Part 14 (1/2)
The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation, its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests; through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or, if any have done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from them. The waves of this ocean, although they roll as high as mountains, yet maintain themselves without breaking, for if they broke it would be impossible for s.h.i.+p to plow them.
PALOS.
Prof. MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. From an article, ”Columbus the Christ-Bearer,” in the New York _Independent_, June 2, 1892.
The caravels equipped at Palos were so unseaworthy, judged by the dangers of the Atlantic, that no crew in our time would have trusted in them. The people of Palos disliked this foreigner, Columbus. No man of Palos, except the Pinzons, ancient mariners, sympathized with him in his hopes. The populace overrated the risks of the voyage; the court, fortunately for Columbus, underrated them. The Admiral's own s.h.i.+ps and his crew were not such as to inspire confidence. His friends, the friars, had somewhat calmed the popular feeling against the expedition; but ungrateful Palos never approved of it until it made her famous.
AN UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.
SAMUEL R. ELLIOTT, in the _Century Magazine_, September, 1892.
You have no heart? Ah, when the Genoese Before Spain's monarchs his great voyage planned, Small faith had they in worlds beyond the seas-- And _your_ Columbus yet may come to land!
SAGACITY.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, the well-known American essayist, poet, and speculative philosopher. Born in Boston, May 25, 1803; died at Concord, April 27, 1882. From his essay on ”Success,” in _Society and Solitude_. Copyright, by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers, Boston, and with their permission.
Columbus at Veragua found plenty of gold; but, leaving the coast, the s.h.i.+p full of one hundred and fifty skillful seamen, some of them old pilots, and with too much experience of their craft and treachery to him, the wise Admiral kept his private record of his homeward path. And when he reached Spain, he told the King and Queen, ”That they may ask all the pilots who came with him, Where is Veragua? Let them answer and say, if they know, where Veragua lies. I a.s.sert that they can give no other account than that they went to lands where there was abundance of gold, but they do not know the way to return thither, but would be obliged to go on a voyage of discovery as much as if they had never been there before. There is a mode of reckoning,” he proudly adds, ”derived from astronomy, which is sure and safe to any who understands it.”
THE VOICE OF THE SEA.
From a poem, ”Seash.o.r.e,” by RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.
I with my hammer pounding evermore The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, Strewing my bed, and, in another age, Rebuild a continent of better men.
Then I unbar the doors; my paths lead out The exodus of nations; I disperse Men to all sh.o.r.es that front the h.o.a.ry main.
I too have arts and sorceries; Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal With credulous and imaginative man; For, though he scoop my water in his palm, A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.
Planting strange fruits and suns.h.i.+ne on the sh.o.r.e, I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, To distant men, who must go there, or die.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBUS AS A STUDENT AT PAVIA.
From the Drake Drinking Fountain, Chicago.
(See page 118.)]
THE REASONING OF COLUMBUS.
Columbus alleged, as a reason for seeking a continent in the West, that the harmony of nature required a great tract of land in the western hemisphere to balance the known extent of land in the eastern.--_Ibid._
STRANGER THAN FICTION.
EDWARD EVERETT, a distinguished American orator, scholar, and statesman. Born at Dorchester, Ma.s.s., April 11, 1794; died, January 15, 1865. From a lecture on ”The Discovery of America,”
delivered at a meeting of the Historical Society of New York in 1853.