unknown lands, and vague reports amongst mariners of driftwood seen on the
seas. But at any rate we know that he arrived at a fixed conclusion that
there was a way by the west to the Indies; that he could discover this
way, and so come to Cipango, Cathay, the Grand Khan, and all he had met
with in the gorgeous descriptions of Marco Polo and other ancient
authorities. We may not pretend to lay down the exact chronological order
of the formation of the idea in his mind, in fact, to know more about it
than he would probably have been able to tell us himself. And it must not
be forgotten that his enterprise, as compared with that of the Portuguese
along the coast of Africa, was as an invention compared to an improvement.
Each new discovery then was but a step beyond that which had preceded it;
Columbus was the first to steer boldly from shore into the waste of
waters, an originator, not a mere improver.


COLUMBUS'S THEORY.

Fernando Columbus divides into three classes the grounds on which his
father's theory was based; namely, reasons from nature, the authority of
writers, and the testimony of sailors. He believed the world to be a
sphere; he under-estimated its size; he over-estimated the size of the
Asiatic continent. The farther that continent extended to the eastward the
nearer it came round towards Spain. And this, in a greater or less degree,
had been the opinion of the ancient geographers. Both Aristotle and Seneca
thought that a ship might sail "in a few days" from Cadiz to India.
Strabo, too, believed that it might be possible to navigate on the same
parallel of latitude, due west from the coast of Africa or Spain to that
of India. The accounts given by Marco Polo and Sir John Maundeville of
their explorations towards China confirmed the exaggerated idea of the
extent of Eastern Asia.