In the century before the discovery of our continent, Sir John Mandeville had come home from the East (1356) with particular descriptions of the region about the Terrestrial Paradise. He described the noise, the roughness of the country, the fierceness of the beasts, and the other obstacles put in the way of adventurous travellers who would penetrate the abode of our first parents. The same traveller had told his wondering countrymen the marvellous tale of the wealth and grandeur of the Grand Khan, of the province of Cathay and the city of Cambalu.*

Marco Polo, a few years earlier had gone farther, and had described the magnificence of the island of Cipango (Japan), which he said lay fifteen hundred miles to the eastward of China.

Besides, the imagination had firmly fixed in men's minds a belief in the existence of lands of fabulous wealth to the westward of Europe. On the maps of the time of Columbus, we find the island of St. Brandan laid down at a distance of some six hundred miles beyond the Canary Islands, and the Island of

* Mandeville said that experience and understanding prove that a ship might sail "all round the earth, above and beneath," but that the globe is so great that it would not be apt to return to the place from which it set out, "unless by chance, or by the grace of God.” He showed that when it is day in England, it is night on the other side of the earth, and assured "simple and unlearned men" that they need have no fear of falling off towards the heavens, thereby confuting the ridicule that Lactantius, in the fourth century, sought to cast upon the doctrine of antipodes, when he said: "Is there any one so foolish as to believe that there are antipodes with their feet opposite to ours, people who walk with their heels upward and their heads hanging down? That there is a part of the world in which all things are topsyturvy: where the trees grow with their branches downward, and where it rains, hails and snows upward?"

THE FABLED ISLANDS.

7

the Seven Cities further to the north. This island had not disappeared from the maps as late as 1755, when a French geographer placed it upon his chart. With both of these islands there were associated marvellous stories. Concerning the first, it was related that St. Brandan, a Scotch or Irish abbot of the sixth century, sailed out into the great ocean in search of an island of which he had heard that enjoyed the delights of Paradise, but was inhabited by infidels. Before he arrived at the spot, he found, on another island, the body of a giant lying in a sepulchre. This he resuscitated, and the giant, after giving accounts of the sufferings of Jews and Pagans in the infernal regions, was converted and baptized. He told the saint that he knew the island for which he was seeking, and undertook to direct him to it. The search proved unsuccessful; but the island that the people of the Canaries supposed they could see from their shores, long bore the name of St. Brandan.* At a later period it was the subject of much grave official inquiry, and so satisfactory was the evidence of its existence, that in 1526, 1570, 1605, and even 1721, expeditions were actually sent to search for it, though it always refused to be discovered.

The Island of the Seven Cities was connected with the Moorish conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when the inhabitants fled in all directions. Seven bishops, with a great number of people, founded seven cities on a large island in the ocean. Mariners were found who related that they had actually visited the

* See Longfellow's "The Poets and Poetry of Europe,” page 372; also poems by Matthew Arnold and Denis Florence McCarthy, on St. Brandan; and the appendix to Irving's “Columbus,” vol. iii p. 403.

island; and their story of the strange inhabitants gained much currency. The island was laid down on the maps under the name of Antilla.

Romance had connected itself also with the island of Maderia, which was said to have been discovered by an Englishman, who in the reign of Edward III. (about 1350) had fallen in love with a maiden above. him in social importance. The marriage being impossible in England, the lovers took ship surreptitiously, intending to land in France; but after a voyage of fourteen days found themselves in a country of Arcadian loveliness. A tempest destroyed their vessel, leaving the lovers alone in a strange land. The lady died, reproaching herself at being the cause of the misfortune, and her lover soon followed her to the grave.

GENVENS

LVMB VS

In this age of romance, at about the middle of the fifteenth century, there appeared from the obscurity of an humble social position, a young Italian seaman who was destined to revolutionize the world. He was inured to hardship, and had passed the apprenticeship of a rigid discipline on board a ship engaged in predatory warfare against the enemies of Genoa. He had studied geography, geometry and astronomy in the great school of Pavia, and in the northern and southern seas, for he had sailed to Iceland, and a hundred leagues beyond it,* curious to know if that frozen land

*Humbolt asserts that in Scandanavia Columbus learned traditions which confirmed him in his views regarding a Western continent.