Africa, went also far northward in America and sailed
along the coast of Canada.

We find, in consequence, that when King Manoel of Portugal
was fitting out a fleet of twenty ships for a new expedition
under da Gama, which was to sail to the Indies by way of
Africa, another Portuguese expedition, setting out with
the same object, was sailing in the opposite direction.
At its head was Gaspar Corte-Real, a nobleman of the
Azores, who had followed with eager interest the discoveries
of Columbus, Diaz, and da Gama. Corte-Real sailed from
Lisbon in the summer of 1500 with a single ship. He
touched at the Azores. It is possible that a second vessel
joined him there, but this is not clear. From the Azores
his path lay north and west, till presently he reached
a land described as a 'cool region with great woods.'
Corte-Real called it from its verdure 'the Green Land,'
but the similarity of name with the place that we call
Greenland is only an accident. In reality the Portuguese
captain was on the coast of Newfoundland. He saw a number
of natives. They appeared to the Portuguese a barbarous
people, who dressed in skins, and lived in caves. They
used bows and arrows, and had wooden spears, the points
of which they hardened with fire.

Corte-Real directed his course northward, until he found
himself off the coast of Greenland. He sailed for some
distance along those rugged and forbidding shores, a land
of desolation, with jagged mountains and furrowed cliffs,
wrapped in snow and ice. No trace of the lost civilization