A glance at the map (opposite) will sho how different our world is from that with which the English were acquainted when Henry was crowned.  Then the earth was generally supposed to be a flat body surrounded by the ocean.  The only countries of which anything was certainly known, with the exception of Europe, were parts of western Asia, together with a narrow strip of the northern, eastern, and western coasts of Africa.  The knowledge which had once existed of India, China, and Japan appears to have died out in great measure with the travelers and merchants of earlier times who had brought it.  The land farthest west of which anything was then known was Iceland.

335.  First Voyages of Exploration; the Cabots, 1497.

About the time of Henry’s accession a new spirit of exploration sprang up.  The Portuguese had coasted along the western shores of Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea, and had established trading posts there.  Later, they reached and doubled the Cape of Good Hope (1487).  Stimulated by what they had done, Columbus, who believed the earth to be round, determined to sail westward in the hope of reaching the Indies.  In 1492 he made his first voyage, and discovered a number of the West India Islands.

Five years afterward John Cabot, a Venetian residing in Bristol, England, with his son Sebastian, persuaded the King to aid them in a similar undertaking.  They sailed from that port.  On a map drawn by the father after his return we read the following lines:  “In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot and his son Sebastian discovered that country which no one before his time had ventured to approach, on the 24th June, about 5 o’clock in the morning.”  That entry is supposed to record the discovery of Cape Breton Island; a few days later they set foot on the mainland.  This made the Cabots the first discoverers of the American CONTINENT.

As an offset to that record we have the following, taken from the King’s private account book:  “10.  Aug. 1497, To him that found the new isle 10 pounds.”

Such was the humble beginning of a series of explorations which gave England possession of the largest part of North America.

336.  Henry VII’s Reign the Beginning of a New Epoch.

A few years after Cabot’s return Henry laid the corner stone of that “solemn and sumptuous chapel” which bears his own name, and which joins Westminster abbey on the east.  There he gave orders that his tomb should be erected, and that prayers should be said over it “as long as the world lasted.”

Emerson remarks in his “English Traits” that when the visitor to the Abbey mounts the flight of twelve black marble steps which lead from it to the edifice where Henry lies buried, he passes from the medieval to the beginning of the modern age,—­a change which the different style of the architecture distinctly marks (S324).

The true significance of Henry’s reign is, that it, in like manner, stands for a new epoch,—­new in modes of government, in law, in geographical discovery, in letters, art, and religion.