And what adventure it was! New trees, new men, new animals, new stars; nothing bounded, nothing trite, nothing which had the bloom taken off it by much previous description! The early voyagers moreover, were like children coming out to take their first gaze into the world, with ready credulity and unlimited fancy, willing to believe in fairies and demons, Amazons and mystic islands, "forms of a lower hemisphere," and fountains of perpetual youth.
MEDIAEVAL MAP OF THE WORLD; THE ROMAN DOMINION.
The known world, in the time of Prince Henry of Portugal (at whose discoveries it will be convenient to take a preliminary glance), was a very small one indeed.

The first thing for us to do is to study our maps and charts.

Without frequent reference to these, a narrative like the present forms in our mind only a mirage of names and dates and facts, is wrongly apprehended even while we are regarding it, and soon vanishes away.

The map of the world being before us, let us reduce it to the proportions it filled in Prince Henry's time; let us look at our infant world.

First take away those two continents, for so we may almost call them, each much larger than a Europe, to the far west.