Chapter 2: The Sea of Darkness and the Great Faith of Columbus

In Chapter 1, How the Vikings of Old Sought and Found New Lands, Norse sailors reached North America about five hundred years before Columbus. Bjarni sighted an unknown shore but would not land. Leif the Lucky bought his ship, sailed west, and named three lands: Helluland, Markland, and Vineland, where wild grapes grew. His brother Thorvald was killed by an arrow and buried at Cross Ness, and Thorfinn later brought settlers and cattle, and his son Snorri was born there. But trade with the Skraelings turned to fighting, and the Norsemen sailed away and left the country. For centuries only the sagas remembered it, until ruins found at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1960 proved the story true.

• peril: great danger of being hurt or lost
• threadbare: worn so thin the threads show through
• derision: mocking laughter that shows you think little of someone
• foolhardy: bold in a foolish, reckless way

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This is a Kindred Thicket Revised Edition. Factual and historical errors are corrected and dated wording is put right, and these notes tell you plainly what we changed and what we left as Marshall wrote it.

• About this sectionThroughout this section we brought Marshall’s British spellings to American English, keeping the original spelling inside quoted material.
• Kindred Thicket Revised Edition UpdatesIn This Country of Ours Chapter 2 we thoroughly examined and researched the chapter's contents. Three things needed our attention, two of them small matters of fact about Columbus himself. Marshall writes that Columbus had made Portugal his home for more than ten years. He lived there roughly eight or nine years, from about 1476 to 1485, so the text now says he had made it his home for many years. Marshall also calls him a man over forty at the time he left. Columbus was born around 1451, which would have made him about thirty-four, so we removed the age rather than replace one uncertain number with another. The third change is a matter of language. When the chapter describes the old trade routes falling into new hands, Marshall used a religious insult for the Muslim rulers and sailors of the region, written from a Christian point of view. We replaced the first use with Muslim rulers and removed the second, which leaves the history of the trade routes exactly as Marshall told it, without the insult.
• Teacher's Notes“King John listened kindly enough”The book says King John of Portugal secretly sent ships west of his own. It is a story that grew in the retelling.
• “I will pawn my jewels to do it.”Isabella offering to pawn her jewels was first written down by Las Casas, who admired her greatly.
• “The world was round, said wise men.”Educated Europeans had known the earth was round since the days of the Greeks. What Columbus's critics doubted was the distance to Asia, and there they were right.
• “There was nothing to be gained by venturing upon it, much to be dreaded.”The fears of the old sailors were not simple ignorance. No one had crossed that ocean, and caution about an unknown sea was reasonable.
• “huge and horrible sea-dragons lived there”The sea dragons, the great bird, and the pit of fire in the west were what some people truly believed lay beyond the last known water.

• Christopher Columbus: A Genoese sailor seeking sponsorship for a new trade route.
• Bartholomew: Columbus's brother.
• Ferdinand: The king of Spain, Isabella's husband.
• Isabella: The queen of Spain, Ferdinand's wife.
• King John of Portugal: The king of Portugal, who would not back Columbus's plan.
• The Sea of Darkness: Europe's name for the unknown Atlantic Ocean.
• The Moors: The Muslim people who long ruled part of Spain, defeated at Granada.
• Palos: The Spanish port where Columbus's voyage began.