The mariners of Palos received these tidings with dismay. Nothing was certainly in those days more calculated to strike with terror the cautious coaster than a voyage upon the boundless, endless MARE TENEBROSUM, which, in the imagination not only of the ignorant, but even of the educated, was the home of chaos, if not the seat of Erebus. Upon the maps of the world designed at this period, the words Mare Tenebrosum were surrounded with figures of imps and devils, compared to which the Cyclops, griffins, and centaurs of mythology were modest and benign creations. The Arabians, who were forbidden by the Koran to depict the forms of animals, gave, as they thought, a fitting character to the sea, by representing the hand of Satan upon their charts, ready to clutch and drag beneath the waves all who should be so rash as to brave the displeasure of Bahr-al-Talmet. Besides Satan, besides the Leviathan and Behemoth, and other similar submarine terrors, the adventurer upon the open sea would find adversaries in the air; and, if he escaped the blast and the thunderbolt, it would be to fall a victim to the roc, that gigantic bird which lifted ships into the air and crunched them in the clouds. This roc, from terrifying the companions of Columbus, has descended to amuse children in the nautical romance of Sinbad the Sailor. Time passed, and the authorities of Palos had yet furnished nothing towards the voyage. Owners of vessels hid them in distant creeks, and the port became gradually a desert. The court ordered stringent measures, and at last a caravel named the Pinta was seized and laid up for repairs. All the carpenters turned sick, and neither rope, wood, nor tar were to be found. In vain did Marchena, the zealous Franciscan of Palos, who was beloved by all its inhabitants, undertake a crusade among the seafaring population in favor of the project: the whole Andalusian coast considered it chimerical and a temptation of Providence.