disappointed man.

These western discoveries were made under Spanish aus-
pices. Christopher Columbus was patronised by Queen
Isabella of Castile. Balboa beheld the Pacific Ocean across
Panama in 1513, and the Portuguese Magellan, in the ser-
vice of Spain, passed into the Pacific (so called by Magellan
on account of its calm in contrast to the Atlantic)' through
the Strait named after him, in 1519, and reached the Philip-
pine Islands where unfortunately he was killed. But three
years after the expedition had started, only one (Victoria)
out of the five ships that had set out under Magellan, reach-
ed Seville harbour, returning via the Cape of Good Hope.
This is the first recorded circumnavigation of the earth.
Others followed in the wake of the Portuguese and the
Spaniards, but we have no space to describe them. The