Part 29 (1/2)

Columbus, then, had made three discoveries before he discovered land--the trade-winds, the Sarga.s.so Sea, and the variation of the compa.s.s.

COLUMBUS THE PATRON SAINT OF REAL-ESTATE DEALERS.

At a banquet in Chicago of the real-estate brokers, a waggish orator remarked that Columbus, with his cry of ”Land! Land!” was clearly the patron saint of American real-estate dealers.

THE MUTINY.

HORATIO J. PERRY, an American author. From ”Reminiscences.”

When those Spanish mutineers leaped upon their Admiral's deck and advanced upon him sword in hand, every man of them was aware that according to all ordinary rules the safety of his own head depended on their going clean through and finis.h.i.+ng their work. No compromise that should leave Columbus alive could possibly have suited them then.

Nevertheless, at the bottom of it all, the moving impulse of those men was terror. They were banded for that work by a common fear and a common superst.i.tion, and it was only when they looked in the clear face of one wholly free from the influences which enslaved themselves, when they felt in their marrow that supreme expression of Columbus at the point of a miserable death--only then the revulsion of confidence in him suddenly relieved their own terrors. It was instinctive. This man knows!

He does not deceive us! We fools are compromising the safety of all by quenching this light. He alone can get us through this business--that was the human instinct which responded to the look and bearing of Columbus at the moment when he was wholly lost, and when his life's work, his great voyage almost accomplished, was also to all appearance lost. The instinct was sure, the response was certain, from the instinct that its motive was also there sure and certain; but no other man in that age could have provoked it, no other but Columbus could be sure of what he was then doing.

The mutineers went back to their work, and the s.h.i.+ps went on. For three days previous, the Admiral, following some indications he had noted from the flight of birds, had steered southwest. Through that night of the 10th and through the day of the 11th he still kept that course; but just at evening of the 11th he ordered the helm again to be put due west. The squadron had made eighty-two miles that day, and his practiced senses now taught him that land was indeed near. Without any hesitation he called together his chief officers, and announced to them that the end of their voyage was at hand; and he ordered the s.h.i.+ps to sail well together, and to keep a sharp lookout through the night, as he expected land before the morning. Also, they had strict orders to shorten sail at midnight, and not to advance beyond half speed. Then he promised a velvet doublet of his own as a present to the man who should first make out the land. These details are well known, and they are authentic; and it is true also that these dispositions of the Admiral spread life throughout the squadron. n.o.body slept that night. It was only twenty-four hours since they were ready to throw him overboard; but they now believed in him and bitterly accused one another.

THE TRACK OF COLUMBUS.

From a paper in _New England Magazine_, 1892, taken originally from a volume of ”Reminiscences” left by HORATIO J. PERRY, who made a voyage from Spain to New Orleans in 1847.

A fortnight out at sea! We are upon the track of Christopher Columbus.

Only three centuries and a half ago the keels of his caravels plowed for the first time these very waters, bearing the greatest heart and wisest head of his time, and one of the grandest figures in all history.

To conceive Columbus at his true value requires some effort in our age, when the earth has been girdled and measured, when the sun has been weighed and the planets brought into the relation of neighbors over the way, into whose windows we are constantly peeping in spite of the social gulf which keeps us from visiting either Mars or Venus. It is not easy to put ourselves back into the fifteenth century and limit ourselves as those men were limited.

I found it an aid to my comprehension of Columbus, this chance which sent me sailing over the very route of his great voyage. It is not, even now, a frequented route. The bold Spanish and Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are no longer found upon it. The trade of the Indies has pa.s.sed into other hands, and this is not the road from England to the West Indies or to America.

Thus you may still sail for weeks in these seas without ever meeting a s.h.i.+p. Leaving Madeira or the Canaries, you may even reach those western lands he reached without having seen or felt any other sign or incident except precisely such as were noted by him.

DEATH WAS COLUMBUS' FRIEND.

OSKAR FERDINAND PESCHEL, a noted German geographer. Born at Dresden, March 17, 1826; died, August 31, 1875.

Death saved Columbus the infliction of a blow which he probably would have felt more than Bobadilla's fetters. He was allowed to carry to the grave the glorious illusion that Cuba was a province of the Chinese Empire, that Hispaniola was the Island Zipangu, and that only a narrow strip of land, instead of a hemisphere covered by water, intervened between the Caribbean Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

The discoverer of America died without suspecting that he had found a new continent. He regarded the distance between Spain and Jamaica as a third part of the circ.u.mference of the globe, and announced, ”The earth is by no means as large as is popularly supposed.”

The extension of the world by a new continent had no place in his conceptions, and the greatness of his achievement would have been lessened in his eyes if he had been permitted to discover a second vast ocean beyond that which he had traversed, for he would have seen that he had but half accomplished his object, the connection of Europe with the East.

PETRARCH'S TRIBUTE.

FRANCESCO PETRARCH, Italian poet. Born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, July 20, 1304; died at Arqua, near Padua, July 19, 1374.

The daylight hastening with winged steps, Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes Of far-off nations in a world remote.

COLUMBUS A VOLUMINOUS WRITER.