(C 



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. i486, a far leap from Phenician 

 and Grecian days, Bartholomew Diaz made dis- 

 covery of the Cape of Good Hope, and one year 



7 



