78 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



after clerical opposition, and rebuffs from other 

 states, 'offering,' as Mr. Payne says, in his excellent 

 History of America, ' though he knew it not, the New 

 World in exchange for three ships and provisions 

 for twelve months,' finally secured the support of the 

 Spanish king, and sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd 

 August 1492. On nth October he sighted the 

 fringes of the New World, and believing that he 

 had sailed from Spain to India, gave the name 

 Indies to the island - group. America itself had 

 been discovered by roving Norsemen five hundred 

 years before, but the fact was buried in Icelandic 

 tradition. Following Columbus, Vasco de Gama, a 

 Portuguese, set sail in 1497, and taking a southerly 

 course, doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Twenty- 

 two years later, Ferdinand Magellan started on a 

 voyage more famous than that of Columbus, since 

 his ambition was to sail round the world, and thus 

 complete the chain of proof against the theory of its 

 flatness. For 'though the Church hath evermore 

 from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a 

 widespread plain bordered by the waters, yet he 

 comforted himself when he considered that in the 

 eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is 

 round ; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, 

 is the substance.' Doubling Cape Horn through 

 the straits that bear his name, Magellan entered the 

 vast ocean whose calm surface caused him to call it 

 the Pacific, and after terrible sufferings, reached 

 the Ladrone Islands where, either at the hands of a 

 mutinous crew, or of savages, he was killed. His 

 chief lieutenant, Sebastian d'Elcano, continued the 

 voyage, and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, 



