IN NORTHERN MISTS 



a great extent on remnants of the geographical knowledge 

 and conceptions of the Greeks. It was the age of super- 

 stition and speculation; with the exception of the Norsemen 

 and the Arabs, and in some degree, also, the Irish monks, 

 there was during the earlier part of this period no enterprise 

 that broke through the bounds of the known, except in the 

 mythical world of fancy. It was not until the Crusades that 

 the horizon began to be widened. The Eastern trade of the 

 Italian republics and the development of capable Italian 

 seamen were of great significance. At an early date they 

 made discoveries along the west coast of Africa. Of even 

 greater importance was it that the Portuguese learned sea- 

 manship from them, and no doubt from the Arabs as well, 

 and displayed great enterprise on the ocean along the shores 

 of Africa, finding groups of islands in the west, and finally 

 the Azores, in 1427; but these must have been discovered 

 earlier, since similar islands occur on Italian maps of the 

 fourteenth century [cf. the "Catalan Atlas" of 1375]. 



When Ptolemy's work, and through it the geography 

 of the Greeks, became known in western Europe at the 

 beginning of the fifteenth century, it created a greater stir 

 in the learned world than even the discovery of America 

 did later; the circle of geographical ideas was greatly changed, 

 and the world was regarded with new eyes as a sphere. The 

 doctrine of the possibility of circumnavigating the earth was 

 especially framed and scientifically established by the cele- 

 brated astronomer Toscanelli of Florence. But this was not 

 a new doctrine; for the Greeks, Eratosthenes and Posidonius, 

 for example (cf. Vol. I, pp. 77, 79), had already announceci 

 it clearly enough, and even in the Middle Ages it was not for- 

 gotten. We saw that Mandeville, the writer of fabulous narra- 

 tives, fully understood the possibility of sailing round the globe, 

 and related ancient tales about such a voyage (cf. p. 271). But 

 at the close of the fifteenth century the idea was seriously taken 

 up by two men of action, both Genoese. One of them was 

 Columbus, the other Cabot. Whether the latter had already 

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