e between them these
worlds of the East and the West. They invoked the friendly offices of
the Pope as mediator, and, henceforth, an imaginary line drawn down the
Atlantic divided the realms. At first this arrangement seemed to give
Spain all the new regions in America, but the line of division was set
so far to the West that the discovery of Brazil, which juts out
eastward into the Atlantic, gave the Portuguese a vast territory in
South America. At the time of which we are now speaking, however, the
Portuguese were intent upon their interests in the Orient. Their great
aim was to pass beyond India, already reached by da Gama, to the
further empires of China and Japan. Like other navigators of the time,
they thought that these places might be reached not merely by southern
but also by the northern seas. Hence it came about that the Portuguese,
going far southward in Africa, went also far northward in America and
sailed along the coast of Canada.

We find, in consequence, that when King Manoel of Portugal was fitting
out a fleet of twenty ships for a new expedition under da Gama, which
was to sail to the Indies by way of Africa, another Portuguese
expedition, setting out with the same object, was sailing in the
opposite direction. At its head was Gaspar Corte-Real, a nobleman of
the Azores, who had followed with eager interest the discoveries of
Columbus, Diaz, and da Gama. Corte-Real sailed from Lisbon in the
summer of 1500 with a single ship. He touched at the Azores. It is
possible that a second vessel joined him there, but this is not clear.
From the Azores his path lay north and west, till presently he reached
a land described as a 'cool region with great woods.' Corte-Real called
it from its verdure 'the Green Land,' but the similarity of name with
the place that we call Greenland is only an accident. In reality the
Portuguese captain was on the coast of Newfoundland. He saw a number of
natives. They appeared to the Portuguese a barbarous people, who
dressed in skins, and lived in caves. They used bows and arrows, and
had wooden spears, the points of which they hardened with fire.

Corte-Real directed his course northward, until he found himself off
the coast of Greenland. He sailed for some distance along those rugged
and forbidding shores, a land of desolation, with jagged mountains and
furrowed cliffs, wrapped in snow and ice. No trace of the lost
civilization of the Norsemen met his eyes. The Portuguese pilot