risks, to penetrate into the unknown western ocean, and to explore a land as yet undreamed of.

A new spirit speedily showed itself in improvements in navigation, and especially in two inventions (both previously known in China) which helped discovery and exploration: (1) gunpowder, perhaps discovered in Europe by Roger Bacon, and first used in war about 1350, enabled the invaders of America to beat the savages; (2) printing with movable types, probably first used by Gutenberg in 1450, served to spread the fame of the new world.

The art of navigation was steadily advancing. Sea-going ships had keels and single rudders, were fitted with heavy

8. Seafar

ing

spars and square sails, and for defense from the seas and from enemies were provided with high bulwarks, forecastles, and aftercastles. There was little distinction between merchantmen and war ships: in time of war the trader took on a few more guns and men and became a fighting cruiser. Naval science was immensely aided by four inventions, which by 1450 were widely used: (1) The wondrous art of sailing on the wind, discovered by the Norsemen, gave confidence to men on long voyages. (2) The magnetic compass was a guide far out of sight of land, and when the stars were not visible. (3) The astrolabe enabled the mariner roughly to estimate his distance from the equator. (4) The portolano, or sea chart, assembled what was known about the seas and coasts.

The prelude to American history was the attempt to establish new relations between Europe and Asia. In 1450 Europe

4. Europe and the

had no direct intercourse by sea with India, China, and Japan;
eastern products found their way westward only by trans-
fer across the Isthmus of Suez, or by a slow and expen-
sive caravan journey across Asia, over routes which
were broken in two by the fierce Turks when they took Con-
stantinople in 1453.

Where were Europeans thenceforward to get the carpets and the silks, the pearls and the cotton goods, the sweet white powder that men called sugar, the gums, and the pepper that sometimes sold for its weight in gold dust?

One European, Marco Polo, actually crossed Asia and

East

Yule, Polo,
II. 246

reached the Chinese coast about 1292, and thus reported: "And I tell you with regard to that Eastern Sea of Chin, according to what is said by the experienced pilots and mariners of those parts, there be 7459 Islands in the waters frequented by the said mariners. . . . And there is not one of those Islands but produces valuable and odorous woods . . . and they produce also a great variety of spices." In course of time the question began to be asked, Why might not the Spice Islands and Japan be reached by sea from western Europe? - hence attempts were made to find a water passage around Europe by the Arctic Ocean, and around Africa by the Atlantic Ocean.

Pollard,

Moreover the learned men of the Renaissance discovered that the ancients believed that the world is round. A strange book of wonders, called the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which is dated 1322, says, "For when the sun is east in those parts towards paradise terrestrial, it is then Mandeville, midnight in our parts of this half, for the roundness of the earth. For our Lord God made the earth all round in the midplace of the firmament." By 1470 the Florentine astronomer Toscanelli actually figured out the circumference of the earth at almost exactly its true length. If the world was really round, why might not India be reached by sailing westward instead of eastward?

249

5. The colonizing nations

Such a question could best be solved by the maritime nations of western Europe - by Spain, France, England, and Portugal. The adventurous Portuguese by 1450 had already discovered the four groups of the Canary, Madeira, Cape Verde, and Azores or Western Islands. Under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator, they pushed down the west coast of Africa; but on his death (1460) they had reached no farther south than Sierra Leone.

The neighbor and great rival of Portugal was Spain; in 1469 the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of

Castile brought under one sovereignty the Christian parts of that land. In 1492, by the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, the way was opened for a great Spanish kingdom. Twenty-seven years later Charles V., king of Spain and ruler of the Netherlands (grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella), by his election as German Emperor, brought Spain into the heart of European politics. Spain built a powerful navy, and organized an infantry which could defeat knights in armor, and was almost invincible by other footmen; for many years Spain remained the strongest state in Europe.

slope

The immediate theater of American history lay unknown beyond the Atlantic. The Europeans of the fifteenth century thought of the world as consisting of only three parts - 6. America; Europe, Asia, and Africa. It required a generation of the Atlantic explorers after 1492 to evolve the idea that North America is not part of Asia; more than a century elapsed before men generally began to think of it in its true proportions, and its true relations to the rest of the world. theless the physical character of the land constantly had a controlling effect on the course of discovery and colonization; and therefore it must be considered among the essentials of American history.

Never

The Atlantic coast of North America abounds in deep and sheltered bays and estuaries which make fine harborage, and helped the early settlers in their seafaring. The coast is bold and rugged as far south as Cape Ann; and the country inland, as far south as the Hudson, is hilly and stony and abounds in waterfalls. Farther south lies a low coast plain which gradually widens till it reaches Georgia, and thence stretches westward along the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. Its sandy coast is fringed with shallow lagoons, partly inclosed by long, narrow islands. Up to the foothills of the Appalachians the south country is flat and fertile, and well adapted to agriculture. The water powers at the head of navigation on the sluggish rivers afford