sts the Caribbean
Sea. Although Shakespeare in "Othello," makes one of the gentlemen of
Cyprus say that he "cannot 'twixt heaven and main descry a sail," and,
therefore, with other poets, gives warrant to the application of the
word to the ocean, "main" really refers to the other element. The
Spanish Main was that portion of South American territory distinguished
from Cuba, Hispaniola and the other islands, because it was on the main
land.

When the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea were a Spanish lake, the
whole circle of territory, bordering thereon was the Spanish Main, but
of late the title has been restricted to Central and South America.
The buccaneers are those who made it famous. So the word brings up
white-hot stories of battle, murder and sudden death.

The history of the Spanish Main begins in 1509, with the voyages of
Ojeda and Nicuesa, which were the first definite and authorized
attempts to colonize the mainland of South America.

The honor of being the first of the fifteenth-century {4} navigators to
set foot upon either of the two American continents, indisputably
belongs to John Cabot, on June 24, 1497. Who was next to make a
continental landfall, and in the more southerly latitudes, is a
question which lies between Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci.

Fiske, in a very convincing argument awards the honor to Vespucci,
whose first voyage (May 1497 to October 1498) carried him from the
north coast of Honduras along the Gulf coast around Florida, and
possibly as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, and to the Bahamas on his
return.

Markham scouts this claim. Winsor neither agrees nor dissents. His
verdict in the case is a Scottish one, "Not proven." Who shall decide
when the doctors disagree? Let every one choose for himself. As for
me, I am inclined to agree with Fiske.

If it were not Vespucci, it certainly was Columbus on his third voyage
(1498-1500). On this voyage, the chief of the navigators struck the
South American shore off the mouth of the Orinoco and sailed westward
along it for a short distance before turning to the northward. There
he found so many pearls that he called it the "Pearl Coast." It is
interesting to note that, however the question may be decided, all the
honors go to Italy. Columbus was a Genoese. Cabot, although born in
Genoa, had lived many years in Venice and had been made a citizen
there; while Vespucci was a Florentine.

The first important expedition along