92 THE OCEAN RIVER 



of fisheries off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland exists be- 

 fore 1500, but we know that for a hundred years before that 

 time these same adventurous fishermen were plying their trade 

 in the waters around Iceland and west of Ireland, and it has 

 been pretty well established that Columbus as a young man 

 voyaged to Bristol and probably to Iceland. 



Having followed the second burst of energy in the far north 

 of Europe we can go back and pick up in the Mediterranean. 

 The fall of Rome to the Goths in 474 ushered in the dark 

 ages of stagnation in the history of modern Europe. The spirit 

 of scientific inquiry was at least dormant. Successively the 

 Goths, Vandals, and Mohammedans swept down the Medi- 

 terranean. As Antonio Galvano neatly puts it: 'Tn that age all 

 the world was hurly-burly and all places very tumultuous.'' 

 But the undying human flame of curiosity and experimental 

 endeavor flickered on the fringes of the Old World in Spain 

 and Portugal. 



It is interesting to note that the Crusades inspired by the 

 Church helped to lift the repression that the Church itself 

 created in the Middle Ages. Thousands of men pouring down 

 through the Mediterranean countries to the Holy Land im- 

 bued with the glory of God — and a little mite touched on the 

 side, perhaps, with the lust for adventure and the thought of 

 gain — these adventurers became more and more curious 

 about the far boundaries of the world. They heard of the 

 lands of Gog and Magog in the far north of Asia. They saw 

 how eager the Pope was to find out the kingdom of Prester 

 John; and they heard their Celtic brethren tell of the heavenly 

 paradise found by St. Brandon somewhere just over the hori- 

 zon in the mysterious Atlantic. As late as the sixteenth cen- 

 tury Portugal was still sending out expeditions hoping to lay 

 claim to St. Brandon's Isle. The Church, now an imperial 

 power, was forced to act as an empire builder, and keep its 



