Not
until Magellan, leaving Spain in 1519, passed through the straits that
still bear his name and crossed the Pacific was this vain hope
relinquished. Magellan was killed by the natives of the Philippine
Islands, but one of his ships reached Seville in 1522 with the tale of
the marvelous voyage.
Even after the circumnavigation of the world explorers looked for
channels leading through or around the Americas. Such were the attempts
of Verrazano (1524), Cartier (1534), Frobisher (1576-1578), Davis
(1585-1587), and Henry Hudson in 1609.
ESTABLISHMENT OF COLONIAL EMPIRES
[Sidenote: Portugal]
When Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon in 1499 with a cargo worth sixty
times the cost of his expedition, the Portuguese knew that the wealth
of the Indies was theirs. Cabral in 1500, and Albuquerque in 1503,
followed the route of Da Gama, and thereafter Portuguese fleets rounded
the Cape year by year to gain control of Goa (India), Ormuz, Diu
(India), Ceylon, Malacca, and the Spice Islands, and to bring back from
these places and from Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and Nanking (China) rich
cargoes of "spicery.
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