THE TREASURE REVEALED 203 



the Coagulated Sea of the ancients might not catch and hold 

 an adventurous craft in a clutch of doom. Columbus was a 

 great sea captain, not only because he backed up Galileo in 

 action but because he proved that the vast, slow-revolving pool 

 of the Sargasso Sea was only skin deep in weed and no longer 

 to be dreaded. In 1436 a chart of the Atlantic issued by Andrea 

 Bianca called the Sargasso Sea the ''Mer de Baga/' the sea 

 of berries. Centuries after Columbus popular tradition still 

 held that lost vessels made their slow revolution in this sea 

 of death and doldrums. 



Several scraps of knowledge and of hearsay evidence were 

 available to Columbus to buoy up his imagination as he faced 

 the hazard of decision in planning his enterprise. He had 

 sailed to Bristol and the French channel ports as a young man. 

 Here were fishermen who were familiar with the open seas 

 west of Ireland and north to the Iceland fishing banks. It is 

 also probably true that Columbus himself had touched at 

 Icelandic ports where men believed in the Norse adventures 

 beyond Greenland to Markland and Vinland in the unknown 

 west. But perhaps the most comforting bit of sea talk came 

 to him right at home. For in the port of Palos lived an ancient 

 mariner called Pedro Vasquez de la Frontera who had in 

 1452 made a voyage of discovery — according to Morison — 

 with a Madeiran named Diego de Teive, under orders of 

 Henry the Navigator of Portugal. These men had sailed into 

 and through the Sargasso Sea, and heading north had dis- 

 covered Corvo and Flores of the Azores group. Searching for 

 Hi-Brazil, they had gone as far north as the latitude of Cape 

 Clear, Ireland. Old Pedro Vasquez came to Columbus and 

 told him to be of good heart for his venture, as he was certain 

 that lands lay to the west of the Sargasso Sea. Unfortunately 

 this poor man was murdered in a tavern brawl before Colum- 

 bus returned to prove that his predictions had been right. 



There is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that Columbus 



