Nicolas and Maffeo Polo, Venetians, the father and uncle of Marco Polo, who had establishments at Constantinople and the Crimea, took a journey into Tartary and came to the Court of Kublai Khan. Marco Polo himself was the Herodotus of these ages. He revealed to the western world regions they had never heard of before. He describes China and the towns of Hang-chow and Chincheu, and hears from the sailors of those regions the wonderful description of the great island of Cipango or Japan. Gold was so plentiful there, that the roof of the prince's palace was covered with it. The opulence of this island tempted the rapacity of Kublai Khan, who, with a vast fleet and army, attempted in vain to annex it to his empire. In his wonderful journeyings, the archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean unfolded themselves to Marco-Cochin China with its ebony, Borneo with its spices, Cambodia with its elephants and gold, and the riches of fruitful Java and Sumatra. From Sumatra Marco Polo sailed to the Nicobar and Andaman islands, to Ceylon and the Coromandel coast, and found the commerce of India stretching from the territories of Kublai Khan to the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

(6) At last, in the 15th century, there was a general awakening of the western nations. Portugal, Spain and Holland bestirred themselves, and envious of the enor mous wealth of the Italian Republics, strove to take away their monopoly. This could only be done by finding a new way to the East by the open sea, as they could none of them compete with the Italian merchants in the close waters of the Mediterranean. With the revival of learning and the invention of the compass their opportunity The knowledge of the magnetic needle certainly came from the East. Marco Polo brought back a knowledge of it from China in 1290, but probably without practical results: whilst others say that Flavio da Melfi,

came.

a Neapolitan, invented it, and hence the Principato (part of the kingdom of Naples) had the compass as its arms. In the hands of the mariners of Europe it became a most potent instrument of discovery. Its trembling finger led men to dare the deeps of ocean in a way they never ventured to do before.

(7) The art of map-making was in its rudest infancy, and the bounds of the Eastern continent were absolutely unknown in Europe; but everywhere there was a struggle for greater freedom and more light. The continuous efforts made by the crusaders from 1096 (the date of the first crusade under Walter the Penniless) to 1290 (the time of the last crusade) did not end with personal adventures. The struggle with the infidel over the sacred city made the Western nations, Goth, Frank, Swabian, and Saxon, ponder and reflect: and now the mind of Christopher Columbus, well constituted to think and act, was stirred with all the wonder and poetry of this age. Born probably in Corsica, he was a citizen of Genoa, and therefore able to learn all that was known of science and geography in those days. His own countrymen naturally did not wish him to adventure far afield, as the opening of a western route to the Indies would have destroyed their trade. So Columbus offered his services to Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Aragon and Castile.

(8) There were not wanting traditions of a western continent even at that time. The Portuguese settlers in the Canaries actually declared they had seen land far down in the west. More than one expedition had set out with solemn ceremony and with the prayers of priests to find it, but none had succeeded. Columbus knew all this, he knew too that the world was round, and that to sail west was to reach India. Although Columbus was set down as a visionary and enthusiast, he was entrusted

at last with a vessel and crew by the Queen of Castile. But many of his sailors were criminals let loose upon this desperate chance, as it was thought, of saving themselves; and when they set sail from the harbour of Palos in Portugal their friends took a sad farewell of them, never expecting to see them again.

(9) Long voyages had already been made down the African coast, and explorers had reached the tropics after many thousand miles of travel, but land was never left far distant. Little by little the Portuguese and Spaniards had been creeping down the coast of Africa on the western side past Morocco, Senegambia, Liberia, to the Gulf of Guinea and the regions of the tropics, until at last Bartolomeo Diaz, a Portuguese captain, sighted the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, and found an open sea before him. Then came Vasco di Gama, who sailed from Lisbon in July 1497, rounded the Cape, reached Natal, and, keeping along the eastern coast, arrived at Melinda, where he found Arab pilots acquainted with the navigation of the eastern seas. With their help he reached Calicut on the Malabar coast, and returned to Lisbon in September 1499, with crews reduced from a total of 160 to 55. Such were the risks of explorers in these days, chiefly arising from malaria, scurvy, and bad food. In Mid-Atlantic all was unknown, and the waves and winds were far more terrible there than in the Mediterranean.

(10) Columbus altogether miscalculated the earth's size. How greatly he did so may be gathered from the fact, that when he touched first at San Salvador in the Bahamas (October 12, 1492), he thought he had reached India, and those Japanese and Malayan archipelagoes of the far East which Marco Polo had described. Columbus visited Cuba and a few of the neighbouring islands and sailed back to Europe. To the Spaniards the returning discoverer seemed as one risen from the dead, and a most enthu

siastic reception was given to him by the queen and

nation.

The spell was broken, and mariner after mariner followed Columbus' track westward. True it is, that the key to the East and the wealth of the Indies was not found on these Atlantic voyages. But the wealth of a new world lay at the feet of the old. Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English all rushed to have a share in the new discoveries beyond the Atlantic.

In 1497, while Vasco, Camoens' hero, was rounding the Cape, the mainland of North America was discovered, and thus that memorable date saw two great geographical secrets solved. To the south Africa could be circumnavigated, and India reached by sea, and to the west it was now known that a vast Continent, not a mere shadowy Atlantis, lay across the track of sailors. But could the East Indies be reached by the north-west? This was still a secret locked away in the snowy north.

CHAPTER III.

The Cabots and Bristol (1497).

(1) AMONGST the numerous adventurers who were fired by the example of Columbus were the two Cabots-John and Sebastian. Their family, named in its native form Gabato, came from Venice, but, crossing over to England, settled at Bristol, at that time a most enterprising seaport. John Cabot, being a skilled geographer and a keen merchant, possibly instigated explorations from Iceland

further to the west, following along the line of the Scandinavian adventurers who, as already stated, had sighted Labrador and the great American Continent many years before. John Cabot got a charter from Henry VII conferring privileges upon himself and his three sons-Lewis, Sebastian, and Sanctus. His object and purpose are thus quaintly described by an Italian-Raimondo di Soncino-writing to the Duke of Milan on the subject. He says: "The Englishmen, Cabot's partners, say that they can bring so many fish that this kingdom will have no more business with Islanda [Iceland], and that from this country there will be a very great trade in the fish which they call stock-fish. But John Cabot has his thoughts directed to a greater undertaking, for he thinks of going, after this place is occupied, along the coast further towards the east, until he is opposite the island called Cipango, situate in the equinoctial regions, where he believes all the spices of the world grow, and where there are also gems. And in the spring he says that his Majesty will arm some ships, and will give him all the convicts, so that he may go to this country and plant a colony there, and in this way he hopes to make London a greater place for spices than Alexandria. And the principals of this business are citizens of Bristol, great mariners, who now know where to go. They say that the voyage will not take more than fifteen days, if fortune favour them, after leaving Ibernia [Ireland]. And I believe some poor Italian friars will go on the voyage, who have the promise of being bishops. And I, being a friend of the admiral, if I wished to go, could have an archbishopric.'

(2) All these early expeditions had a religious aspect. It will be remembered that Columbus, when he found the New World, looked upon the natives as heathen who would be converted and become believers in Christianity, and so