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The True Story of Christopher Columbus

Elbridge S. Brooks

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The True Story of Christopher Columbus

by Elbridge S. Brooks

October 12, 1998 [Etext #1488]

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THE TRUE STORY OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL

BY ELBRIDGE S. {Streeter} BROOKS

[This was orginally done on the 400th Anniversary of 1492]

[As was the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago]

[Interesting how our heroes have all be de-canonizied in the

of Political Correctitude] Comments by Michael S. Hart

PREFACE.

This "True Story of Christopher Columbus" is offered and

inscribed to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume

in a series especially designed for their reading, and to be

called "Children's Lives of Great Men." In this series the place

of honor, or rather of position, is given to Columbus the

Admiral, because had it not been for him and for his pluck and

faith and perseverance there might have been no young Americans,

such as we know to-day, to read or care about the world's great

men.

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New World;

he left a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and of

triumph over all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and

guide for Americans ever since his day, and that has led them to

work on in faith and hope until the end they strove for was won.

"The True Story of Christopher Columbus" will be followed by the

"true story" of others who have left names for us to honor and

revere, who have made the world better because they lived, and

who have helped to make and to develop American freedom, strength

and progress.

It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the

simple, straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children,

and shows how the hero can be the man, and the man the hero.

E. S. B.

THE TRUE STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CHAPTER I. BOY WITH AN IDEA.

Men who do great things are men we all like to read about. This

is the story of Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered

America. He lived four hundred years ago. When he was a little

boy he lived in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the

northwestern part of the country called Italy. The mountains were

behind it; the sea was in front of it, and it was so beautiful a

place that the people who lived there called it "Genoa the

Superb." Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful city of

Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He was a

bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear eye and

golden hair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus; his

mother's name was Susanna. His father was a wool-comber. He

cleaned and straightened out the snarled-up wool that was cut

from the sheep so as to make it ready to be woven into cloth.

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong enough,

but he went to school, too, and learned to read and write and to

draw maps and charts. These charts were maps of the sea, to show

the sailors where they could steer without running on the rocks

and sand, and how to sail safely from one country to another.

This world was not as big then as it is now--or, should say,

people did not know it was as big. Most of the lands that

Columbus had studied about in school, and most of the people he

had heard about, were in Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The

city of Genoa where Columbus lived was a very busy and a very

rich city. It was on the Mediterranean Sea, and many of the

people who lived there were sailors who went in their ships on

voyages to distant lands. They sailed to other places on the

Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know,

and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far away as the

cold northern island of Iceland. This was thought to be a great

journey.

The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a time as is

this in which you live. People were alwaysquarreling and fighting

about one thing or another, and the sailors who belonged to one

country would try to catch and steal the ships or the things that

belonged to the sailors or the storekeepers of another country.

This is what we call piracy, and a pirate, you know, is thought

to be a very wicked man.

But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so very wicked

to be a sort of half-way pirate, although they did know that they

would be killed if they were caught. So almost every sailor was

about half pirate. Every boy who lived near the seashore and saw

the ships and the sailors, felt as though he would like to sail

away to far-off lands and see all the strange sights and do all

the brave things that the sailors told about. Many of them even

said they would like to be pirates and fight with other sailors,

and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be.

Columbus was one of these. He was what is called an adventurous

boy. He did not like to stay quietly at home with his father and

comb out the tangled wool. He thought it would be much nicer to

sail away to sea and be a brave captain or a rich merchant.

When he was about fourteen years old he really did go to sea.

There was a captain of a sailing vessel that sometimes came to

Genoa who had the same last name--Columbus. He was no relation,

but the little Christopher somehow got acquainted with him among

the wharves of Genoa. Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or

helped him with some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to

draw. At any rate he sailed away with this Captain Columbus as

his cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite an

exciting life for a boy.

Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their own

adventures or about far-off lands and countries. Columbus,

listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many wonderful

things about a very rich land away to the East that folks called

Cathay.

If you look in your geographies you will not find any such place

on the map as Cathay, but you will find China, and that was what

men in the time of Columbus called Cathay. They told very big

stories about this far-off Eastern land. They said its kings

lived in golden houses, that they were covered with pearls and

diamonds, and that everybody there was so rich that money was as

plentiful as the stones in the street.

This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who were part

pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get some of the gold and

jewels and spices and splendor for themselves. But Cathay was

miles and miles away from Italy and Spain and France and England.

It was away across the deserts and mountains and seas and rivers,

and they had to give it up because they could not sail there.

At last a man whose name was Marco Polo, and who was a very brave

and famous traveler, really did go there, in spite of all the

trouble it took. And when he got back his stories were so very

surprising that men were all the more anxious to find a way to

sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves.

But of course they could not sail over the deserts and mountains,

and they were very much troubled because they had to give up the

idea, until the son of the king of Portugal, named Prince Henry,

said he believed that ships could sail around Africa and so get

to India or "the Indies" as they called that land, and finally to

Cathay.

Just look at your map again and see what a long, long voyage it

would be to sail from Spain and around Africa to India, China and

Japan. It is such a long sail that, as you know, the Suez Canal

was dug some twenty years ago so that ships could sail through

the Mediterranean Sea and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have

to go away around Africa.

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than now, for no

one really knew how long Africa was, or whether ships really

could sail around it. But Prince Henry said he knew they could,

and he sent out ships to try. He died before his Portuguese

sailors, Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497,

at last did sail around it and got as far as "the Indies."

So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships could sail

around Africa and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus was

listening to the stories the sailors told and was wondering

whether some other and easier way to Cathay might not be found.

