Left: Part of the North Sea map showing 

 trade routes, made c. 1535 by the Swedish 

 priest Olaus Magnus. At this time monsters 

 were believed to exist, and are shown here 

 on the map where they were last reported. 



The first men who ventured to the ocean shores must have 

 regarded the vast expanse of water before them as an endless barrier 

 extending to the very edge of creation. Aware of their limitations 

 as swimmers, they must have made their first voyages on tree trunks 

 or limbs lashed together as a raft. Later, with the experience of 

 several voyages behind them, they became bold enough to venture 

 out to sea in hollowed logs, or in skin boats Like the umiaks still 

 used by Eskimos. Without navigational aids they would have been 

 careful never to go beyond the sight of land if they could help it, yet 

 sometimes storms must have driven them out to sea. 



Although we have no records of the earliest sea voyages, we do 

 have records of Eskimos having crossed all the way from Green- 

 land to the north of Scotland. And we accept as fact that in the 

 South Seas the Polynesians sailed from Asia, crossing the wide 

 ocean via the islands of Indonesia to New Zealand and beyond. 

 To guide them toward land they had only the stars and the flights 

 of birds to follow. 



Next came the traders — the Phoenicians, the Arabs, and the 

 Chinese. Galleys and saiKng boats soon opened many of the sea 

 lanes familiar to us today. Even though there were tremendous 

 hazards at sea, when the winds were unfavorable or the seas tem- 

 pestuous, a ship could wait for good sailing conditions. It was not 

 long after the traders established themselves that the highways of 

 the sea also began to draw explorers — and so began the great age 

 of discovery. But discovery, like invention, has all too often been 

 rediscovery. The Vikings had discovered America some 500 years 

 before Columbus rediscovered it. And when Bartholomew Diaz in 

 1487 — and ten years later Vasco da Gama — rounded the Cape of 

 Good Hope, they were doing from west to east only what the 

 Phoenicians in 600 B.C. had done from east to west. In fact we can 

 say that nearly all the inhabited parts of the world had already been 

 discovered when they were rediscovered by the explorers and navi- 

 gators who belong to the fifteenth century's great age of discovery. 



In this chapter we have singled out of the hundreds of sea 

 explorers six whose voyages have special significance for our story 



18 



