Then the blow fell. The expedition was suddenly attacked at a well, and succumbed after a heroic defence against superior numbers. Most of the Frenchmen were cut down. Part of the caravan attempted to reach safety by hurrying northwards on forced marches, but was overtaken and annihilated. Many brave Frenchmen have met the same fate as Flatters in the struggle for dominion over the Sahara.
If we travelled, as we have lately imagined, on swift-footed dromedaries in a huge circuit from Timbuktu through the Sudan, the Libyan desert, and the land of the Tuaregs, we should at last come to Morocco, "The Uttermost West," as this last independent Sultanate in Africa is called. Morocco is the restless corner of Africa, as the Balkan Peninsula is of Europe, Manchuria of Asia, and Mexico of North America—in South America all parts are unsettled.
III
NORTH AMERICA
The Discovery of the New World
Now we must say farewell to Africa. We have in front of us the Straits of Gibraltar, little more than six miles broad, the blue belt that connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, the sharply defined boundary which separates the black continent from the white.
We have but a step to take and we are in Spain. Here, also, a dying echo from the splendid period of Arab rule reaches our ears. We are reminded that twelve centuries have passed away since the Prophet's chosen people conquered the Iberian Peninsula. The sons of Islam were a thorn in the sides of the Christians. Little by little they were forced back southwards. Only Cordova and Granada still remained in the possession of the Arabs, or Moors as they were called, and when Ferdinand the Catholic married Queen Isabella of Castile in the year 1469, only Granada was left in the hands of the Moors. Their last king lived in his splendid palace, the Alhambra in Granada. In 1491 the Spanish army besieged the Moorish city. Barely forty years earlier the Mohammedans had taken Constantinople. Now other Mohammedans were to be turned out of western Europe. New Year's Day 1492 came and Granada fell. The Moorish king had to bend humbly on his knees before the victor ere he went on his way, and the Castilian flag waved from the towers and pinnacles of the Alhambra.
This remarkable incident was witnessed by a mariner from Genoa, forty-six years old. His name was Christopher Columbus.
At the time of the fall of Granada there was no one among the learned men of Europe who had any suspicion of the existence of a continent in the western ocean, and the Portuguese sought only a sea route to India—the rich land of spices, gold, pearls, and coral. But there was a learned mathematician, Toscanelli of Florence, who perceived that, as the world was round, a mariner must necessarily reach Japan, China, and India by sailing westwards from Europe, and as early as 1474 he produced maps and other proofs of the correctness of his theory. It was Columbus, by his boldness and ability, who converted this theory into fact.