56 SCIENCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. PT. n. 



to learn what other scientific men were also doing. Thus 

 printing was one of the first steps out of the ignorance of the 

 Dark Ages. 



Voyages round the World. The next step, as I said 

 just now, was made by the use of the mariner's compass. 

 The Greeks, as you will remember, knew that the earth was 

 a globe, but all this had been forgotten in Europe since the 

 Goths and Vandals came in, and people actually went back 

 to the old idea that the world was flat like a dinner-plate, 

 with the heavens in an arch overhead. Nevertheless, the 

 sailors, who saw ships dip down and disappear gradually 

 as they sailed over the sea, could not help suspecting that it 

 must be a round globe after all ; and Christopher Columbus, 

 a native of Genoa, was convinced he could find a way round 

 to the East Indies by sailing to the west across the Atlantic. 

 Full of this idea, he started on August 3, 1492, with three 

 small ships and ninety men, from Palos, near Cadiz, in 

 Spain, and sailed first to the Canary Islands. From there he 

 sailed on for three weeks, guided by his compass, but with- 

 out seeing any land ; the food in the ship began to run 

 short, and his men became frightened and threatened to 

 throw him overboard if he would not turn back; but he 

 begged them to continue for three days longer, and a little 

 before midnight on October 1 1 there was a cry of ' land ! 

 land ! ' and next morning at sunrise they disembarked on one 

 of the Bahama Islands in the New World. 



Columbus thought that he had sailed right round and 

 reached the other side of Asia, but if you look at your map 

 you will see he only went a quarter of that distance. He died 

 in 1506, without finding out his mistake, though he made 

 several other voyages. During these he made a very remark- 

 able discovery about the magnetic needle of the compass. It 



