.

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.
I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say that the earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over the Atlantic Ocean.

He was not.

Other men had said that they believed the earth was round; other men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean.

But no sailor who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove that it was by crossing the Atlantic.