Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/48

 CHAPTER II.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC, AND THE EARLY EXPLORATION OF FLORIDA.

To atone for the sudden check in the progress of discovery in the North, mentioned in our previous chapter, we find the Spanish vigorously prosecuting their explorations in the Gulf of Mexico, bent, like other nations, on finding a new passage to India, though convinced that it lay, not among the snow and ice of the Arctic regions, but in more southerly latitudes.

BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

Ignorant of the important fact, that the land barring their progress west