From time
immemorial the Mediterranean Sea had given to the nations that dwelt on
its shores mental impulses different from those which governed the
peoples of the North; and never, from the very structure of their
character, could the Italians be adventurers in the sense which the
word bore among the Teutons. After they were once at home in all the
eastern harbors of the Mediterranean, it was natural that the most
enterprising among them should be led to join that vast inter- national
movement of the Mohammedans which there found its outlet. A new half of
the world lay, as it were, freshly discovered before them. Or, like
Polo of Venice, they were caught in the current of the Mongolian
peoples, and carried on to the steps of the throne of the Great Khan.
At an early period, we find Italians sharing in the discoveries made in
the Atlantic Ocean; it was the Genoese who, in the thirteenth century
found the Canary Islands. In the same year, 1291, when Ptolemais, the
last remnant of the Christian East, was lost, it was again the Genoese
who made the first known attempt to find a sea-passage to the East
Indies. Columbus himself is but the greatest of a long list of Italians
who, in the service of the western nations, sailed into distant seas.
The true discoverer, however, is not the man who first chances to
stumble upon anything, but the man who finds what he has sought.
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