beyond the equator, because they did not know the stars in the southern
hemisphere and therefore had no guide. They also believed that beyond
the equator there was a frightful region of intense heat, where the
sun scorched the earth and where the waters boiled.

Many marvelous stories were told about the islands which the sailors
said they saw in the distance. Scarcely a vessel returned from a voyage
without some new story of signs of land seen by the crew.

The people who lived on the Canary Islands said that an island with
high mountains on it could be seen to the west on clear days, but no
one ever found it.

Some thought these islands existed only in the imagination of the
sailors. Others thought they were floating islands, as they were seen
in many different places. Every one was anxious to find them, for they
were said to be rich in gold and spices.

You can easily understand how excited many people were in regard to
new lands, and how they wished to find out whether the earth was round
or not. There was but one way to find out, and that was to try to sail
around it.

For a long time no one was brave enough to venture to do so. To start
out and sail away from land on this unknown water was to the people
of that day as dangerous and foolhardy a journey as to try to cross
the ocean in a balloon is to us at the present time.

MARCO POLO.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, about two hundred years before
the time of Columbus, a boy named Marco Polo lived in the city of
Venice.

[Illustration: Marco Polo.]

Marco Polo belonged to a rich and noble family, and had all the
advantages of study that the city afforded. He studied at one of the
finest schools in the city of Venice. This city was then famous for
its schools, and was the seat of culture and learning for the known
world.

When Marco Polo started for school in the morning, he did not step
out into a street, as you do. Instead, he stepped from his front
doorstep into a boat called a gondola; for Venice is built upon a
cluster of small islands, and the streets are water ways and are called
canals.

The gondolier, as the man who rows the gondola is called, took Marco
wherever he wished to go. Sometimes, as they glided along, the
gondolier would sing old Venetian songs; and as Marco Polo lay back
against the soft cushions and listened and looked about him, he
wondered if anywhere else on earth there was so beautiful a city as
Venice. Fo