THE RENEWAL OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 355 



of Maiiuus, and cousequeutly in his maps uintcil the eastern coast of 

 Africa by nnkuowu lands or KSoutheru Ethiopia to the Chinese coast.* 



The science and learning of antiqnity were swept away by the destruc- 

 tive incursions of the barbarians, and there is retrogression rather than 

 progress to record during the dark and middle ages. 



The Portuguese voyages along the west coast of Africa, initiated by 

 Prince Henry, the navigator, must be regarded as among the tirst fruits 

 of the lienaissance, and the i)relu(le to the great maritime discoveries 

 of the 15th and IGtli centuries. The views of ^lela prevailed in Portu- 

 gal, whereas those of Ptolemy were elsewhere supreme. By the time 

 of Prince Henry's death in 1400, the Portuguese had reconnoitered the 

 coast of Africa for 1,700 miles, and Bartholomew Diaz reached and 

 doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 148G. This most successful voyage 

 produced an immense sensation. A deathblow was given to Ptolemy's 

 view that the Indian Ocean was an inclosed sea; the liery zone of the 

 ancients had been crossed; the southern temperate zoiKi of Aristotle, 

 Strabo, and Mela had been reached, and it was inhabited. The air was 

 filled with the noise of discovery. A few years later Columbus made 

 his ever famous voyage iicross the Atlantic; Vespucci announced the 

 discovery of a new world in the Southern IlGmii>Y)]\eiG, a fourth part 

 unknown to the ancients. The Portuguese sailed to India, the Spice 

 Islands, and even China by way of the cape. From a \)enk in Darien, 

 Balboa beheld a boundless ocean beyond the new-found lauds in the 

 west, and in 1520 Magellan passed into and crossed this great ocean, 

 which he called tiie Pacific, thus completing the first circumnavigation 

 of the world. These great voyages doubled at a single bound all that 

 was previously known of the earth's surface. The si)hericity of the 

 earth, the existence of antipodes, were no longer scientific theories, but 

 demonstrated facts. The loss or gain of a day in sailing round the 

 world, together with a multitude of other unfamiliar and bewildering 

 facts, struck the imagination, and altogether the effect of these startling 

 events was without parallel in the history of the world. The solid 

 immovable earth beneath men's feet was replaced by the mental picture 

 of the great floating globe swung in space, supported by some unseen 

 power. This grand conception can be traced in the literature of the 

 succeeding century. Bacon and Milton had the image of the huge 

 spiuniug globe continually before them, and Shakespeare's spirit seemed 



"^ "To reside 



In thrilling region of tliick-ribbed ice ; 

 To be iniprison'd iu the viewless winds 

 And blown with restless violence round about 

 The pendent world." 



Although many voyages were soon undertaken to the Arctic, centu- 

 ries passed away before maritime exploration was directed toward the 



" See Murray, "The Discovery of America by Columbus, " Scot. Geogr. Mag., 1893, 

 vol. IX, p. 561. 



