It was a leap in the dark towards some star invisible to all but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or sea must have a brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises on the day of the small man.
Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in consequence shrunk.

It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe with maps traced upon it.

I am sure that our imagination has a far narrower angle--to borrow a term from the science of lenses--than the imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century.

They thought of the world in its actual terms--seas, islands, continents, gulfs, rivers, oceans.

Columbus had seen maps and charts--among them the famous 'portolani' of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it unlikely that he was so familiar with them as to have adopted their terms in his thoughts about the earth.