When he was at school he had studied about a certain man named

Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he

was born, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball

or an orange."

As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books

and listened to what other people said, he began to believe that this

man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round,

though everybody declared it was flat. If it is round , he said

to himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa

to get to Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and

keep going right around the world until you strike Cathay?

I believe it could be done," said Columbus.

By this time Columbus was a man. He was thirty years old and was

a great sailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels; he

had sailed north and south and east; he knew all about a ship and

all about the sea. But, though he was so good a sailor, when he

said that he believed the earth was round, everybody laughed at

him and said that he was crazy. "Why, how can the earth be

round?" they cried. "The water would all spill out if it were,

and the men who live on the other side would all be standing on

their heads with their feet waving in the air." And then they

laughed all the harder.

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at. He

believed it so strongly, and felt so sure that he was right, that

he set to work to find some king or prince or great lord to let

him have ships and sailors and money enough to try to find a way

to Cathay by sailing out into the West and across the Atlantic

Ocean.

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which break upon

our rocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to be a

dreadful place. People called it the Sea of Darkness, because

they did not know what was on the other side of it, or what

dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim where the sky and water

seem to meet, and which we call the horizon. They thought the

ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straight away to a

sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this horrible jumping-

off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters and

all sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships and

destroy them and the sailors.

So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward this

dreadful jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse

than crazy. They said he was a wicked man and ought to be

punished.

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went

from place to place trying to get the ships and sailors he wanted

and was bound to have. As you will see in the next chapter, he

tried to get help wherever he thought it could be had. He asked

the people of his own home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived

and played when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful city

that is built in the sea--Venice; he tried the king of Portugal,

the king of England, the king of France the king and queen of

Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen to such a wild

and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the way of the

Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would never get

there alive, they said.

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while he waited,

though he was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked and

hoped so much that he began to look like an old man when he was

forty years old. But still he would never say that perhaps he was

wrong, after all. He said he knew he was right, and that some day

he should find the Indies and sail to Cathay.

CHAPTER II. WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say

that the earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over

the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other men had said that they

believed the earth was round; other men had sailed out into the

Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor who believed the earth was round

had ever yet tried to prove that it was by crossing the Atlantic.

So, you see, Columbus was really the first man to say, I believe

the earth is round and I will show you that it is by sailing to

the lands that are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world. Your

geography, you know, tells you now that what is called the

circumference of the earth--that is, a straight line drawn right

around it--is nearly twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had

figured it up pretty carefully and he thought it was about twenty

thousand miles. If I could start from Genoa, he said, and walk

straight ahead until I got back to Genoa again, I should walk

about twenty thousand miles. Cathay, he thought, would take up so

much land on the other side of the world that, if he went west

instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-five

hundred or three thousand miles.

If you have studied your geography carefully you will see what a

mistake he made.

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to China (or

Cathay as he called it). But America is just about three thousand

miles from Spain, and if you read all this story you will see how

Columbus's mistake really helped him to discover America.

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do something great

from the time when, as a little boy, he had hung around the

wharves in Genoa and looked at the ships sailing east and west

and talked with the sailors and wished that he could go to sea.

Perhaps what he had learned at school-- how some men said that

the earth was round--and what he had heard on the wharves about

the wonders of Cathay set him to thinking and to dreaming that it

might be possible for a ship to sail around the world without

falling off. At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming and

longing until, at last, he began doing.

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom

I have told you, in their trying to sail around Africa discovered

two groups of islands out in the Atlantic that they called the

Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries, or Isles of Dogs.

When Columbus was in Portugal in 1470 he became acquainted with a

young woman whose name was Philippa Perestrelo. In 1473 he

married her.

Now Philippa's father, before his death, had been governor of

Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his wife went

off there to live. In the governor's house Columbus found a lot

of charts and maps that told him about parts of the ocean that he

had never before seen, and made him feel certain that he was

right in saying that if he sailed away to the West he should find

Cathay.

At that time there was an old man who lived in Florence, a city

of Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He was a great scholar and

studied the stars and made maps, and was a very wise man.

Columbus knew what a wise old scholar Toscanelli was, for

Florence is not very far from Genoa. So while he was living in

the Azores he wrote to this old scholar asking him what he

thought about his idea that a man could sail around the world

until he reached the land called the Indies and at last found

Cathay.

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he believed his idea was

the right one, and he said it would be a grand thing to do, if

Columbus dared to try it. Perhaps, he said, you can find all

those splendid things that I know are in Cathay--the great cities

with marble bridges, the houses of marble covered with gold, the

jewels and the spices and the precious stones, and all the other

wonderful and magnificent things. I do not wonder you wish to

try, he said, for if you find Cathay it will be a wonderful thing

for you and for Portugal.

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar said he

was right, he must be right. So he left his home in the Azores

and went to Portugal. This was in 1475, and from that time on,

for seventeen long years he was trying to get some king or prince

to help him sail to the West to find Cathay.

But not one of the people who could have helped him, if they had

really wished to, believed in Columbus. As I told you, they said

that he was crazy. The king of Portugal, whose name was John, did

a very unkind thing--I am sure you would call it a mean trick.

Columbus had gone to him with his story and asked for ships and

sailors. The king and his chief men refused to help him; but King

John said to himself, perhaps there is something in this worth

looking after and, if so, perhaps I can have my own people find

Cathay and save the money that Columbus will want to keep for

himself as his share of what he finds. So one day he copied off

the sailing directions that Columbus had left with him, and gave

them to one of his own captains without letting Columbus know

anything about it, The Portuguese captain sailed away to the West

in the direction Columbus had marked down, but a great storm came

up and so frightened the sailors that they turned around in a

hurry. Then they hunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for

getting them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find

land in the sky, they said, as in those terrible waters.

