I

A little more than four hundred years ago, when Europe was emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the era of printed books, when the Field of the Cloth of Gold had impressed the official stamp of culture on her civilization, when gunpowder was changing the aspect of war—in an age that produced such intellects as those of Machiavelli, Copernicus, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cardinal Wolsey, and John Werner—wise men were still groping blindly for knowledge about the world in which they lived that is regarded as elementary by the school children of our day. What was its shape? What lay beyond the western horizon of the Atlantic, the vast and stormy Mare Tenebrosum of fabled terror to mariners? What was south of the African countries bordering the Mediterranean? How far east did Asia extend? No one knew.

In the year 150 A.D., the learned Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy had made a map of Europe and of those parts of Asia and Africa which were then known, or supposed to exist; and on that map, for the first time in history, the world was represented as a sphere—though a stationary one. Therefore, speculated those who thought about it at all, assuming Ptolemy’s theory to be correct, how could a mariner, even were he successful in navigating his vessel down the awful declivity on one side of the globe, hope to make it climb up again on the other? How could he cross the equator, which Aristotle and Pliny had declared was an uninhabitable zone, so torrid that the earth around was burnt up as with fire and only marine salamanders, if such monsters existed, could live in the super-heated waters? And, even if the equator were passable, how could the frightful abysses into which the ocean was supposed to discharge itself at the pole be escaped?

Some time in the sixth century a monk named Cosmas had attempted to answer these questions by means of a theory evolved from a study of the Bible and more consistent with its descriptions and metaphors. In the map he made, the world was represented as a level rectangle, its sides composed of blue walls, supporting a dome that separated the mortal domain from the Paradise where dwelt the Creator and his angels; and, fanciful as was this cosmos of Cosmas’ devising, his map was regarded as the standard of geographical knowledge down to the time of Columbus. Even after his time the famous astronomer Galileo was imprisoned as a heretic partly for reasserting the theory of Ptolemy. No one but a few scientists even imagined that the east could be reached by sailing west; no one, not even they, yet knew that Africa could be circumnavigated and the treasures of gorgeous Far Cathay (as China was then called) brought to Europe’s doors by water. Yet it was to accomplish that very object that the series of voyages was begun that led eventually to the discovery of America.

Venice and Genoa, grown rich and powerful through trade with India and the nearer countries of the Orient, had for a space enjoyed a prosperity and revival of culture that were felt throughout Christendom. Then had come the conquest of Spain and domination of the Mediterranean by the Moors, and, afterward, the wars of the Crusades, which had checked the Saracen advance but interrupted all other commerce with the infidels. Meanwhile, as though to compensate for this loss, the great Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan had fulfilled his remarkable destiny and, instead of adopting measures to prevent it, invited western intercourse with the countries he had brought under his sway, and China, about which almost nothing was then generally known, was visited overland by traders, adventurers, and missionaries. Marco Polo, a Venetian, after spending more than twenty years in the far east, part of the time in the service of the Great Khan Kubilay, had returned by way of India and Persia, laden with jewels of enormous value, and had written a book descriptive of the countries he had seen and the wealth and customs of the people. In the fourteenth century, when the Mongolian dynasty was overthrown, the Asiatics had again turned hostile and the land route was closed.

But during this open season it had become known that Cathay was not the end of the world, as had been supposed—that there was an ocean beyond and the wonderful Island of Cipango (Japan) and other islands rich in spices and costly products; and Europe began to wonder, since the Tartars barred the route by land, whether these desirable places might not be accessible by water. “Between wondering and the attempt,” says Hawthorne, “there was a considerable interval, for the idea was too novel to be digested all at once. But it was an age of unbridled license of imagination and of desperate courage. The mere possibility of encountering perils never until then conceived of was allurement enough, as, even to-day, our young adventurers go forth to die on the ice fields of the north and south poles, or in the mysterious heart of savage Africa, or on the ghastly plateaux of Tibet. In addition, there were the fabulous rewards that success seemed to promise.”

At first, though, if the plan of sailing west was even thought of, it would seem to have been regarded as less feasible than that of rounding Africa. Prince Henry, a son of King John I of Portugal—for it was the Portuguese, not the Spanish, who were the pioneers in this series of discoveries—determined to devote his life to the work. Retiring from the splendors of the Lisbon court, he built an astronomical observatory on the promontory of Sagres (in southern Portugal), extended its hospitalities to all the wise men of the age and sent out expedition after expedition to the south. “Until then,” says Dawson, “nautical knowledge was very meager. The compass served only to indicate direction, not distance or position, and did not suffice for the systematic navigation of the open Atlantic. The Portuguese first made that possible by using astronomical observations and inventing the quadrant and astrolabe.”

This knowledge, once acquired, was promptly applied. Madeira was discovered in 1418, the Canaries in 1427, the Azores in 1432. To the west the Portuguese ventured no farther, but, continuing south, they reached Cape Blanco in 1441, Senegambia and Cape Verde in 1445, the Cape Verde Islands in 1460, and the Gulf of Guinea in 1469. In 1471 they were the first Europeans to cross the equator. The idea was then conceived that they had only to keep on and they could round the southern extremity of the continent and reach Abyssinia and India by sea—a hope that was realized in 1487 when Bartholomew Dias arrived at last at the Cape of Good Hope. A few miles beyond, however, he was compelled by the condition of his crew to return and it remained for his compatriot Vasco da Gama some years later to double the cape and complete the voyage up the eastern coast and across the Indian Ocean to Hindustan.