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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: course, by the length and danger of the coasting voyage. It was one
thing to have, like Columbus and Vespucci, Cortes and Pizarro, the
Azores as a halfway port; another to have Greenland, or even
Iceland. It was one thing to run south-west upon Columbus's track,
across the Mar de Damas, the Ladies' Sea, which hardly knows a
storm, with the blazing blue above, the blazing blue below, in an
ever-warming climate, where every breath is life and joy; another to
struggle against the fogs and icebergs, the rocks and currents of
the dreary North Atlantic. No wonder, then, that the knowledge of
Markland, and Vinland, and Whiteman's Land died away in a few
generations, and became but fireside sagas for the winter nights.
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