And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King John had

tried to use his ideas without letting him know anything about

it, he was very angry. His wife had died in the midst of this

mean trick of the Portuguese king, and so, taking with him his

little five-year-old son, Diego, he left Portugal secretly and

went over into Spain.

Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is a green hill

looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands an old

building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a a convent or

home for priests. It was called the Convent of Rabida, and the

priest at the head of it was named the Friar Juan Perez. One

autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan Perez saw a dusty

traveler with a little boy talking with the gate-keeper of the

convent. The stranger was so tall and fine-looking, and seemed

such an interesting man, that Friar Juan went out and began to

talk with him. This man was Columbus.

As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested in what

Columbus said. He invited him into the convent to stay for a few

days, and he asked some other people--the doctor of Palos and

some of the sea captains and sailors of the town--to come and

talk with this stranger who had such a singular idea about

sailing across the Atlantic.

It ended in Columbus's staying some months in Palos, waiting for

a chance to go and see the king and queen. At last, in 1485, he

set out for the Spanish court with a letter to a priest who was a

friend of Friar Juan's, and who could help him to see the king

and queen.

At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting to drive

out of Spain the people called the Moors. These people came from

Africa, but they had lived in Spain for many years and had once

been a very rich and powerful nation. They were not Spaniards;

they were not Christians. So all Spaniards and all Christians

hated them and tried to drive them out of Europe.

The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the Moors were

named Ferdinand and Isabella. They were pretty good people as

kings and queens went in those days, but they did a great many

very cruel and very mean things, just as the kings and queens of

those days were apt to do. I am afraid we should not think they

were very nice people nowadays. We certainly should not wish our

American boys and girls to look up to them as good and true and

noble.

When Columbus first came to them, they were with the army in the

camp near the city of Cordova. The king and queen had no time to

listen to what they thought were crazy plans, and poor Columbus

could get no one to talk with him who could be of any help. So he

was obliged to go back to drawing maps and selling books to make

enough money to support himself and his little Diego.

But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez of

Rabida, who was a priest at the court, and named Talavera, and to

whom he had a letter of introduction, Columbus found a chance to

talk over his plans with a number of priests and scholars in the

city of Salamanca where there was a famous college and many

learned men.

Columbus told his story. He said what he wished to do, and asked

these learned men to say a good word for him to, Ferdinand and

Isabella so that he could have the ships and sailors to sail to

Cathay. But it was of no use.

What! sail away around the world? those wise men cried in horror.

Why, you are crazy. The world is not round; it is flat. Your

ships would tumble off the edge of the world and all the king's

money and all the king's men would be lost. No, no; go away; you

must not trouble the queen or even mention such a ridiculous

thing again.

So the most of them said. But one or two thought it might be

worth trying. Cathay was a very rich country, and if this foolish

fellow were willing to run the risk and did succeed, it would be

a good thing for Spain, as the king and queen would need a great

deal of money after the war with the Moors was over. At any rate,

it was a chance worth thinking about.

And so, although Columbus was dreadfully disappointed, he thought

that if he had only a few friends at Court who were ready to say

a good word for him he must not give up, but must try, try again.

And so he staid in Spain.

CHAPTER III. HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

When you wish very much to do a certain thing it is dreadfully

hard to be patient; it is harder still to have to wait. Columbus

had to do both. The wars against the Moors were of much greater

interest to the king and queen of Spain than was the finding of a

new and very uncertain way to get to Cathay. If it had not been

for the patience and what we call the persistence of Columbus,

America would never have been discovered--at least not in his

time.

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and, poorer. He was almost

friendless. It seemed as if his great enterprise must be given

up. But he never lost hope. He never stopped trying. Even when he

failed he kept on hoping and kept on trying. He felt certain that

sometime he should succeed.

As we have seen, he tried to interest the rulers of different

countries, but with no success. He tried to get help from his old

home-town of Genoa and failed; he tried Portugal and failed; he

tried the Republic of Venice and failed; he tried the king and

queen of Spain and failed; he tried some of the richest and most

powerful of the nobles of Spain and failed; he tried the king of

England (whom he got his brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and

see) and failed. There was still left the king of France. He

would make one last attempt to win the king and queen of Spain to

his side and if he failed with them he would try the last of the

rulers of Western Europe, the king of France.

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went from place

to place fighting the Moors. He hoped that some day, when they

wished to think of something besides fighting, they might think

of him and the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay.

The days grew into months, the months to years, and still the war

against the Moors kept on; and still Columbus waited for the

chance that did not come. People grew to know him as "the crazy

explorer" as they met him in the streets or on the church steps

of Seville or Cordova, and even ragged little boys of the town,

sharp-eyed and shrill- voiced as all such ragged little urchins

are, would run after this big man with the streaming white hair

and the tattered cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown

little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show that even they

knew that he was "as crazy as a loon."

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving it up

in Spain. His money was gone; his friends were few; but he

remembered his acquaintances at Palos and so he journeyed back to

see once more his good friend Friar Juan Perez at the Convent of

Rabida on the hill that looked out upon the Atlantic he was so

anxious to cross.

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went back to the

Convent of Rabida. If he could not get any encouragement there,

he was determined to stay in Spain no longer but to go away and

try the king of France.

