at the southern extremity of the country, now first proven to be thus
separate and a continent. Men in those days began to think that creation
was doubled, and that such discovered lands must be separate from India,
China, and Japan. And the very successes of the Portuguese under Vasco
da Gama, bringing from their eastern course the expectancy of Asia's
wealth, intensely excited the Spaniards to renew their western search.

The Portuguese, led around the Cape of Good Hope, had brought home vast
treasures from the East, while the Spanish discoverers, as yet, had not
reached the countries either of Montezuma or of the Inca. Their success
"troubled the sleep of the Spaniards."

Everything, then, of personal ambition and national pride, the thirst
for gold, the zeal of religious proselytism, and the cold calculations
of state policy, now concurred in the disposition to sacrifice what
Spain already had of most value on the American shores in order to seize
upon a greater good, the Indies, still supposed to be near at hand. And
since it was now certain that the new lands were not themselves Asia,
the next aim was to find the secret of the narrow passage across
them which must lead thither. The very configuration of the isthmus
strengthened the belief in the existence of such a passage by the number
of its openings, which seemed to invite entrance in the expectancy that
some one of them must extend across the narrow breadth of land.

For this the Spanish government, in 1514, gave secret orders to
D'Avilla, Governor of Castila del Oro, and to Juan de Solis, the
navigator, to determine whether Castila del Oro were an island, and to
send to Cuba a chart of the coast, if any strait were possible. For
this, De Solis visited Nicaragua and Honduras; and later, led far to the
south, perished in the La Plata. For this, Magellan entered the straits,