The error of the Spanish Admiral in supposing that the eastern shores
of Asia extended 240 degrees east of Spain, or to the meridian of
the modern San Diego, in California--this error, insisted on in his
dispatches and adopted and continued by his followers, still further
animated the earlier Spanish sovereigns and the men whom they sent into
the New World to reach Asia by a short and easy route.

Nobody in Europe dreamt that Columbus had discovered a new continent,
and when Balbao, in 1513, discovered the South Sea, then it was known
that Asia lay beyond, and navigators directed their course there. On
his deathbed, in 1506, Columbus still held to his delusion that he had
reached Zipanga, Japan. In 1501 he was exploring the coast of Veragua,
in Central America, still looking for the Ganges, and announcing his
being informed on this coast of a sea which would bear ships to the
mouth of that river, while about the same time the Cabots, under Henry
VII., were taking possession of Newfoundland, believing it to be part of
the island coast of China.

Although these were grave blunders in geography and in navigation, the
discoveries really made in the rich tropical zones, the acquirement of
a new world, and the rich products continually reaching Europe from it,
for a time aroused Spain from her lethargy. The world opened east and
west. The new routes poured their spices, silks, and drugs through new
channels into all the Teutonic countries. The strong purposes of having
near access to the East were deepened and perpetuated doubly strong, by
the certainties before men's eyes of what had been attained.

Balbao, in 1513, gained from a height on the Isthmus of Panama the first
proof of its separation from Asia; and Magellan enters the South Sea