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the priests

and the sailors of Palos. They saw how patient he was; how

persistent he was; how he would never give up his ideas until he

had tried them. They were moved by his determination. They began

to believe in him more and more. They resolved to help him. One

of the principal sea captains of Palos was named Martin Alonso

Pinzon. He became so interested that he offered to lend Columbus

money enough to make one last appeal to the king and queen of

Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them, this Captain

Pinzon said that he would go into partnership with Columbus and

help him out when it came to getting ready to sail to Cathay.

This was a move in the right direction. At once a messenger was

sent to the splendid Spanish camp before the city of Granada, the

last unconquered city of the Moors of Spain. The king and queen

of Spain had been so long trying to capture Granada that this

camp was really a city, with gates and walls and houses. It was

called Santa Fe. Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fe, after some

delay, agreed to hear more about the crazy scheme of this

persistent Genoese sailor, and the Friar Juan Perez was sent for.

He talked so well in behalf of his friend Columbus that the queen

became still more interested. She ordered Columbus to come and

see her, and sent him sixty-five dollars to pay for a mule, a new

suit of clothes and the journey to court.

About Christmas time, in the year 1491, Columbus, mounted upon

his mule, rode into the Spanish camp before the city of Granada.

But even now, when he had been told to come, he had to wait.

Granada was almost captured; the Moors were almost conquered. At

last the end came. On the second of January, 1492, the Moorish

king gave up the keys of his beloved city, and the great Spanish

banner was hoisted on the highest tower of the Alhambra--the

handsomest building in Granada and one of the most beautiful in

the world. The Moors were driven out of Spain and Columbus's

chance had come.

So he appeared before Queen Isabella and her chief men and told

them again of all his plans and desires. The queen and her

advisers sat in a great room in that splendid Alhambra I have

told you of. King Ferdinand was not there. He did not believe in

Columbus and did not wish to let him have either money, ships or

sailors to lose in such a foolish way. But as Columbus stood

before her and talked so earnestly about how he expected to find

the Indies and Cathay and what he hoped to bring away from there,

Queen Isabella listened and thought the plan worth trying.

Then a singular thing happened. You would think if you wished for

something very much that you would be ve up a good deal for the

sake of getting it. Columbus had worked and waited for seventeen

years. He had never got what he wanted. He was always being

disappointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her

what he wished to do, he said he must have so much as a reward

for doing it that the queen and her chief men were simply amazed

at his--well, what the boys to-day call "cheek"--that they would

have nothing to do with him. This man really is crazy, they said.

This poor Genoese sailor comes here without a thing except his

very odd ideas. and almost "wants the earth" as a reward. This is

not exactly what they said, but it is what they meant.

His few friends begged him to be more modest. Do not ask so much,

they said, or you will get nothing. But Columbus was determined.

I have worked and waited all these years, he replied. I know just

what I can do and just how much I can do for the king and queen

of Spain. They must pay me what I ask and promise what I say, or

I will go somewhere else. Go, then! said the queen and her

advisers. And Columbus turned his back on what seemed almost his

last hope, mounted his mule and rode away.

Then something else happened. As Columbus rode off to find the

French king, sick and tired of all his long and useless labor at

the Spanish court, his few firm friends there saw that, unless

they did something right away, all the glory and all the gain of

this enterprise Columbus had taught them to believe in would be

lost to Spain. So two of them, whose names were Santangel and

Quintanilla, rushed into the queen's room and begged her, if she

wished to become the greatest queen in Christendom, to call back

this wandering sailor, agree to his terms and profit by his

labors.

What if he does ask a great deal? they said. He has spent his

life thinking his plan out; no wonder he feels that he ought to

have a good share of what he finds. What he asks is really small

compared with what Spain will gain. The war with the Moors has

cost you ever so much; your money-chests are empty; Columbus will

fill them up. The people of Cathay are heathen; Columbus will

help you make them Christian men. The Indies and Cathay are full

of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you home shiploads of

treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors; Columbus will help you

conquer Cathay.

In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so

earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for

glory and riches that she had almost lost, Quick! send for

Columbus. Call him back! she said. I agree to his terms. If King

Ferdinand cannot or will not take the risk, I, the queen, will do

it all. Quick! do not let the man get into France. After him.

Bring him back!

And without delay a royal messenger, mounted on a swift horse,

was sent at full gallop to bring Columbus back.

All this time poor Columbus felt bad enough. Everything had gone

wrong. Now he must go away into a new land and do it all over

again. Kings and queens, he felt, were not to be depended upon,

and he remembered a place in the Bible where it said: "Put not

your trust in princes." Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he

jogged slowly along toward the mountains, wondering what the king

of France would say to him, and whether it was really worth

trying.

Just as he was riding across the little bridge called the Bridge

of Pinos, some six miles from Granada, he heard the quick

hoof-beats of a horse behind him. It was a great spot for

robbers, and Columbus felt of the little money he had in his

traveling pouch, and wondered whether he must lose it all. The

hoof-beats came nearer. Then a voice hailed him. Turn back, turn

back! the messenger cried out. The queen bids you return to

Granada. She grants you all you ask.

Columbus hesitated. Ought he to trust this promise, he wondered.

Put not your trust in princes, the verse in the Bible had said.

If I go back I may only be put off and worried as I have been

before. And yet, perhaps she means what she says. At any rate, I

will go back and try once more.

