Page:The story of geographical discovery.djvu/122

 118 still cast longing eyes upon the Spice Islands, and the Fuggers, the great bankers of Augsburg, who financed the Spanish monarch, for a long time attempted to get possession of Peru, with the scarcely disguised object of making it a "jumping-place" from which to make a fresh attempt at obtaining possession of the Moluccas. A modern parallel will doubtless occur to the reader.

There are thus three stages to be distinguished in the successive discovery and delimitation of the New World:—

(i.) At first Columbus imagined that he had actually reached Zipangu or Japan, and achieved the object of his voyage.

(ii.) Then Amerigo Vespucci, by coasting down South America, ascertained that there was a huge unknown land intervening even between Columbus's discoveries and the long-desired Spice Islands.

(iii.) Magelhaens clinches this view by traversing the Southern Pacific for thousands of miles before reaching the Moluccas.

There is still a fourth stage by which it was gradually discovered that the North-west of America was not joined on to Asia, but this stage was only gradually reached and finally determined by the voyages of Bering and Cook.