310 FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 



minds more competent c ncoptions of the form and size of the earth, and of the 

 diversity of climates, than could otherwise have been attained. Thus, by means 

 the most indirect, the limits of the world were extended, many obscure spaces 

 of the earth brought to light, and the minds of men prepared for greater and 

 more decisive discoveries. 



We have now arrived at the first half of the fifteenth century. Portugal is 

 a prosperous kingdom, without near enemies to combat, and possessed of a 

 vitality which refuses to confine itself within the territorial frontier ; it claims 

 a wider field, and enterprises more worthy of the national spirit. With this 

 spirit the geographical position of Portugal at one of the extremities of the an- 

 cient world, in front of that world which now awaits discovery, concurs to make 

 it tha point of departure for the great maritime expeditions of the age. Its 

 princes, too, second opportunely the impulse, as well by their patronage of 

 science and its cultivators as by a steady faith and interest in all enterprises 

 calculated to enhance the name and importance of their country. Under the 

 protection of Prince lienry, the Portuguese navigators explore and take pos- 

 session of the archii)elagoes of Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde, and double 

 Cape Bojador, so long the terminus of the African coast, thus penetrating into 

 the vast Gulf of Guinea. Still later, in 1486, Bartholomew Diaz reaches the 

 southernmost extremity of Africa, to which he gives the name of the Cape of 

 Stonris, a name soon changed by King John II mlo the more propitious one 

 of Good Hope; and, finally, Vasco de Gama, passing, in 1497, beyond this for- 

 midable promontory, and turning his prow in an opposite direction to that of 

 the supposed Phenician navigators of a remote age, points out to his adventu- 

 rous cotemporaries the marit.me route to India and China, immense regions 

 till then only knowi^ through vague and inexact tradition. 



It seemed impossible that the ardor of the Portuguese for distant and haz- 

 ardous exploration could be surpassed by any other country, and that silll more 

 important successes were in reserve for a different people. And yet this seeming 

 impossibility "was realized in a manner the most simple and natural, and with 

 means the most limited imaginable. The genius and perseverance of an obscure 

 and ill-understood mariner having met, though after long struggles, with sup^- 

 port and countenance in the faith and enthusiasm of a queen, Columbus was 

 enabled to launch his three frail caravels, manned by a handful of Spaniards, 

 upon the broad Atlantic; there, leaving the Portuguese to contend with the 

 dangers of the African coasts, and disregarding the circuitous and unprofitable 

 track pursued by the Scandinavian adventurers, he directed the course of his 

 vessels first south, and then constantly west, until he reached the archipelago 

 of the Antilles, the gate of a new world resplendent with beauty, which seemed 

 at that moment to ascend from the bosom of the seas. 



Among the multitude of daring navigators who followed Columbus in the 

 work of western exploration we may distinguish Magallaues, a Portuguese in 

 the service of Spain, for the importance of the results attending his enterprise. 

 After the discoveries of Columbus and De Gama, it still remained to be ascer- 

 tained what separated, and at how wide an interval, the two continents to which 

 they had led the way. There existed, as Balboa had descried, in 1513, from 

 the Isthmus of Darien, a vast sea, but of its extent no conception had been 

 formed, and yet Magallaues, not more enlightened on this point than previous 

 explorers, proposed to traverse it. He sailed from Spain in September, 1519, 

 passed the next year through the difficult straits which bear his name, and per- 

 ished in the Philippine islands, after having overcome the chief difiiculty of his 

 Undertaking. His second in command, Elcano, a Biscayan by birth, and not 

 less resolute than the chief he had lost, still continued his course westwardly, 

 and finally regained his country in a direction opposite to that by which he had 

 departed. The sphericity of the earth, already recognized by reflecting minds, 

 and gradually revealed by the discoveries which have been here briefly re- 