So, on the little Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule around and

rode back to Granada. And, sure enough, when he saw Queen

Isabella she agreed to all that he asked. If he found Cathay,

Columbus was to be made admiral for life of all the new seas and

oceans into which he might sail; he was to be chief ruler of all

the lands he might find; he was to keep one tenth part of all the

gold and jewels and treasures he should bring away, and was to

have his "say" in all questions about the new lands. For his part

(and this was because of the offer of his friend at Palos,

Captain Pinzon) he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expenses

of this expedition and of all new enterprises, and was to have

one eighth of all the profits from them.

So Columbus had his wish at last. The queen's men figured up how

much money they could let him have; they called him "Don

Christopher Columbus," "Your Excellency" and "Admiral," and at

once he set about getting ready for his voyage.

CHAPTER IV. HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

The agreement made between Columbus and the king and queen of

Spain was signed on the seventeenth of April, 1492. But it was

four months before he was quite ready to sail away.

He selected the town of Palos as the place to sail from, because

there, as you know, Captain Pinzon lived; there, too, he had

other acquaintances, so that he supposed it would be easy to get

the sailors he needed for his ships. But in this he was greatly

mistaken.

As soon as the papers had been signed that held the queen to her

promise, Columbus set off for Palos. He stopped at the Convent of

Rabida to tell the Friar Juan Perez how thankful he was to him

for the help the good priest had given him, and how everything

now looked promising and successful.

The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of Spain, is

situated at the mouth of the river Tinto on a little bay in the

southwestern part of Spain, not far from the borders of Portugal.

To-day the sea has gone away from it so much that it is nearly

high and dry; but four hundred years ago it was quite a seaport,

when Spain did not have a great many sea towns on the Atlantic

coast.

At the time of Columbus's voyage the king and queen of Spain were

angry with the port of Palos for something its people had done

that was wrong--just what this was we do not know. But to punish

the town, and because Columbus wished to sail from there, the

king and queen ordered that Palos should pay them a fine for

their wrong-doing. And this fine was to lend the king and queen

of Spain, for one year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the

kind called caravel's, armed and equipped "for the service of the

crown"-- that is, for the use of the king and queen of Spain, in

the western voyage that Columbus was to make.

When Columbus called together the leading people of Palos to meet

him in the church of St. George and hear the royal commands, they

came; but at first they did not understand just what they must

do. But when they knew that they must send two of their ships and

some of their sailing men on this dreadful voyage far out upon

the terrible Sea of Darkness, they were terribly distressed.

Nobody was willing to go. They would obey the commands of the

king and queen and furnish the two ships, but as for sailing off

with this crazy sea captain --that they would not do.

Then the king's officers went to work. They seized some sailors

(impressed is the word for this), and made them go; they took

some from the jails, and gave them their freedom as a reward for

going; they begged and threatened and paid in advance, and still

it was hard to get enough men for the two ships. Then Captain

Pinzon, who had promised Columbus that he would join him, tried

his hand. He added a third ship to the Admiral's "fleet." He made

big promises to the sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last

he was able to do what even the royal commands could not do, and

a crew of ninety men was got together to man the three vessels.

The names of these three vessels were the Capitana (changed

before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and the Nina or

Baby. Captain de la Cosa commanded the Santa Maria, Captain

Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his brother, Captain Vincent

Pinzon, the Nina. The Santa Maria was the largest of the three

vessels; it was therefore selected as the leader of the

fleet--the flag-ship, as it is called--and upon it sailed the

commander of the expedition, the Admiral Don Christopher

Columbus.

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowadays, we think

of vessels as large as the big three-masted ships or the great

ocean steamers--vessels over six hundred feet long and fifty feet

wide. But these "ships" of Columbus were not really ships. They

were hardly larger than the "fishing smacks" that sail up and

down our coast to-day. Some of them were not so large. The Santa

Maria was, as I have told you, the largest of the three, and she

was only sixty-three feet long, twenty feet wide and ten and a

half feet deep. Just measure this out on the ground and see how

small, after all, the Admiral's "flag-ship" really was. The Pinta

was even smaller than this, while the little Nina was hardly

anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do you wonder that the

poor people of Palos and the towns round about were frightened

when they thought of their fathers and brothers and sons putting

out to sea, on the great ocean they had learned to dread so much,

in such shaky little boats as these?

But finally the vessels were ready. The crews were selected. The

time had come to go. Most of the sailors were Spanish men from

the towns near to the sea, but somehow a few who were not

Spaniards joined the crew.

One of the first men to land in America from one of the ships of

Columbus was an Irishman named William, from the County Galway.

And another was an Englishman named either Arthur Laws or Arthur

Larkins. The Spanish names for both these men look very queer,

and only a wise scholar who digs among names and words could have

found out what they really were. But such a one did find it out,

and it increases our interest in the discovery of America to know

that some of our own northern blood--the Irishman and the

Englishman--were in the crews of Columbus.

The Admiral Columbus was so sure he was going to find a rich and

civilized country, such as India and Cathay were said to be, that

he took along on his ships the men he would need in such places

as he expected to visit and among such splendid people as he was

sure he should meet. He took along a lawyer to make out all the

forms and proclamations and papers that would have to be sent by

the Admiral to the kings and princes he expected to visit; he had

a secretary and historian to write out the story of what he

should find and what he should do. There was a learned Jew, named

Louis, who could speak almost a dozen languages, and who could,

of course, tell him what the people of Cathay and Cipango and the

Indies were talking about. There was a jeweler and silversmith

who knew all about the gold and silver and precious stones that

Columbus was going to load the ships with; there was a doctor and

a surgeon; there were cooks and pilots, and even a little fellow,

who sailed in the Santa Maria as the Admiral's cabin boy, and

whose name was Pedro de Acevedo.

