Gradually a new interest was added. As time went on doubts
increased regarding the true shape of the earth. Early
peoples had thought it a great flat expanse, with the
blue sky propped over it like a dome or cover. This
conception was giving way. The wise men who watched the
sky at night, who saw the sweeping circles of the fixed
stars and the wandering path of the strange luminous
bodies called planets, began to suspect a mighty
secret,--that the observing eye saw only half the heavens,
and that the course of the stars and the earth itself
rounded out was below the darkness of the horizon. From
this theory that the earth was a great sphere floating
in space followed the most enthralling conclusions. If
the earth was really a globe, it might be possible to go
round it and to reappear on the farther side of the
horizon. Then the East might be reached, not only across
the deserts of Persia and Tartary, but also by striking
out into the boundless ocean that lay beyond the Pillars
of Hercules. For such an attempt an almost superhuman
courage was required. No man might say what awful seas,
what engulfing gloom, might lie across the familiar waters
which washed the shores of Europe.
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