Columbus Reached the South American Mainland
On his third crossing, Columbus stumbled onto an unexpected continent, mistaking the Orinoco's torrents for proof of a new land.
On his third voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus sailed south of the routes he already knew and reached the coast of South America in early August 1498. After touching at the island he named Trinidad, his small fleet crossed into the Gulf of Paria, between Trinidad and what is now Venezuela.
The ships’ captain planted the Spanish flag on the Paria Peninsula, the first documented European footing on the South American mainland. Columbus was puzzled by the enormous volumes of fresh water pouring into the gulf from the Orinoco River delta. A river that mighty, he reasoned, could only drain a vast landmass.
So great a flood of fresh water, he wrote, must come not from an island but from a continent.
Still, Columbus clung to his belief that Asia lay just beyond. He never grasped that he had brushed the edge of an entire continent unknown to Europe, one that would soon be mapped and renamed for a later navigator, Amerigo Vespucci.
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