volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hacia el
occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que
Ptolomeo escribio, a la vuelta erales necesario subir cuesta
arriba, lo que los navios era imposible hacer." The gentle but
keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas:
"Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y senal de haber bien el
negocio entendido!" _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 230.]

[Footnote 370:
Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces
Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros.
Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum
Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.
_Georg._, i. 240.

For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle
Ages, as well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's
_Master Virgil_, 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.]

[Sidenote: Superstitious fancies.]

To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of
scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that
clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps
made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we
should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth
shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnishing eloquent
testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The
barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like
that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we
remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose
which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension
of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea
of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought
an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.

[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]

[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]

Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or
superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of
the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already
observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century
were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the
tenth. Mere yachts in size we s