the more indispensable it became to coordinate them, the more legend and empiricism became transformed into science.
Thus antiquity and the middle ages passed; thus these "sea rovers," as Michelet calls them, advanced—Icelanders, Arabs, Dieppois, and Basques. We can not admit that the sailors who then plowed the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the seas of China could remain indifferent to the favorable or unfavorable circumstances whose advantages or dangers were the more worthy of attention since their ships were smaller and less capable of resistance than are the enormous vessels of the present day propelled by steam. It is only through skill that the weak are victorious. When the Norsemen about the year 1000 went from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, and from Greenland to that Vinland which five centuries later was to become America, they left in the places which they there discovered names which showed that natural phenomena had markedly attracted their attention; Straumsoe, the island of currents; Straumsfjorde, the bay of currents; Straumness, the cape of currents.
Suddenly, about the middle of the fifteenth century, the world experienced a great disturbance. The Renaissance began to make its influence felt throughout all Europe. There was a universal awakening of curiosity, of science, of ambition, of life; that is to say, of desire of enjoyment and of gold. There are such periods of fermentation in the lives of individuals as in those of nations. Their primary wants were satisfied, they desired more. The earth was divided among different races, each race divided into peoples, the peoples into provinces, the provinces into villages, hamlets, castles, all hostile to one another, warring, fighting, massacring, and being massacred. The least painful road for peaceful or for adventurous spirits, impatient with an ambition difficult to satisfy in the old countries, was now the sea. All nations launched out upon the waters. Some, Venetians, Genoese, sought riches and found them, others sought riches and rule over vast countries. The sea gave glory and fortune, asking in exchange only boldness, and valiant spirits of all nations, Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, French, English, and a little later Dutch, embarked on vessels. Columbus discovered America anew, a discovery that was not the result of chance. Admitting that he had not received formal assurance of its existence, he foresaw it, guided by his observations and oceanographic information, marred and distorted, but nevertheless collected and transmitted from mouth to mouth. At Porto Santo he had handled a piece of carved wood thrown upon the shore by the currents and during former voyages he had remarked that the western shores of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland were strewn with pieces of wood of unknown species brought by the waves from an unknown land. He, too, sought this land and found it.
When he reached it and, wishing to broaden the field of his discoveries, navigated that sea which was later to be called the Caribbean
