of the most extensive and lucrative voyages yet accomplished.

About the same time, the Pinzons, that family of bold and opulent
navigators, fitted out an armament of four caravels at Palos, manned in a
great measure by their own relations and friends. Several experienced
pilots embarked in it who had been with Columbus to Paria, and it was
commanded by Vicente Yanez Pinzon, who had been captain of a caravel in
the squadron of the admiral on his first voyage.

Pinzon was a hardy and experienced seaman, and did not, like the others,
follow closely in the track of Columbus. Sailing in December, 1499, he
passed the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, standing southwest until he lost
sight of the polar star. Here he encountered a terrible storm, and was
exceedingly perplexed and confounded by the new aspect of the heavens.
Nothing was yet known of the southern hemisphere, nor of the beautiful
constellation of the cross, which in those regions has since supplied to
mariners the place of the north star. The voyagers had expected to find at
the south pole a star correspondent to that of the north. They were
dismayed at beholding no guide of the kind, and thought there must be some
prominent swelling of the earth, which hid the pole from their view.
[94]

Pinzon continued on, however, with great intrepidity. On the 26th of
January, 1500, he saw, at a distance, a great headland, which he called
Cape Santa Maria de la Consolacion, but which has since been named Cape
St. Augustine. He landed and took possession of the country in the name of
their catholic majesties; being a part of the territories since called the
Brazils. Standing thence westward, he discovered the Maragnon, since
called the River of the Amazons; traversed the Gulf of Paria, and
continued across the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, until he found