THE MEDITERRANEAN LOOKS WEST 95 



ages, Antam Goncalvez brought back slaves and gold from 

 the coast of Guinea. Superstitious fear of the Sea of Darkness 

 vanished at the clink of coin. 



Near Cape St. Vincent on the Portuguese coast Prince 

 Henry established what might well be termed a maritime 

 university. Here he installed his students of geography and 

 astronomy and his map-makers, and here his venturing sea 

 captains had to check in and report on their voyages of dis- 

 covery. As a result of this clearinghouse of careful study and 

 practical preparation some twenty-eight years after Henry's 

 death Bartholomew Diaz de Novaes sailed from Lisbon with 

 three ships and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. He was the 

 first man to do this, provided we forget Strabo's mention that 

 it was reported that Phoenicians had circumnavigated Africa 

 from east to west under the Egyptian kings. This great turning 

 of the Cape set Portuguese minds to the eastern trade, which 

 they went on to develop in India and the Moluccas, thus 

 leaving the way open in the sixteenth century for Spain to 

 dominate the western world of Columbus. • 



No longer did Portugal or the people of the Mediterranean 

 world figure in the uncovering and exploitation of the new 

 world of the great Atlantic Gyre. Spain, England, and France 

 now took over, and began the real unfolding of the River 

 in its streams and drifts and eddies. Many years were to pass 

 before the great Atlantic circulation of salt waters became 

 known as it is today, when we can follow its course on the 

 printed surface of a chart. The growth of a New World 

 civilization and the charting of the River went on side by side, 

 each a history in itself, but each a natural result of the other. 



