The Mediterranean countries, on the other hand, were specially favorable for the development of commerce and maritime adventure. Voyages from island to island and from coast to coast were easily undertaken, and the maritime spirit rose at a very early age. It became an enthusiasm, a passion. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians and Greeks were men of the sea. The same spirit at length prevailed in the westernmost parts of Europe. Navigation was improved and new means discovered for reaching distant regions of the globe. But in the New World none of these conditions and motives existed. The native peoples of America were land-peoples, and little ambitious of the sca. Content and possibly the spirit of ease prevailed with the Central American races, and commerce and navigation were therefore little cultivated.

It should not be understood, however, that aboriginal America such as it was four centuries ago was poor in those treasures which excite the ambitions and lusts of men. In many parts of these continents rich mines of gold and silver existed. Many of the gulf waters abounded in pearls. It were long to enumerate the native treasures which might be gathered by brave and adventurous marauders among the peaceable and well-contented peoples who inhabited the central parts of our hemisphere at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

We should remember, however, that the actual treasures of the New World were not comparable with the fabulous. Story and imagination wrought astonishing fictions of the gorgeous wealth which abounded in the new lands. Every adventurer carried the torch of fancy; and though each nightfall found him unrewarded, he slept and dreamed of the riches that should come with the morrow.

From this distance we are easily able to summarize the motives which carried the European adventurers to our

shores. The men who crossed the Atlantic at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century were inflamed, first of all, with the passion of gold-hunting. A second motive was the acquisition of territory, and the third-though less sincere was the purpose of bringing new races of men to the Christian religion as taught and formulated by the Church of Rome. On the whole it was a matter of gain and conquest. Men, for many generations given over to the struggles of war, of barbarism, of wild adventure in Eastern lands, found at length to the west of the Atlantic vast new regions in which their energies and passions might have free play and reach satiety.

CHAPTER II.

THE long darkness between the beginning of the eleventh century and the modern era was at length broken into dawn. The fifteenth century is one of the most important which history has to consider since the classical ages. It was at that time that the broken-up condition of Europe was amended somewhat by the establishment of better institutions. The political estate of the Continent was greatly improved. In France, during the reign of Louis XI., the feudal institutions of the Middle Ages were made to yield to regular government. In Germany, the same thing happened in the reign of Maximilian. In England, the princes of the House of Tudor became real kings, and confirmed their authority throughout the realm. In Spain in particular, there was a great consolidation of society coincident with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was for this epoch that the real discovery of the American continents had been reserved. Spain was the destined nation under whose banners the greatest event of modern times was to be accomplished. The man and the leader, however, was to be found in that great central peninsula of Europe in which the ancient Romans had left their progeny. Out of Italy came Christopher Columbus, born of the necessity of the age he lived in, fitted by genius and afterward by education for the great work of crossing the Atlantic and confirming the existence of new lands in the West.

Let us see what part of the discovery of America may

properly be awarded to the man of Genoa. As we have seen, the Norsemen, and possibly other adventurers, had been to our shores before him. He did not originate the idea of the sphericity of the earth. That had been believed in by some of the ancients. The theory of the globular form of our planet had been advocated but not demonstrated. Copernicus and Galileo did not precede but followed Columbus. The old English traveler, Sir John Mandeville, living at the middle of the fourteenth century and contributing what may be regarded as the first book ever written in the English language, had shown by theory, and in a measure by observation, the spherical form of the world. He had declared that the earth is a globe; that he had traveled northward and observed the polar star rising to the zenith; that he had gone southward and the Antarctic constellations had risen in like manner; that it was possible for a mariner to sail around the world; and that indeed one adventurer had done so. "And therefore," says the old traveler, "hath that same thing, which I heard recited when I was young, happened many times. Howbeit, upon a time, a worthy man departed from our country to explore the world. And so he passed India and the islands beyond India-more than five thousand in number-and so long he went by sea and land, environing the world for many seasons, that he found an island where he heard them speaking in his own language, hallooing at the oxen in the plow with the identical words spoken to beasts in his own country. Forsooth, he was astonished; for he knew not how the thing might happen. But I assure you that he had gone so far by land and sea that he had actually gone around the world and was come again through the long circuit to his own district. It only remained for him to go forth and find his particular neighborhood. Unfortunately he turned from the coast which he had reached, and thereby

lost all his painful labor, as he himself afterward acknowl edged when he returned home. For it happened by and by that he went into Norway, being driven thither by a storm; and there he recognized an island as being the same in which he had heard men calling the oxen in his own tongue; and that was a possible thing. And yet it seemeth to simple, unlearned rustics that men may not go around the world, and if they did they would fall off!"

The fourteenth century, however, produced no practical discovery. Mandeville, though believing vaguely, perhaps confidently, in the sphericity of the earth, was not bold enough to undertake the hazardous task of circumnavigation. It remained for Columbus to become the first practical believer in the theory of the old wise astronomers. If he did not himself succeed in circumnavigating the globe, he led the way, and proved the possibility of doing so.

The mistake of the great Genoese navigator was thisthat he conceived the earth to be much smaller than it is. In his day the correct measurement of a degree of latitude had not been made. The result was that Columbus confidently expected, in sailing westward, to reach the Indies after a voyage of about 3,000 miles; for he supposed the world to be no more than 12,000 miles in girth. It must be remembered that it was not the purpose of Columbus to sail around the globe, but to discover a new all-water route across the Atlantic to the East Indies.

The true date of the birth of Christopher Columbus remains in dispute. Probably it was in the year 1435. His birthplace has also been in controversy, without sufficient cause. It is now known that he began his existence in a certain street in Genoa, and the very house in which he was born has been determined and suitably inscribed. The discoverer was a scion of a seafaring family. His education was undertaken with some care, but before reaching what