676 GEOGRAPHY 



path, until the old order was restored by the cutting of the Suez 

 Canal. 



The century-long quest of the Portuguese to find this way round 

 Africa was not likely to pass without some rival routes being advo- 

 cated, and one there w r as which had a classic flavor. 



To reach the East by sailing west was a natural corollary to the 

 demonstration that the world was globular. Many of the Greek 

 geographers had spoken of it, and though the famous Eratosthenes - 

 \vho in the third century B. c. had measured the size of the earth with 

 greater accuracy than any one attained to until quite modern times - 

 had dismissed the scheme as impracticable owing to the extent of 

 intervening ocean, the later Ptolemy, with restricted ideas as to the 

 size of the earth and exaggerated notions of the extent of Asia, made 

 it appear but a short voyage from the west of Europe westward to 

 the east of Asia. This scheme, first mooted about the middle of the 

 fifteenth century by Paul Toscanelli, an astronomer of Florence, won 

 little sympathy from the Portuguese, who were rightly committed to 

 the African route, but found an ardent advocate in Columbus. 



After long waiting, in 1492, the consolidation of Spain, accomplished 

 by the eviction of the Moors from their last stronghold in Granada, 

 gave Columbus his opportunity, and in the service of Spain, the 

 second of the two countries occupying the favorably situated Iberian 

 Peninsula, he set out on his famous voyage, as the pioneer of West- 

 ern exploration. A short voyage of less than five weeks from the 

 Canaries, helped by the favoring trade-winds, revealed land, where 

 land was anticipated. Asia had apparently been reached at the first 

 attempt, by the easiest of voyages, and the name West Indies per- 

 petuates the blunder to this day. 



Other voyages quickly followed, and presently the great wonder 

 of a new and unsuspected world was revealed, lying like a great 

 barrier to the immediate object of the Western quest, but instinct 

 with the greatest possibilities. A new route to an old world had not 

 been found, but the path to a vast new continent, hitherto undreamed 

 of, had been laid bare. 



Twenty years after Columbus's first voyage, the sea that lay be- 

 yond the New World was first beheld by Nunez de Balboa, 



" When with eager eyes 

 He star'd at the Pacific, and all his men 

 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise 

 Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 



But for all Keats's fine imagination, the marvel of the Pacific was 

 as unsuspected as had been the existence of the New World. America 

 was supposed to lie close up to Asia and only separated from it by 

 a narrow sea. 



It was nearly ten years later that Magellan, a native of Portugal 



