DISCOVERIES BY SEA
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sovereigns intending thus to form settlements in those distant countries. On the first days of November 1493, Columbus landed on some new islets of the Lesser Antilles, went in search of the Spaniards lie had left in Cuba and I lay ti, meanwhile discovered Jamaica, and returned once more to Spain, touching Cadiz on the 14th June 1496. On May the 30th 1498, he undertook his third voyage, kept a more southward course in the hope of either finding new islands or the Indian peninsula, and thus he discovered Trinidad and the coast of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco.
     On his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, Columbus landed in Honduras, thence he returned with shattered health in 1504 to Spain, and, calumniated by his rivals and forsaken by the Court, he died at Valladolid on the 20th May 1506, convinced of having discovered islands on which no European had ever before trodden, wrongly believing, however, that the continent he explored was the eastern coast of Cathay, or India, thus being entirely ignorant of having found a new world! Such a great mistake was quite pardonable in those times; and, notwithstanding this error, mankind is indebted to him if America was not discovered by a humiliating chance, for he always maintained undauntedly that on the west there must be land. Moreover, while the other explores undertook voyages only to carry out an order or scheme of their sovereigns, the Genoese navigator alone conceived by himself and endeavoured to execute the plan of finding the desired route by a western course.
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    Columbus was the first on record who trusted himself on the high seas far distant from any coast; up to his time, with the exception of those who discovered Iceland, Greenland, Porto Santo, Madeira, and the Azores, mariners always
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