T h e former, commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon,
had a crew of thirty men, and the latter, under his
brother, Vicente Yafiez Pinzon, had one of twenty-
four men. Both were rigged with lateen sails only.
There were one hundred and twenty men in the
whole expedition.
T h e distance traversed in the ten weeks’ voyage
was scarcely one fourth of the way to the far-off
Indies which Columbus expected to reach by this
western route. Across his track lay the two great
continents, then unknown to Europe, and the archipelago
stretching between them which was to be
the limit of his explorations, save for some brief and
dubious lingerings upon the southern and western
shores of the Caribbean Sea. This was not exactly a
“ new world.” For ages the St. Lawrence, the
Mississippi, and the Amazon had drained their great
valleys ; the Ro ck y Mountains, the Cordilleras,
and the Andes had stretched their long barrier from
north to south between the oceans; the dusky tribes
had roamed the forests and built up the rude splendours
of Mexico and Peru, and the tropical islands
had inclosed the great basins of the double sea.
But of this the adventurous navigator knew nothing
when he set forth upon the limitless “ waste of
waters. ’ ’
He was disturbed b y variations of the magnetic
needle never before observed; he was astonished by
the vast and floating fields of marine verdure in the
“ Sargasso S e a ” ; he was mystified by the steady
pull of the trade-winds; and finally he was delighted
by the sight of land, which he had no doubt was a