hesitating cruelty. All these he employed, and with such success that, on July 7, 1520, a final military victory made him master of Mexico. Cortes spent some time looking over this remarkable land which he had conquered, but he never forgot that the main purpose of Spain was to find a western waterway to India. The discovery of Mexico, together with other coastwise explorations, had dispelled the idea that the island group discovered by Columbus was a mere screening archipelago, beyond and near which lay India; but there re- “Sy, mained a universal belief that soubie nee ta | through these western lands there A we was an open waterway that would ater provide a direct all-water route to the land of riches so glowingly described by Marco Polo. This supposed waterway came to be known as the Strait of Anian,
and in the
language of Professor Chapman of the Department of History of the University of California, “The story of the search for the Strait of Anian is one of the most fascinating tales in the annals of the New World.” At about this time—in 1520, to be exact—Magellan, in search of this strait, made his famous voyage down the east coast of South America, sailed through the strait that bears his name, and found a great ocean between the land Columbus discovered and the land he thought
