Ea5)2



DISCOVERY



or



Ptolemy, as productions peculiar to the East Indies. After
a course of westerly'winds, trees torn up by the roots were
often driven upon the coasts of the Azores, and at one time
the dead bodies of two men, with singular features, resem-
bling neither the inhabitants of Europe -nor of Africa,
were cast ashore there.
  As the force of this united evidence, arising from theoret-
ical and practical observations, led Columbus to expect
the discovery of new countries in the western ocean, other
reasons induced him to believe that these must be connect-



ed with the continent
hardly ever penetrate&



of the
descril
prone
known
extent
rest of
lows,



Ganges, yet so]
)e the province
and at liberty 1
a, they represent
. Cesias affirm
Asia. 0 nesier
contended that



inhabitable earth.



N



four months to march
ty of India to the o
who had proceeded to
its to which any Eurc
confirm these exasrger;



of India. Though the ancients had
I into India farther than the banks
me Greek authors had ventured to.
s beyond that river. As men are
to magnify what is remote or un-
;ed them as regions of an.mmense
ed that India was as large as all the
itus, whom Pliny, the naturalist, fol-
it was equal to a third part of the
earchus asserted, that it would take
in a straight line from one extremi-
ther. The journal of Marco Polo,
wards the east, far beyond the lim-
zpean had ever advanced, seemed to
atted accounts of the ancients.



               Co
  From the maanificent descri
lo gave of Cathay and Cipar
countries on that continent, it
that India was a region of vast
that in proportion as the conti
out towards the east, it must,
spherical figure of the earth,
islands which had lately been
Africa; that the distance from
probably not very considerable,
as well as the shortest course,



ptions which Marco Po-
igo, and of many other
I appeared to Columbus
extent. *He concluded,
[nent of India stretched
in consequence of the
approach nearer to the
discovered to the west of



the oi
and t]
to the



the East, was to be found by sailing d
be was supported in this opinion by



qe to the other was
iat the most direct,
remote regions of
ue west. Although
some of the most