Some scholars have said that it cost about two hundred and thirty

thousand dollars to fit out this expedition. I do not think it

cost nearly so much. We do know that Queen Isabella gave

sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay for it. Some people,

however, reckoning the old Spanish money in a different way, say

that what Queen Isabella gave toward the expedition was not over

three or four thousand dollars of our money. Perhaps as much more

was borrowed from King Ferdinand, although he was to have no

share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and Columbus were

partners.

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third of

August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their anchors

and sailed away from the port of Palos. I suppose it was a very

sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos. The people probably

crowded down on the docks, some of them sad and sorrowful, some

of them restless and curious. Their fathers and brothers and sons

and acquaintances were going--no one knew where, dragged off to

sea by a crazy old Italian sailor who thought there was land to

be found somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knew he

was wrong. They were certain that nothing but dreadful goblins

and horrible monsters lived off there to the West, just waiting

to devour or destroy the poor sailors when these three little

ships should tumble over the edge.

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped, into the

rowboat that took him off to his "flag-ship," the Santa Maria.

His dreams had come true. He had ships and sailors under his

command, and was about to sail away to discover great and

wonderful things. He who had been so poor that he could hardly

buy his own dinner, was now called Don and Admiral. He had a

queen for his friend and helper. He was given a power that only

the richest and noblest could hope for. But more than all, he was

to have the chance he had wished and worked for so long. He was

to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have his

share in all the wealth he should discover and bring away. The

son of the poor wool-weaver of Genoa was to be the friend of

kings and princes; the cabin boy of a pirate was now Admiral of

the Seas and Governor of the Colonies of Spain! Do you wonder

that he felt proud?

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday morning

in August, be boarded the Santa Maria and gave orders to his

captains "to get under way." The sailors with a "yo heave ho!"

(or whatever the Spanish for that is) tugged at the anchors, the

sails filled with the morning breeze, and while the people of

Palos watched them from the shore, while the good friar, Juan

Perez, raised his hands to Heaven calling down a blessing on the

enterprise, while the children waved a last good- by from the

water-stairs, the three vessels steered out from Palos Harbor,

and before that day's sun had set, Columbus and his fleet were

full fifty miles on their way across the Sea of Darkness. The

westward voyage to those wonderful lands, the Indies and Cathay,

had at last begun.

CHAPTER V. HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

Did you ever set out, in the dark, to walk with your little

brother or sister along a road you did not know much about or had

never gone over before? It was not an easy thing to do, was it?

And how did your little brother or sister feel when it was known

that you were not just certain whether you were right or not? Do

you remember what the Bible says about the blind leading the

blind?

It was much the same with Columbus when he set out from Palos to

sail over an unknown sea to find the uncertain land of Cathay. He

had his own idea of the way there, but no one in all his company

had ever sailed it, and he himself was not sure about it. He was

very much in the dark. And the sailors in the three ships were

worse than little children. They did not even have the confidence

in their leader that your little brother or sister would probably

have in you as you traveled that new road on a dark night. It was

almost another case of the blind leading the blind, was it not?

Columbus first steered his ships to the south so as to reach the

Canary Islands and commence his real westward voyage from there.

The Canary Islands, as you will see by looking in your geography,

are made up of seven islands and lie off the northern corner of

Africa, some sixty miles or so west of Morocco. They were named

Canaria by the Romans from the Latin canis, a dog, "because of

the multitude of dogs of great size" that were found there. The

canary birds that sing so sweetly in your home come from these

islands. They had been known to the Spaniards and other European

sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years.

At the Canaries the troubles of Columbus commenced. And he did

have a lot of trouble before his voyage was over. While near the

island called the Grand Canary the rudder of the Pinta, in which

Captain Alonso Pinzon sailed, somehow got loose, then broke and

finally came off. It was said that two of the Pinta's crew, who

were really the owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on

purpose, because they had become frightened at the thoughts of

the perilous voyage, and hoped by damaging their vessel to be

left behind.

But Columbus had no thought of doing any such thing. He sailed to

the island of Gomera, where he knew some people, and had the

Pinta mended. And while lying here with his fleet the great

mountain on the island of Teneriffe, twelve thousand feet high,

suddenly began to spit out flame and smoke. It was, as of course

you know, a volcano; but the poor frightened sailors did not know

what set this mountain on fire, and they were scared almost out

of their wits' and begged the Admiral to go back home. But

Columbus would not. And as they sailed away from Gomera some

sailors told them that the king of Portugal was angry with

Columbus because he had got his ships from the king and queen of

Spain, and that he had sent out some of his war-ships to worry or

capture Columbus.

But these, too, Columbus escaped, although not before his crews

had grown terribly nervous for fear of capture. At last they got

away from the Canaries, and on Sunday, the ninth of September,

1492, with a fresh breeze filling their sails, the three caravels

sailed away into the West. And as the shores of Ferro, the very

last of the Canary Islands, faded out of sight, the sailors burst

into sighs and murmurings and tears, saying that now indeed they

were sailing off --off--off--upon the awful Sea of Darkness and

would never see land any more.

When Columbus thought that he was sailing too slowly --he had now

been away from Palos a month and was only about a hundred miles

out at sea--and when he saw what babies his sailors were, he did

something that was not just right (for it is never right to do

anything that is not true) but which he felt he really must do.

He made two records (or reckonings as they are called) of his

sailing. One of these records was a true one; this he kept for

himself. The other was a false one; this he kept to show his

sailors. So while they thought they were sailing slowly and that

the ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own true

record that they were getting miles and miles away from home.

