Henry’s most famous plan for outflanking the Muslim world rested on his belief in the possibility of a southern route around Africa. The primary problem with this idea, initially, was that it meant crossing the equator. Ancient wisdom held that anyone who tried to cross the Torrid Zone, as the equatorial latitudes were then known, would be, as if in some Dante-esque torture, scorched to death by this hottest of rings around the earth.
