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Rh isolation of far southern South America. Excepting the barren lands of the Antarctic regions, with which Patagonia is somewhat associated by a broken string of islands, the nearest continental lands of a more habitable kind are South Africa and New Zealand. In contrast to the sub-Arctic land ring, here is a sub-Antarctic ocean ring, and as a result the land flora and fauna of South America to-day are strongly unlike the life forms of the other south-ending continents.

For further treatment of the physical geography of the American continents, see,.

II. General Historical Sketch.—The name America was derived from that of (q.v.). In Waldseemuller's map of 1507 the name is given to a body of land roughly corresponding to the continent of South America. As discovery revealed the existence of another vast domain to the north, the name spread to the whole of the pair of continents by customary use, in spite of the protests of the Spaniards, by whom it was not officially used of North America till the 18th century.

The discovery of America is justly dated on the 12th (N.S. 21st) of October 1492, when (q.v.), the Genoese, made his landfall on the island of Guanahani, now identified with Watling Island in the Bahamas. In the 10th and 11th centuries Norse sea-rovers, starting from Iceland, had made small settlements in Greenland and had pushed as far as the coast of New England (or possibly Nova Scotia) in transient visits (see and ). But the Greenland colony was obscure, the country was believed to form part of Europe, and the records of the farther explorations were contained in sagas which were only rediscovered by modern scholarship. Throughout the middle ages, legendary tales of mythical lands lying in the western ocean—the Isle of St Brandan, of Brazil and Antilia—had been handed down. Scholars, guessing from isolated passages in classic writers, or arguing on general principles, had held that the “Indies” could be reached by sailing due west. But the venture was beyond the resources of the ships and the seamanship of the time. The opinions of scholars, and the fantasies of poets, became an enthusiastic belief in the mind of Columbus. After many disappointments he persuaded the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to furnish him with a squadron of three small vessels. With it he sailed from Palos in Andalusia on the 3rd of August 1492, reached Guanahani on the 12th of October, touched on the coast of Cuba and Hispaniola, established a small post on the latter, and returned to Lisbon on the 4th of March 1493, and thence to Spain.

It was the belief of Columbus and his contemporaries that he had reached the islands described by Marco Polo as forming the eastern extremity of Asia. Hence he spoke of the “Indies,” and “las Indias” continued to be the official name given to their American possessions by the Spaniards for many generations. His feat produced a diplomatic controversy with Portugal which was destined to have important political consequences. In 1454 Pope Nicholas V. had given the Portuguese the exclusive right of exploration and conquest on the road to the Indies. His bull contemplated only the use of the route by the coast of Africa to the south and east. In 1488 the Portuguese Bartholomeu Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. After the return of Columbus and his supposed demonstration that the Indies could be reached by sailing west, disputes might obviously arise between the two powers as to their respective “spheres of influence.” The Catholic sovereigns applied to Pope Alexander VI., a Spaniard, for a confirmation of their rights. The pope drew a line from north to south one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, and gave the Spaniards the claim to all to the west (May 4, 1493). The Portuguese thought the division unfair to them, and protested. A conference was held between the two powers at Tordesillas in 1494, and by common consent the line was shifted to three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The boundary line corresponded to the 50th degree of longitude west of Greenwich, which strikes the mainland of South America about the mouth of the Amazon. Thenceforward the Spaniards claimed the right to exclude all other peoples from trade or settlement “beyond the line.”

Between September 1493 and the time of his last voyage (May 1502 to November 1504), Columbus explored the West Indies, reached the mainland of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco and sailed along the coast of Central America from Cape Honduras to Nombre de Dios (near Colon). Henry VII. of England allowed the Bristol merchants to fit out a western voyage under the command of another Genoese, (q.v.), in 1497. The history of the venture is very obscure, but Cabot is thought to have reached Newfoundland and the mainland. Between 1500 and 1503 a Portuguese family of the name of Cortereal carried out voyages of exploration on the eastern coast of North America, with the consent of their government, and with little regard for the treaty of Tordesillas. In 1500 the Portuguese Pedro Alvarez Cabral, while on his way to the East Indies, sighted the coast of Brazil at Monte Pascoal in the Aimores, and took formal possession. The belief that the eastern extremity of Asia had been reached died slowly, and the great object of exploration in America continued for some years to be the discovery of a passage through to the Spice Islands, in order to compete with the Portuguese, who had reached them by the Cape route. The first Spanish settlement in Hispaniola spread to the mainland by the adventure of Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa in Darien in 1509. Cuba was occupied by Diego de Velazquez in 1511. In 1512 (or 1513) Juan Ponce de Leon made the first recorded exploration of the coast of Florida and the Bahama Channel. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Darien and saw the South Sea (Pacific). The hope that a passage through to the Spice Islands would be found near existing Spanish settlements was now given up. One was sought farther south, and in November 1520 (q.v.) passed through the strait which bears his name and sailed across the Pacific. At last the existence of a continent divided by a vast stretch of ocean from Asia, and mostly lying within the sphere of influence assigned to Spain by the pope, was revealed to the world.

The first aim of the Spaniards had been trade with the Indies. The Casa de Contratacion, a committee for the regulation of trade, was established at Seville in 1503. European plants and animals were introduced into Hispaniola and Cuba, and sugar plantations were set up. But the main object of the Spaniards, who could not labour in the tropics even if they had wished to do so, was always gold, to be won by slave labour. As the surface gold of the islands was exhausted, and the feeble island races perished before the invaders, the Spaniards were driven to go farther afield. In 1510 Pedrarias Davila transferred the Darien settlement to Panama. In that and the following year the coasts of Yucatan and of the Gulf of Mexico were explored successively by Francisco Hernandez Cordova and Juan de Grijalva, who both sailed from Cuba. From Cuba it was that (q.v.) sailed on the 10th (or 18th) of February 1519 for the conquest of Mexico. Hitherto the Spaniards had met only the weak islanders, or the more robust cannibal Caribs, both alike pure savages. In Mexico they found “pueblo” or town Indians who possessed an organized government and had made some progress in civilization. The hegemony of the Aztecs, who dominated the other tribes from the central valley of Mexico, was oppressive. Cortes, the most accomplished and statesmanlike of the Spanish conquerors, raised the subject peoples against them. His conquest was effected by 1521. His example stimulated the settlers at Panama, who had heard of a great people owning vast quantities of gold to the south of them. Between 1524 and 1535 (q.v.) and Diego de Almagro had completed the conquest of Peru, which was followed, however, by a long period of strife among the Spaniards, and of rebellions. The country between Peru and Panama was subdued before 1537 by the conquest of Quito by Sebastian de Benalcazar and of New Granada by Jimenez de Quesada. From Peru the Spaniards advanced southwards to Chile, which was first unsuccessfully invaded (1535–37) by Diego de Almagro, and afterwards occupied (1540–53) by Pedro de Valdivia. Their advance to the south was checked by the indomitable opposition