Soon another thing happened to worry the sailors. The pilots were

steering by the compass. You know what that is --a sort of big

magnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing always to the

north. At the time of Columbus the compass was a new thing and

was only understood by a few. On the thirteenth of September they

had really got into the middle of the ocean, and the line of the

north changed. Of course this made the needle in the compass

change its position also. Now the sailors had been taught to

believe so fully in the compass that they thought it could never

change its position. And here it was playing a cruel trick upon

them. We are trapped! they cried. The goblins in this dreadful

sea are making our compass point wrong so as to drag us to

destruction. Go back; take us back! they demanded.

But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was wrong, said

the compass was all right. The North Star, toward which the

needle always pointed, had, so he said, changed its position.

This quieted the sailors for a while.

When they had been about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran

into what is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea. This is a

vast meadow of floating seaweed and seagrass in the middle of the

Atlantic; it is kept drifting about in the same place by the two

great sea currents that flow past it but not through it.

The sailors did not know this, of course, and when the ships

began to sail slower and slower because the seaweed was so thick

and heavy and because there was no current to carry them along,

they were sure that they were somewhere near to the jumping-off

place, and that the horrible monsters they had heard of were

making ready to stop their ships, and when they had got them all

snarled up in this weed to drag them all down to the bottom of

the sea.

For nearly a week the ships sailed over these vast sea- meadows,

and when they were out of them they struck what we call the

trade-winds--a never-failing breeze that blew them ever westward.

Then the sailors cried out that they were in an enchanted land

where there was but one wind and never a breeze to blow the poor

sailors home again. Were they not fearfully "scarey?" But no

doubt we should have been so, too, if we had been with them and

knew no more than they did.

And when they had been over fifty days from home on the

twenty-fifth of September, some one suddenly cried Land! Land!

And all hands crowded to the side. Sure enough, they all saw it,

straight ahead of them--fair green islands and lofty hills and a

city with castles and temples and palaces that glittered

beautifully in the sun.

Then they all cried for joy and sang hymns of praise and shouted

to each other that their troubles were over. Cathay, it is

Cathay! they cried; and they steered straight for the shining

city. But, worst of all their troubles, even as they sailed

toward the land they thought to be Cathay, behold! it all

disappeared--island and castle and palace and temple and city,

and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them.

For this that they had seen was what is called a mirage--a trick

of the clouds and the sun and the sea that makes people imagine

they see what they would like to, but really do not. But after

this Columbus had a harder time than ever with his men, for they

were sure he was leading them all astray.

And so with frights and imaginings and mysteries like these, with

strange birds flying about the ships and floating things in the

water that told of land somewhere about them, with hopes again

and again disappointed, and with the sailors growing more and

more restless and discontented, and muttering threats against

this Italian adventurer who, was leading the ships and sailors of

the Spanish king to sure destruction, Columbus still sailed on,

as full of patience and of faith, as certain of success as he had

ever been.

On the seventh of October, 1492, the true record that Columbus

was keeping showed that he had sailed twenty-seven hundred miles

from the Canaries; the false record that the sailors saw said

they had sailed twenty- two hundred miles. Had Columbus kept

straight on, he would have landed very soon upon the coast of

Florida or South Carolina, and would really have discovered the

mainland of America. But Captain Alonso Pinzon saw what looked

like a flock of parrots flying south. This made him think the

land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral to change his course

to the southward as he was sure there was no land to the west.

Against his will, Columbus at last consented, and turning to the

southwest headed for Cuba.

But he thought he was steering for Cathay. The islands of Japan,

were, he thought, only a few leagues away to the west. They were

really, as you know, away across the United States and then

across the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles farther west than

Columbus could sail. But according to his reckoning he hoped

within a day or two to see the cities and palaces of this

wonderful land.

When they sailed from the Canaries a reward had been offered to

whomsoever should first see land. This reward was to be a silken

jacket and nearly five hundred dollars in money; so all the

sailors were on the watch.

At about ten o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of October,

Columbus, standing on the high raised stern of the Santa Maria,

saw a moving light, as if some one on the shore were running with

a flaming torch. At two o'clock the next morning--Friday, the

twelfth of October, 1492 the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on

the Pinta (his name was Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long

low coastline not far away. He raised the joyful shout Land, ho!

The ships ran in as near to the shore as they dared, and just ten

weeks after the anchors had been hauled up in Palos Harbor they

were dropped overboard, and the hips of Columbus were anchored in

the waters of a new world.

Where was it? What was it? Was it Cathay? Columbus was sure that

it was. He was certain that the morning sun would shine for him

upon the marble towers and golden roofs of the wonderful city of

the kings of Cathay.

CHAPTER VI. WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

A little over three hundred years ago there was a Pope of Rome

whose name was Gregory XIII. He was greatly interested in

learning and science, and when the scholars and wise men of his

day showed him that a mistake in reckoning time had long before

been made he set about to make it right. At that time the Pope of

Rome had great influence with the kings and queens of Europe, and

whatever he wished them to do they generally did.

So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days of the

year, and a new reckoning of time was made upon the rule that

most of you know by heart in the old rhyme:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November;

All the rest have thirty-one,

Excepting February which alone

Hath twenty-eight--and this, in fine,

One year in four hath twenty-nine.

And the order of the days of the months and the year is what is

called, after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar.

This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past dates

wrong. The old dates, which were called Old Style, had to be made

to correspond with the new dates which were called New Style.

