11) were smaller caravels, and neither was decked amidships. In 1893
reproductions of the three vessels, full size and as exact as possible,
were sent across the sea by Spain, and exhibited at the World's Fair in
Chicago.

[9] The ideas of geography held by the unlearned of those days are very
curious to us. They believed that near the equator was a fiery zone where
the sea boiled and no life existed; that hydras, gorgons, chimeras, and
all sorts of horrid monsters inhabited the Sea of Darkness; and that in
the Indian Ocean was a lodestone mountain that could draw nails out of
ships. Because of the way in which ships disappeared below the horizon, it
was believed that they went down hill, and that if they went too far they
could never get back.

[10] The object of Columbus was not to let the sailors know how far they
were from home.

[11] Columbus was not the first European to reach the New World. About six
hundred years earlier, Vikings from Norway settled in Iceland, and from
the Icelandic chronicles we learn that about 986 A.D. Eric the Red planted
a colony in Greenland. His son, Leif Ericsson, about 1000 A.D., led a
party south-westward to a stony country which was probably the coast of
Labrador or Newfoundland. Going on southward, they came at last to a spot
where wild grapes grew. To this spot, probably on the New England coast,
Leif gave the name Vinland, spent the winter there, and in the spring went
back to Greenland with a load of timber. The next year Leif's brother
sailed to Vinland and passed two winters there. In later years others
went, but none remained long, and the land was soon forgotten. Iceland and
Greenland were looked upon as part of Europe; and the Vikings' discoveries
had no influence on Columbus and the explorers who followed him. Read