I used to read about people who circumnavigated the earth. They would get in a ship and travel 40 or 50 thousand miles, dodging continents, to go around a globe that was only about 25 thousand miles around. I always wondered why they didn't take a few short cuts across land.

The trick was to just get on the Equator and sail east or west until they hit land. Then they would sell the ship and buy a herd of horses, load up and cross the land mass and then sell the horses and buy a ship. Then they would repeat the whole process until they were back to the starting spot.

Part of my reasoning was the if you are going around the world, you might as well do it in a warm climate.


Being a kid, I didn't think about the problem of finding someone in the market for a good used ship. It needed to be someone who just happened to have a herd of horses to trade.

Then there was the problem of jungles, mountains, and unfriendly natives. At that time I had never heard of a belt of calms between the trade wind belts. It seems that air rises at the equator instead of moving along the surface. That's bad news for sailing vessels.

But when I was a kid, a lot of thing seemed more simple than they really were. Just one of the many good reasons to not grow up.
Howard