How was the world discovered ? That is to say, how did a certain set of men who lived round the Mediterranean Sea, and had acquired the art of recording what each generation had learned, become successively aware of the other parts of the globe ? Every part of the earth, so far as we know, has been inhabited by man during the five or six thousand years in which Europeans have been storing up their knowledge, and all that time the inhabitants of each part, of course, were acquainted with that particular part: the Kamtschatkans knew Kamts-chatka, the Greenlanders, Greenland ; the various tribes of North American Indians knew, at any rate, that part of America over which they wandered, long before Columbus, as we say, " discovered " it.Very often these savages not only know their own country, but can express their knowledge in maps of very remarkable accuracy. Cortes traversed over iooo miles through Central America, guided only by a calico map of a local cacique. An Eskimo named KallTable of Contents Preface 5; List of Maps and Illustrations 9; Introduction 13; I The World as Known to the Ancients 17 II The Spread of Conquest in the Ancient; World 33; III Geography in the' Dark Ages 43; IV Mediaeval Travels-Marco Polo, Ibn Ba-; tuta 63; V Roads and Commerce 74; VI To the Indies Eastward - Portuguese Route - Prince Henry and Vasco Da; Gama 84; VII To the Indies Westward-Spanish Route; -Columbus and Magellan 98 VIII To the Indies Northwards - English,; French, Dutch, and Russian Routes 119; IX The Partition of America 128 X Australia and the South Seas-Tasman; and Cook 139; XI Exploration and Partition of Africa-; Park, Livingstone, and Stanley 153 XII The Poles-Franklin, Ross, Nordenskiold,; Nansen, Peary, Amundsen, and Scott , 169; Annals of Discovery , , , , j8GAbout the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such a