|
THE "DAUPHIN" MAP OF THE WORLD. MADE BY PIERRE
DESCELIERS, 1546, TO THE ORDER OF FRANCIS I., FOR THE DAUPHIN (HENRI II. OF FRANCE). This map gives a remarkably clear and interesting view of geographical knowledge in the first half of the sixteenth century. (It is to be noted that all objects on one side of the Equinoctial are reversed.) |
CHAPTER XXXII
SEARCH FOR A NORTH-EAST PASSAGE
England was now awaking from her sleep—too late to possess the Spice Islands—too late for India and the Cape of Good Hope—too late, it would seem, for the New World. The Portuguese held the eastern route, the Spaniards the western route to the Spice Islands. But what if there were a northern route? All ways apparently led to Cathay. Why should England not find a way to that glorious land by taking a northern course?
"If the seas toward the north be navigable we may go to these Spice Islands by a shorter way than Spain and Portugal," said Master Thorne of Bristol—a friend of the Cabots.
"But the northern seas are blocked with ice and the northern lands are too cold for man to dwell in," objected some.
"There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea unnavigable," was the heroic reply.