Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/252

 2 4 o THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY conclusion that neither the pope nor any other mortal man has power to pardon sin. When the papal commissioners were coming with their Indulgences to Saxony, he affixed to the doors of the Cathedral a series of theses against them; and he persuaded Frederick the Elector of Saxony to forbid the commissioners to enter Saxon territory. So in 151 7 the battle began. Hitherto the limits of the known world — the world, that is, of which the west had any knowledge — had not gone eastward 4. The Dis- beyond the boundaries of the old Persian Empire, coveries. nor westward beyond those of the Roman Empire. Southwards they had been fixed by the North African deserts. In fact since the Roman time, the centre and north and east The Known of Europe had been brought within the range of World. civilisation j otherwise there had been practically no change. Even now Russia was for the most part outside the known range. The Norwegians had colonised Iceland; they had even carried their voyages to Greenland, and adventurous explorers had certainly touched Labrador and Newfoundland. But these ventures had passed into the regions of forgotten myths. Neither the Norsemen nor any one else had felt tempted Travellers' to follow in the tracks of those early explorers. Tales. There were legends of a wonderful Isle of Atlantis far away in western waters, and there were Portuguese sailors in the early fifteenth century who affirmed that having been carried by storms far over the ocean, they had seen a vast island on the western horizon. In very early days Phoenician sailors had doubled the Cape of Good Hope ; but their story, though carefully recorded, had been discredited because the true facts which they reported had appeared to be mere travellers' tales. For two thousand years no one had thought of circumnavigating Africa. From India and from China, known to the western world as Cathay, merchandise had come by way of Persia and Bagdad ; and the crusaders brought home amazing tales of the wealth and the mystery of the far east, the way to which was barred by the Mohammedan powers. Some adventurous spirits had even made their way to the remotest east in the days when the Mongol dominion was at its mightiest, and Khubla Khan reigned in Xanadu. Concerning these far lands men cheerfully