WESTWARD HO ! 



Thylde's Expedition. 



Long before the time of Columbus there was rumour of land to the 

 West which, as has already been shown in a previous chapter, had 

 undoubtedly been discovered long before. In 1480 an expedition was 

 sent out from Bristol under the command of Thylde to re-discover the 

 island of Brazil, a legendary land that was supposed to be some hundreds 

 of miles ofT the Irish coast. Their vessel was only eighty tons and they 

 made their voyage in the autumn, so that it is not surprising that the men 

 of Bristol were not able to get right across the Atlantic as Columbus 

 did later on. For many years the legendary island of Brazil was marked 

 on charts, sometimes down by the Azores, sometimes much further 

 North and, reduced to a rock, was even charted in the nineteenth 

 century. 



Atlantis. 



Closely allied to the Brazils is Atlantis, the famous legendary island 

 which was first mentioned by Plato. The Greeks believed that it had 

 been a powerful empire nine thousand years before Solon and that its 

 arms had reached the main continents. Finally it had been over- 

 whelmed by the sea and it came to be made a sort of ideal republic. All 

 the peoples of the Middle Ages firmly believed in the existence of these 

 islands under some name or another, sometimes the Fortunate Isles, or 

 Avalon, or Saint Brendan's Land, or numerous other names, but always 

 closely allied in detail. There is so much interest in the story that it is 

 still occasionally discussed by scientists. 



Christopher Columbus. 



The famous navigator, Christopher Columbus, or Cristobal Colon as 

 his name is spelt in Spanish, was born in Genoa either in 1446 or 1451, the 

 son of a wool comber. He was at sea at the age of fourteen but had time for 

 some education and had also followed his father's trade for a spell. In 

 1476 he appears to have visited England and perhaps gone into the 

 North. On his return he married the daughter of one of Henry the 

 Navigator's Captains, which turned his mind still more towards explora- 

 tion. He spent some time among Henry's old followers and appears 

 to have then decided that the world was round and that the Orient could 

 be reached from the West, a theory that had already been put forward 

 but not accepted. He had considerable difficulty in finding a patron, 

 for the Portuguese were too interested in the newly discovered route 

 round the Cape and he could get no help from them. Genoa likewise 

 would have nothing to do with the scheme. King John of Portugal, 

 however, attempted to steal his ideas but was foiled by the cowardice 

 of the people he sent out. Finding his way to Spain he was not long in 

 interesting people of influence, but Ferdinand and Isabella at that time 

 still had their hands full with the Moors and it was a long time before 

 he could get any sort of an audience. Meanwhile Columbus returned to 

 Portugal and sent his brother Bartholomew to England to obtain the 

 interest of King Henry VII. Just when he was despairing he got into 



246 



