INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER I THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE The Discovery of the New World THE explorers of the sixteenth century opened a new world to the industrial enterprise of Europe. The ancient world had centered in the Orient. Political power and commercial influence had rested in turn with Egypt, China, India, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The trade of mediaval Europe had been with the Levant. The Venetian fleet, though it sailed once a year to London and the Baltic ports, never ventured farther into the Atlantic. The westernmost capes were called Finisterre, Land's End, Ultima Thule. The great ocean beyond was known as the Sea of Darkness. Nameless terrors haunted its stormy waters, and merchantmen hardly ventured out of sight of the familiar headlands. After the adoption of the mariner's compass the Western Islands had been rediscovered, and Genoese pilots in the employ of Portugal had braved the thousand miles of stormy sea that lay between Lisbon and the Azores, but no man dared go farther west or south. Only when the Turkish conquest of Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean gave the customary trade routes into the keeping of a hostile power, did men seek to traverse the Atlantic. Monarchs, such as John II of Portugal, Isabella of Castile, Henry VII of England, sought not a new continent but a new trade route to the Orient—to India, China, and the Spice Islands. Fiske, Discovery of Yeats, The Growth Commerce, Fiske, 道 I, Ch. V, VI; The Eastward Route. Prince Henry of Portugal, the Navigator, first undertook to find an "outside" route to India. Many expeditions were sent out from Lisbon under the advice of the astronomer prince. They sailed to southward and came upon Porto Santo and Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde Islands. Creeping along the coast, the timorous navigators rounded Cape Verde and crossed the dreaded Equator. Finally, in 1487, Bartholomew Diaz circumnavigated Africa as far as the Great Fish River. A mutiny among his sailors forced Diaz to return without traversing the eastern ocean; but ten years later Vasco da Gama sailed on to India. The conquests of the important trading ports followed, and a Portuguese empire was established in the coveted Spice Islands. Bartholomew Columbus, a younger brother of Christopher, accompanied Diaz. It is said that he suggested to the discoverer of America the possibility that a shorter route to the Orient might be found by sailing directly west. Certain it is that Bartholomew submitted this plan to Henry VII in the year succeeding his momentous voyage. upon When Christopher Columbus hit the islands of the Caribbean Sea, he thought that they must be on the east coast of Asia. In 1503 Americus VesII, Ch. VII. pucius sailed from the Spanish Main to the thirty-fifth Yeats, parallel, south latitude. Finding no passage to the westPt. II, Ch. V. ward, he became convinced that this was not Asia nor the Spice Islands, but a new world. Before this discovery, Pope Alexander VI had declared a division of the newly discovered lands between the exploring monarchs of Spain and Portugal. All the islands lying west of a meridian drawn three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores were assigned to Spain; realms discovered to the eastward were to belong to her zealous rival. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator sailing under the auspices of Charles V, set forth to circumnavigate South America and penetrate the unknown sea beyond, hoping to find out a route to the Indies in the region that belonged to his master. With heroic fortitude he and his devoted crew |