w he was right, and that some day he should find the Indies and
sail to Cathay.

CHAPTER II. WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say that
the earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over the Atlantic
Ocean. He was not. Other men had said that they believed the earth was
round; other men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor
who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove that it was
by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus was really the first man
to say, I believe the earth is round and I will show you that it is by
sailing to the lands that are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world. Your geography,
you know, tells you now that what is called the circumference of
the earth--that is, a straight line drawn right around it--is nearly
twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty carefully
and he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. If I could start from
Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back to Genoa again,
I should walk about twenty thousand miles. Cathay, he thought, would
take up so much land on the other side of the world that, if he went
west instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-five
hundred or three thousand miles.

If you have studied your geography carefully you will see what a mistake
he made.

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to China (or Cathay
as he called it). But America is just about three thousand miles from
Spain, and if you read all this story you will see how Columbus's
mistake really helped him to discover America.

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do something great from
the time when, as a little boy, he had hung around the wharves in
Genoa and looked at the ships sailing east and west and talked with the
sailors and wished that he could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learned
at school--how some men said that the earth was round--and what he had
heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set him to thinking
and to dreaming that it might be possible for a ship to sail around the
world without falling off. At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming
and longing until, at last, he began doing.

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom I have
told you, in their trying to sail around Africa discovered two groups
of isl