450 : The Atlantic 



of the rivers, the fertiUty of soil, the fortunes of climate, the wealth of 

 interlocking waterways and of harbors, the organization of winds and 

 ocean currents, the accessibility of large land masses — the one to the 

 other. 



The prelude to transport was discovery and we have seen how the 

 organization of the Atlantic helped to shape the rate and direction of 

 human progress. The Norsemen sailed their courses in latitudes above 

 the prevailing westerlies where winds, though strong, were variable. 

 This was a condition that served them well on their relatively short 

 passages from Norway to the Faeroes, to Iceland, Greenland, Labrador 

 and other portions of the American coast. 



The first Atlantic explorations of the Portuguese were not made 

 to the west but to the south, thus they utilized the southward flow- 

 ing current that flowed so steadily off their shores and also the pre- 

 vailing northeast wind which was the beginning of the northeast 

 trades that carried them to Madeira and the shores of Africa. The 

 long period that intervened between the early voyages initiated by 

 Henry the Navigator and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope 

 were not due to the hostility of the African tribes so much as to the 

 resistance of the southeast trades and the Benguella Current. When 

 the Portuguese boldly struck out to sea it was the winds and cur- 

 rents of the South Atlantic that sped them smartly around the cape. 

 They seem to have overdone matters somewhat in the case of one 

 Portuguese navigator for it was a combination of the South Atlantic 

 Current and a southeasterly storm that caused Cabral to discover the 

 eastern tip of Brazil when he thought he was on his way around the 

 Cape of Good Hope to India. 



Columbus, with his round-bodied, clumsy and simply rigged ves- 

 sels, would hardly have survived to reach the West Indies had he not 

 been favored with the northeast trades and the north equatorial cur- 

 rents that swung him southward to the Canaries and then westward 

 to the Bahamas. So, of course, Columbus' successors benefited by the 

 same ocean blessings, soon adding to them a favorable return from 

 the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Florida Straits 

 and the Gulf Stream. 



Nor were the benefits of the Atlantic monopolized by the Portuguese 

 and the Spaniards for it was variance of these routes that permitted 

 the Dutch to develop their island colonies in the West Indies and that 

 accounted for the early prosperity of Barbados and of the British West 

 Indies at a time when the northern colonies were still fighting for a 

 foothold on the continent. 



