VGUS. Slight wear on edges. Name written inside cover in pen. The Unknown! That was the name mapmakers in 1400 gave to the space they left around the edges after they had drawn the world as they knew it. The Unknown would suck you under or burn you up or leave you to rot, they said. This was too bad, for as everyone knew, China and Japan were on the other side of the world, and there was gold there. Spices, too. Adventurers thought they could get there by sailing down the west coast of Africa and around the tip, and one by one they got up their nerve to try. They were a brave, cruel, ambitious lot, these explorers. In a hundred years they not only changed the map of the world, they left behind stories no one e would want to miss.