LITERARY NOTICES. 



4i7 



fabled land of the East. The traders did 

 not actually pass from Europe to India and 

 China, but met the Eastern traders and made 

 exchange of products. Their knowledge of 

 the East was therefore mostly hearsay knowl- 

 edge, and, as is generally the fact in such a 

 case, much fable was mixed with the truth. 

 It was not until the middle of the thirteenth 

 century that it became known in Europe that 

 there was an ocean to the east of Cathay, 

 and it was not until the close of the century, 

 when Marco Polo published an account of 

 his long sojourn in the East, that there was 

 any definite information of these far-off 

 countries accessible to Europeans. This 

 Eastern trade, which had been steadily grow- 

 ing, had reached large proportions by the 

 middle of the fifteenth century. But just at 

 this juncture political events occurred which 

 threatened its destruction by cutting off the 

 routes heretofore used. The overthrow of 

 the Mongols and the coming in of the native 

 Ming dynasty in China had resulted in the 

 exclusion of foreigners from that country. 

 The rise of the Ottoman Empire and the 

 conquest of Constantinople had cut off the 

 northern route used by Genoa, and the Vene- 

 tian route by way of Egypt was threatened 

 by the same power. Men's minds, therefore, 

 turned with ardor to the question of finding 

 an outside route to the Indies. The signifi- 

 cance of an ocean to the east of China be- 

 gan to be apprehended, and by the time of 

 the first voyage of Columbus the European 

 mind was ripe for projects for the finding of 

 a water route to the Indies. Very little 

 faith, however, was put in any scheme to 

 find the Indies by sailing west. The hope 

 and expectation were all in the direction of 

 finding a route down the west coast of 

 Africa and then east. No one had any idea 

 of the extent of Africa, and, though many 

 voyages were undertaken by Portugal, it was 

 not until after the voyage of Columbus that 

 Africa was entirely circumnavigated and an 

 easterly route to the Indies discovered. 



Prof. Fiske details very fully the strug- 

 gles of Columbus to interest, first Portugal 

 and then Spain, in his project of finding the 

 Indies by sailing westward. The only 

 ground upon which such an expedition could 

 be based was the one that it would furnish 

 a shorter route to the Indies than that 

 which Portugal was seeking down the west 



vol. xxi. 32 



coast of Africa. Columbus calculated that 

 the distance from the Canaries to Japan, the 

 wonderful island kingdom to the east of 

 Cathay, could not be much more than twenty- 

 five hundred miles. As Prof. Fiske points 

 out, this was a case where a little knowledge 

 was helpful instead of dangerous. The per- 

 ils of the voyage seemed great enough with 

 this estimate of the distance; they would 

 have been prohibitory had the real distance 

 to Asia been known. Columbus died in the 

 belief that he had reached land just off the 

 Asiatic coast. He did not dream that he 

 had landed upon a new world separated from 

 Asia by a vast ocean. Years were to elapse 

 before this fact should be appreciated by 

 Europe, and the labors of many able naviga- 

 tors, extending through a period of two hun- 

 dred years, were necessary to completely map 

 out the vast new continent to which Colum- 

 bus led the way. 



Prof. Fiske, in recounting the many voy- 

 ages and explorations by which the New 

 World was brought within the domain of 

 accurate knowledge, is very successful in 

 grouping them so as to preserve the histori- 

 cal perspective. The reader appreciates the 

 gradual growth of knowledge in Europe as 

 successive voyages furnish new data, until at 

 last there is the rounded out and completed 

 whole. The text is supplemented by maps 

 made from time to time by European cartog- 

 raphers, which are more vividly illustrative 

 of the state of European ignorance than any 

 amount of description could be. 



Prof. Fiske devotes considerable space to 

 clearing up the obscurity that surrounds the 

 naming of the New World America. From 

 this it appears that this name was pro- 

 posed by a German cartographer for the land 

 discovered by Americus Vespucius on his 

 third voyage, when he was blown westward 

 to the extreme eastern coast of South Amer- 

 ica. It was not known until long afterward 

 that this land had any connection with that 

 discovered by Columbus. The latter was 

 supposed to be Asia, and the place occupied 

 by the land visited by Americus was sup- 

 posed to be open sea. It was therefore felt 

 to be a proper thing to give to this new land, 

 which was not Asia, the name of its discov- 

 erer. Later, when it became known that 

 this was part of a land of continental dimen- 

 sions, which extended far to the north as 



