Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/614

 member of no learned institution could hardly hope to convert at once to his theory an erudite assembly, most of whom entertained the impression that he was at the best a mere visionary. "Was it likely," exclaimed one of his learned examiners, in a burst of indignant unbelief, "that there was a part of the world where the feet of the people who inhabited it were opposite to ours; where they walk with their heels upward, and their heads hanging down; where the trees grow with their branches downward; where it rains, hails, and snows upward, and where all things are topsy-turvy?" "Even 'admitting' the earth to be spherical, it was only," they said, "inhabitable in the northern hemisphere, and in that section only was canopied by the heavens, the opposite half being, in their opinion, a chaos, a gulph, or a mere waste of water." One of their objections was indeed amusing: "Should a ship succeed in reaching," they argued, "the extremity of India, she could never get back again, for the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible for her to sail with the most favourable wind."

The sound reasoning, however, of Columbus made a deep impression on the minds of some of the members of the conference (as especially on Diego De Deza, afterwards Archbishop of Seville), and the seed thus sown grew and in time prospered. In the meanwhile, however, he had much to endure. The affairs of war hurried the court from place to place, so that any question of less importance than the campaign