e fact that beyond it there is _no_ return possible." And so the rhyme
"Who pass Cape Non--Must turn again, _or else begone_" (lit. "_or not_,"
_i.e._, will not be able to return).]

We are now at the very time of Prince Henry himself; his first voyage
was in 1412. De Bethencourt died in 1425, and it is quite needless to
follow out at length the stories, however interesting, of sporadic
navigation in other parts of the European Seas. Between 1380-95 the
Venetian Zeni sailed in the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the
Orkneys, to Greenland, and brought back fisher stories, which read like
those of Central America, of its man-eating Caribs and splendid
barbarism. Somewhat earlier, about 1349, Ivar Bardsen of Norway paid one
of the last of Christian visits to the Arctic colonies of Greenland, the
legacy of the eleventh century, now sinking into ruin; but neither of
these voyages gives us any new knowledge of the Unknown which was now
being pierced, not from the North and East, but from the South and West.

Both in land travel and sea voyages we have traced the progress of
Western exploration and discovery up to its Hero, the real central
figure both in the history of Portugal and of the European expansion. A
little remains to be said on the other lines of preparation for his work
in scientific theory and national development from the Age of the
Crusades.

CHAPTER V.

GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE FIRST CRUSADES.

CIRCA 1100-1460.

Before the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
scientific geography of Christendom, as we have seen, was mainly a
borrowed thing. From the ninth century to the time of the Mediaeval and
Christian Renaissance, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries, the Arabs were the recognised heirs of Greek science, and
what Franks or Latins knew of Ptolemy or Strabo was either learnt or
corrected in the schools of Cordova and Bagdad.

But when the Northmen and the Holy War with Islam had once thoroughly
aroused the practical energies of Christendom, it began to expand in
mind as well as in empire, and in the time of Prince Henry, in the
fifteenth century, a Portuguese could say: "Our discoveries of coasts
and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge.
For our sailors went out very well taught, and furnished with
instruments and rules of _astrology_ and geometry, things which all
mariners and map-makers must know."

[Illustr