Accordingly, in May, 1501, the King sent out three ships in charge of
Americus Vespucius. Vespucius sighted the coast somewhere about Cape St.
Roque, and, finding that it was east of the line of demarcation,
explored it southward as far as the mouth of the river La Plata. As he
was then west of the line, and off a coast which belonged to Spain, he
turned and sailed southeastward till he struck the island of South
Georgia, where the Antarctic cold and the fields of floating ice stopped
him and sent him back to Lisbon.

The results of this great voyage were many. In the first place, it
secured Brazil for Portugal. In the second place, it changed the
geographical ideas of the time. The great length of coast line explored
proved that the land was not a mere island, but that Vespucius had found
a new continent in the southern hemisphere,--off the coast of Asia, as
was then supposed. This for a time was called the "Fourth Part" of the
world,--the other three parts being Europe, Asia, and Africa. But in
1507 a German professor published a little book on geography, in which
he suggested that the new part of the world discovered by Americus, the
part which we call Brazil, should be called America.

As Columbus was not supposed to have discovered a new world, but merely
a new route to Asia, this suggestion seemed very proper, and soon the
word "America" began to appear on maps as the name of Brazil. After a
while it was applied to all South America, and finally to North
America also.

%7. The Pacific discovered; the Mexican Gulf Coast explored.%--A few
years after the publication of the little book which gave the New World
the name of America, a Spaniard named Balboa landed on the Isthmus of
Panama, crossed it (1513), and from the mountains looked down on an