But what if this
that you have underneath is a greater one? What if the
world truly is larger than Alfraganus or the ancients thought?
What if all this that we have found since the first island
and that means only beginnings of what is to be found;
what if it is not Asia at all? What if it is a land mass,
great as Europe or greater, that no one knew anything of?
What if over by the sunset there is Ocean-Sea again, true
ocean and as many leagues to Asia as to Spain? What if
they cannot lead us to Quinsai, Cambaluc or Zaiton, or to
the Ganges' mouth, or Aurea Chersonesus, because they
never heard of them, and they have no ships to pass again
an Ocean-Sea? What if it is all New, and all the maps
have to be redrawn?"
He looked at me as I spoke, steadily and earnestly. What
Juan Lepe said was not the first entry into his mind of
something like that. But he was held by that great mass
of him that was bound by the thinking of the Venerable.
He was free far and far beyond most, but to certain things
he clung like a limpet. "The Earthly Paradise!" he said,
and he looked toward that Paria that we thought ran across
our south. "When our first parents left the Earthly Paradise,
they and their sons and daughters and all the peoples
to come wandered by foot into Chaldea and Arabia. So
it could not be!" His blue-gray eyes under that great
brow and shock of white hair regarded the south.
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