Another bold sea rover of Portugal sailed four hundred miles from land, where he picked up a strangely carved paddle and several pieces of wood of a sort not to be found in Europe.
St. Brandon, an Irish priest, was driven in a storm far, far to the west, and landed upon the shore of a strange country, inhabited by a race of people different from any he had ever seen.
All this time the bold Portuguese sailors were venturing farther and farther down the coast of Africa. They hoped to be able to sail around that continent and up the other side to India. But they dared not go beyond the equator, because they did not know the stars in the southern hemisphere and therefore had no guide. They also believed that beyond the equator there was a frightful region of intense heat, where the sun scorched the earth and where the waters boiled.
Many marvelous stories were told about the islands which the sailors said they saw in the distance. Scarcely a vessel returned from a voyage without some new story of signs of land seen by the crew.
The people who lived on the Canary Islands said that an island with high mountains on it could be seen to the west on clear days, but no one ever found it.
Some thought these islands existed only in the imagination of the sailors. Others thought they were floating islands, as they were seen in many different places. Every one was anxious to find them, for they were said to be rich in gold and spices.
You can easily understand how excited many people were in regard to new lands, and how they wished to find out whether the earth was round or not. There was but one way to find out, and that was to try to sail around it.
For a long time no one was brave enough to venture to do so. To start out and sail away from land on this unknown water was to the people of that day as dangerous and foolhardy a journey as to try to cross the ocean in a balloon is to us at the present time.