Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, he never relaxed his observation of the movement of the waters. At the "Serpent's Mouth," near the Gulf of Paria, he saw that the current turned to the west; he recognized this again on the coast of Honduras. Grouping the results of his experiments he formulated an hypothesis and declared that the sea in its advance followed the firmament from east to west. The true father of oceanography is the Gulf Stream. It seems as if men had invented the science solely to explain this current, which even to-day is the most studied and best known of the phenomena of the ocean. For many years all the sailing expeditions from Spain radiated around Hispaniola and Cuba. Ocampo sailed all around the latter island. In 1513 Ponce de Leon, having for pilot Anton de Alaminos (who had been pilot for Columbus in his last voyage), set out in search of the Fountain of Youth in Florida, and his vessel passed with difficulty through the waters whose current set with great force toward the north. A little later Diego Columbus, the son of the admiral, gathered together his data, combined them, and as Pierre Martyr d'Angleria recounts, asserted the continuity of this river of the ocean and that of the continent which checks it on the west and turns it back in a contrary direction. Scientific data appeared. Anton de Alaminos, after he had accompanied Cordova, then Grijalva, around Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, became chief pilot of Cortez when he went to seize the empire of Montezuma, and when the conqueror feared to be stopped by the jealousies and intrigues of his enemies in Cuba and Madrid, in order to baffle them, he charged his pilot to return in all haste to Spain and carry to the court dispatches, and particularly presents. Alaminos was the first to make use of his observations. To arrive more promptly he took the longer route, and leaving Vera Cruz turned his vessel toward the north of Cuba and the straits of Florida. We have here the three successive phases—the oceanographic discovery, its formulation and use for deductions, and lastly the putting it in practice.
All seas were traversed. Bartholomeu Dias discovered the Cape of Tempests; Vasco da Gama doubled it and entered the Indian Sea; Magellan and his Basque pilot, Sebastian del Cano, made the first voyage around the world; the Cabots, Jacques Cartier, Francis Drake, Hudson, Willoughby, and many others went from all coasts seeking empires or a more direct route by the north of America to India and China. Navigation and geography gave rise to the first observations relative to the sea. Each people, seeing, with reason, a competitor in every other people, took the greatest care to guard the secret of its discoveries. The Carthaginian boat, pursued by a more powerful Roman vessel, did not hesitate to cast itself on the coast and to break upon the rocks rather than indicate the way to the country of tin. Vasco da Gama in his war vessel massacred the crew and passengers of the poor Arabian boutre which he found laden with pilgrims in the Indian Sea. However, despite all efforts, the facts which could be made
