Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/334

 dispelled the terror inspired by the unknown ocean, and ended in 1522 with Elcano's arrival at Sanlucar after circumnavigating the globe.

In all this activity very little occurs by chance. The progressive series of geographic discoveries, due to persistent premeditation and not to accident, was inaugurated at Sagres by the Infante D. Enrique and his illustrious pilot Jaime de Mallorca.

Well might Pedro Nuñes exclaim that from that time forth until the form and size of the terraqueous globe were thoroughly known, the most to be obtained would not be firmly established, "unless our mariners sailed away better instructed and provided with better instruments and rules of Astronomy and Geography than the things with which cosmographers supplied them."

The culmination in the progress of that beautiful history falls on the 12th of October, 1492, when Columbus was the first European to set foot upon the intertropical shores of the New World. But this act, considered apart from its intrinsic value, as purely the individual inspiration of a mariner and the generous enthusiasm of a patron Queen, derives a higher value when regarded as part of a summation of efforts, a grand development of an idea, a purpose to explore and know the whole globe, to spread the name and the law of Christ together with the civilization of Europe, and to reap a harvest of gold, spices, and all the riches of which costly samples and exaggerated reports were furnished by the traffic of the Venetians, Genoese and Catalonians, who in turn got them from Mussulmans.

Doubtless the moving cause, whose gorgeous banner so many men of our peninsula followed, was clothed in great sentiments, good or bad; their hearts were filled with religious fervor, thirst for glory, ambition, Christian love, cupidity, curiosity, and violent dissatisfaction (even during the Renaissance), to seek and undergo real adventures that should surpass the vain, fruitless, and fanciful adventures of chivalry; and to make voyages and conquests eclipsing those of the Greeks and Romans, many of which, recorded in classic histories and fables, were now disinterred by the learned.

What must be described is the complete picture in all its sumptuousness so that its magnificent meaning may stand out distinctly, without which the conviction would be lacking that the studies, voyages, and happy audacity of Bartolomé Diaz, Gama,