d Grenville discovered Cape Fear, and there was
an end of it. Then came Sir Walter Raleigh's famous but petty
expeditions to Virginia, the Orinoco, and New Guinea, and the less
important voyages of John Davis (in 1585-87) to the Northwest. Nor must
we forget brave Martin Frobisher's fruitless voyages to Greenland in
1576-81. This was the end of England in America until the seventeenth
century. In 1602 Captain Gosnold coasted nearly our whole Atlantic
seaboard, particularly about Cape Cod; and five years later yet was the
beginning of English occupancy in the New World. The first English
settlement which made a serious mark on history--as Jamestown did
not--was that of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1602; and they came not for the
sake of opening a new world, but to escape the intolerance of the old.
In fact, as Mr. Winsor has pointed out, the Saxon never took any
particular interest in America until it began to be understood as a
_commercial_ opportunity.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE MOQUI TOWNS.

_See page 87._]

But when we turn to Spain, what a record is that of the hundred years
after Columbus and before Plymouth Rock! In 1499 Vincente Yanez de
Pinzon, a companion of Columbus, discovered the coast of Brazil, and
claimed the new country for Spain, but made no settlement. His
discoveries were at the mouths of the Amazon and the Orinoco; and he was
the first European to see the greatest river in the world. In the
following year Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese, was driven to the
coast of Brazil by a storm, "took possession" for Portugal, and founded
a colony there.

As to Amerigo Vespucci, the inconsiderable adventurer whose name so
overshadows his exploits, his American claims are extremely dubious.
Vespucci was born in Florence in 1451, and was an educated man,--his
father being a notary and his uncle a Dominican who gave him a good
schooling. He became a clerk in the great house of the Medicis, and in
their service was sent to Spain about 1490. There he presently got into
the employ of the merchant who fitted out Columbus's second
expedition,--a Florentine named Juanoto Berardi. When Berardi died, in
1495, he left an unfinished contract to fit out twelve ships for the
Crown; and Vespucci was intrusted with the completion of the contract.
There is no reason whatever to believe that he accompanied Columbus
either on the first or the second voyage. According to his own story, he
sailed from Cadiz May 10, 1497 (in a Spanis