explorers that they had found the Indies by sailing westward.

When John Cabot, in 1496, obtained permission from Henry VII. to equip
an expedition for westward exploration, he hoofed to reach "the island
of Cipango" (Japan) and the lands from which Oriental caravans brought
their goods to Alexandria. [Footnote: Letter of Soncino, 1497, in Hart,
Contemporaries, I., 70.] It is true that he landed on the barren shore
of Labrador, and that what he descried from his vessel as he sailed
southward was only the wooded coast of North America; but it was
reported, and for a while believed, that the king of England had in
this manner "acquired a part of Asia without drawing his sword."
[Footnote: Ibid. Cf. Bourne. Spain in America, chap v.] In 1501 Caspar
Cortereal, in the service of the king of Portugal, pressed farther into
the ice-bound arctic waters on the same quest, and with his companions
became the first in the dreary list of victims sacrificed to the long
search for a northwest passage. [Footnote: Harrisse, Les Cortereal]
When the second generation of explorers learned that the land that had
been discovered beyond the sea was not Asia, their first feeling was
not exultation that a new world had been discovered, but chagrin that a
great barrier, stretching far to the north and the south, should thus
interpose itself between Europe and the eastern goal on which their
eyes were fixed. Every navigator who sailed along the coast of North or
South America looked eagerly for some strait by which he might make his
way through, and thus complete the journey to the Spice Islands, to
China, Japan, India, and the other lands of the ancient East.
[Footnote: Bourne, Spain in America, chap viii.] Verrazzano, in 1521,
and Jacques Cartier, in 1534, 1535, and 1541, both in the service of
the king of France, and Gomez, in the Spanish service, in 1521, were
engaged in seeking this elusive passage. [Footnote: Pigeonneau,
Histoire du Commerce de la France, II, 142-148.] For more than a