[The Life of Columbus by Arthur Helps]@TWC D-Link bookThe Life of Columbus CHAPTER I 1/36
CHAPTER I.Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century. LEGENDS OF THE SEA. Modern familiarity with navigation renders it difficult for us to appreciate adequately the greatness of the enterprise which was undertaken by the discoverers of the New World.
Seen by the light of science and of experience, the ocean, if it has some real terrors, has no imaginary ones. But it was quite otherwise in the fifteenth century.
Geographical knowledge was but just awakening, after ages of slumber; and throughout those ages the wildest dreams had mingled fiction with fact.
Legends telling of monsters of the deep, jealous of invasion of their territory; of rocks of lodestone, powerful enough to extract every particle of iron from a passing ship; of stagnant seas and fiery skies; of wandering saints and flying islands; all combined to invest the unknown with the terrors of the supernatural, and to deter the explorer of the great ocean.
The half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediterranean shores were but ill-fitted to bear the brunt of the furious waves of the Atlantic.
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