Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/610

 undertaking depended upon two happy errors, the imaginary extent of Asia to the East, and the supposed smallness of the earth, both errors of the most learned and profound philosophers, but without which Columbus would hardly have ventured upon his enterprise. As to the idea of finding land by sailing directly to the West, it is at present so familiar to our minds, as in some measure to diminish the merits of the first conception, and the hardihood of the first attempt; but in those days, as has been well observed, the circumference of the earth was yet unknown; no one could tell whether the ocean was not of immense extent, impossible to be traversed; nor were the laws of specific gravity, and of central gravitation, ascertained, by which, granting the rotundity of the earth, the possibility of making the tour of it would be manifest."

Several years, however, elapsed before Columbus could make any progress towards carrying into effect his favourite project. He was himself too poor to render any pecuniary assistance towards the fitting out of the requisite expedition; and the government of Portugal was then too much engrossed in a war with Spain to engage the services of a foreigner in any peaceful enterprise of an expensive nature. The public mind, also, though elated by the discoveries which had already been made, was not then prepared for so doubtful and perilous an undertaking, while the sailors, who had rarely ventured far out of sight of land, considered the project of a voyage directly westward into a boundless waste of ocean as dangerous as it was extravagant and visionary. But when John II., who had imbibed the passion for dis