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Sitting thus, I might have looked toward Africa, but I knew now that I was not going to Africa. Often, perhaps, in the unremembered past I had been in Africa; often, doubtless, in ages to come its soil would be under my foot, but now I was not going there! To-day I looked westward over River-Ocean, unknown to our fathers and unknown to ourselves. It was unknown as the future of the world.

West of these and filling the middle map came Ocean-Sea, an open parchment field save for here a picture of a great fish, and here a siren and here Triton, and here the Island of the Seven Cities and here Saint Brandon's Isle, and these none knew if they be real or magical! Wide middle map and River-Ocean! The eye quitting that great void approached the left or western side of the circle.

Certain ships of Gades that is our Cadiz driven by a great wind far into River-Ocean, met these weeds or others like them, distant parents of these. They were like floating islands forever changing shape, and those old ships sailed among them for a while. They thought they must have broken from sea floor and risen to surface, and currents brought other masses from land.

Diego de Arana took that up. "We are obliged to find something! No sensible man can think like some of those forward that this goes on forever and we shall sail till the wood rots and sails grow ragged and wind carries away their shreds or they fall into dust!" "Who knows anything of River-Ocean? We may not find the western shore, if there be such a thing, for a year!