IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 61 



coast of Africa. Why did they do so? It seems as if there were 

 several causes. Of course there was the fascination of the un- 

 known, the joy of discovery, but undoubtedly the main cause was 

 commercial. And this commercial impetus apparently was due to 

 the Crusades and to the invasion of Europe by the Turks. For 

 those wars, in which Christians and Moslems smashed each other's 

 heads for the glory of God as they still only yesterday were doing in 

 the Balkans, blocked the commerce of Venice with the East and led 

 the Portuguese and the Spaniards to seek a way around Africa to 

 obtain the spices of India. Thus although the great Portuguese 

 explorations were not wholly due to the blocking of the Oriental 

 trade routes by the Turks, still they must have been so to some 

 extent. And, in certain respects therefore, the invasion of America 

 by the Europeans must be considered as a result of the invasion of 

 Europe by the Turks. 



The lost Atlantis also must have helped to arouse the curiosity 

 of medieval seamen. Eor the account given in Plato that a great 

 island or continent had been destroyed in past millenniums was cer- 

 tainly known in the Middle Ages. Atlantis was then supposed to 

 be in the Atlantic Ocean, whose name not impossibly is connected 

 with that of the island, and some early navigators may easily have 

 had it in mind in searching for new lands or islands. It was indeed 

 not until A.D. 1909, that a real foundation for the Atlantean tale 

 was offered, when some thoughtful person suggested in an anony- 

 mous letter to an English newspaper that the lost Atlantis of Plato 

 was Minoan Crete. And certainly Plato's story answers in many 

 respects to Minoan Crete and its destruction as revealed by archeol- 

 ogy, and in an article " Atlantis or Minoan Crete, "^ I tried to ex- 

 plain Plato's narrative by comparing it with Minoan Cretan and 

 Greek history and mythology. One point, however, namely the 

 statement that the sea around Atlantis had become unnavigable, re- 

 mained very dim. About this, Mr. William H. Babcock, the author 

 of numerous scholarly and important papers about the discovery 

 of America, in a letter to me, suggested that this might refer to 

 the Sargasso Sea, and this certainly seems like a plausible explana- 



- 2 The Geographical Review, May, 1917. 



