Note 76 — Chapter I

Helps says: “The greatest geographical discoveries have been made by men conversant with the book-knowledge of their own time.” The age of Columbus was perhaps the most illustrious of ages. “Where in the history of nations,” says Humboldt, “can one find an epoch so fraught with such important results as the discovery of America, the passage to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and Magellan’s first circumnavigation, simultaneously occurring with the highest perfection of art, the attainment of intellectual and religious freedom, and with the sudden enlargement of the knowledge of the earth and the heavens?” Cosmos, Eng. tr., ii. 673.