est Indies. Mr.
Vignaud contends that the confusion arose from the very loose way in
which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages. Several Indias were
recognised. There was an India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between
the Ganges and the Indus; and a Lesser India, in which were included
Arabia, Abyssinia, and the countries about the Red Sea. These divisions
were, however, quite vague, and varied in different periods. In the time
of Columbus the word India meant the kingdom of Prester John, that
fabulous monarch who had been the subject of persistent legends since the
twelfth century; and it was this India to which the Portuguese sought a
sea road. They had no idea of a barrier cape far to the south, the
doubling of which would open a road for them to the west; nor were they,
as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a route for the spice trade with
the Orient. They had no great spice trade, and did not seek more; what
they did seek was an extension of their ordinary trade with Guinea and
the African coast. To the maritime world of the fifteenth century, then,
the South as a geographical region and as a possible point of discovery
had no attractions.

To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not
think steadily. Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere,
there were no people there, there was no trade in that direction. The
tides of history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified
mariner, blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea
monsters and enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and
coasts upon which no one could make a landfall. The farthest land known
to the west was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible
ocean of terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al
Edrisi, whose countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as
follows:

"The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and
all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything
concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation,
its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests;
through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there
are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited. There is
no mariner who dares to enter into its deep