"The Sea! the Open Sea!" 



discoveries, and to work onwards from a point 

 already gained, had to start afresh and to find 

 their way just as if it had never been found 

 before to and beyond the Pillars of Hercules. 



To the Greek imagination that wide mysterious 

 Ocean, opening out from the narrow Strait, was 

 unattractive and terrible. It was a sea of limit- 

 less distances, of fog and gloom, of blackness 

 and death ; not an unexplored Ocean of possible 

 glory and beauty and wealth. 



Time glided by, and man advanced in his 

 acquaintance with Land and Sea ; but with the 

 latter slowly. It was not until five centuries ago 

 and five centuries are but as a day, compared 

 with the full stretch of history that two weighty 

 steps were taken. 



One step was southward. One step was west- 

 ward. 



The African Continent, all along its northern 

 region, had been the scene of very old-world 

 history. But the south was shrouded in dark- 

 ness. A brief glimmer of light, perhaps thrown 

 there in Phenician days, had been long long lost 

 sight of. 



In the year A. D. 1486, a far leap from Phenician 

 and Grecian days, Bartholomew Diaz made dis- 

 covery of the Cape of Good Hope, and one year 



7 



