16 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
impassable on account of heat, and that it might be trav- 
ersed though with great difficulty. 
Europe at last became fully awake. In every depart- 
ment of intellectual activity the idle disputations in which 
the learning of the Schoolmen had its end were being dis- 
carded. Facts of natural science were no longer an- 
The Map of Macrobius. 
swered according to the letter of Aristotle, but according 
to his spirit by direct appeal to nature. The art of 
navigation had greatly improved, the Northmen had dis- 
covered new lands far in the west, the compass had been 
invented, or adopted from the Chinese, and as a final spur 
to action the power of Mohammedanism passed from the 
cultivated Arab to the sanguinary and ignorant Turk. 