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered the islands

he thought to be the Indies (and which have ever since been

called the West Indies) on the twelfth of October, 1492. But,

according to the New Style, adopted nearly one hundred years

after his discovery, the right date would be the twenty-first of

October. And this is why, in the Columbian memorial year of 1892,

the world celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the

discovery of America on the twenty-first of October; which, as

you see, is the same as the twelfth under the Old Style of

reckoning time.

But did Columbus discover America? What was this land that

greeted his eyes as the daylight came on that Friday morning, and

he saw the low green shores that lay ahead of his caravels

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he had found

some one of the outermost islands of Cipango or Japan. So he

dropped his anchors, ordered out his rowboat, and prepared to

take possession of the land in the name of the queen of Spain,

who had helped him in his. enterprise.

Just why or by what right a man from one country could sail up to

the land belonging to another country and, planting in the ground

the flag of his king, could say, "This land belongs to my king!"

is a hard question to answer. But there is an old saying that

tells us, Might makes right; and the servants of the kings and

queens--the adventurers and explorers of old--used to go sailing

about the world with this idea in their heads, and as soon as

they came to a land they, had never seen before, up would go

their flag, and they would say, This land is mine and my king's!

They would not of course do this in any of the well-known or

"Christian lands" of Europe; but they believed that all "pagan

lands" belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors

should discover and claim them.

So Columbus lowered a boat from the Santa Maria, and with two of

his chief men and some sailors for rowers he pulled off toward

the island.

But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and

congratulations of the very sailors who, only a few days before,

were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom they thought

crazy had really brought them to the beautiful land, just as he

had promised. It does make such a difference, you know, in what

people say whether a thing turns out right or not.

Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief inspector

and his lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over his armor, and in

his hand he held the royal banner of Spain. Following him came

Captain Alonso Pinzon in a rowboat from the Pinta, and in a

rowboat from the Nina Captain Vincent Pinzon. Each of these

captains carried the "banner of the green cross" on which were to

be seen the initials of the king and queen of Spain.

As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on the shore.

They were not dressed in the splendid clothes the Spaniards

expected to find the people of Cathay wearing. In fact, they did

not have on much of anything but grease and paint. And the land

showed no signs of the marble temples and gold-roofed palaces the

sailors expected to find. It was a little, low, flat green

island, partly covered with trees and with what looked like a

lake in the center.

This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or coral

islands that stretch from the capes of Florida to the island of

Hayti, and are known as the Bahama Islands. The one upon which

Columbus landed was called by the natives Guanahani, and was

either the little island now marked on the map as Cat Island or

else the one called Watling's Island. Just which of these it was

has been discussed over and over again, but careful scholars have

now but little doubt that it was the one known to-day as

Watling's Island. To see no sign of glittering palaces and gayly

dressed people was quite a disappointment to Columbus. But then,

he said, this, is probably the island farthest out to sea, and

the people who live here are not the real Cathay folks. We shall

see them very soon.

So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards floating

above him, with his captains and chief officers and some of the

sailors gathered about him, while all the others watched him from

the decks of his fleet, Columbus stepped upon the shore. Then he

took off his hat, and holding the royal banner in one hand and

his sword in the other he said aloud: I take possession of this

island, which I name San Salvador,[*] and of all the islands and

lands about it in the name of my patron and sovereign lady,

Isabella, and her kingdom of Castile. This, or something like it,

he said, for the exact words are not known to us.

[*] The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy

Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish explorers who followed him gave

Bible or religious names to very much of the land they

discovered.

And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell at his

feet in wonder and admiration, begging him to forgive them for

all the hard things they had said about him. For you have found

Cathay, they cried. You are our leader. You will make us rich and

powerful. Hurrah for the great Admiral!

And when the naked and astonished people of the island saw all

this--the canoes with wings, as they called the ships, the

richly-dressed men with white and bearded faces, the flags and

swords, and the people kneeling about this grand-looking old man

in the crimson cloak--they said to one another: These men are

gods; they have come from Heaven to see us. And then, they, too,

fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven, as they

supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.

And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to

hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak

gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth and other beautiful

things they had never seen before. And this made them feel all

the more certain that these men who had come to see them in the

canoes with wings must really be from Heaven. So they brought

them fruits and flowers and feathers and birds as presents; and

both parties, the men with clothes and the men without clothes,

got on very well together.

But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one

especial reason. He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so

that he could carry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices

of Cathay. The first thing, therefore, that he tried to find out

from the people of the island--whom he called "Indians," because

he thought he had come to a part of the coast of India was where

Cathay might be.

Of course they did not understand him. Even Louis, the

interpreter, who knew a dozen languages and who tried them all,

could not make out what these "Indians" said. But from their

signs and actions and from the sound of the words they spoke,

Columbus understood that Cathay was off somewhere to the

southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find came from

there. The "Indians" had little bits of gold hanging in their

ears and noses. So Columbus supposed that among the finer people

he hoped soon to meet in the southwest, he should find great

quantities of the yellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he

felt, was not far off. Japan was near, China was near, India was

near. Of this he was certain; and even until he died Columbus did

not have any idea that he had found a new world--such as America

really was. He was sure that he had simply landed upon the

eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set out to

discover--the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized

and carried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had

welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands

of the group he had discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and

of them and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the

king and queen of Spain: "This country excels all others as far

as the day surpasses the night in splendor. The natives love

their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest

imaginable; their faces smiling; and so gentle and so

affectionate are they, that I swear to Your Highness there is not

a better people in the world."

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have acted so

meanly toward these innocent people who loved and trusted him so?

For it was Columbus who first stole them away from their island

homes and who first thought of making them slaves to the white

men.

CHAPTER VII. HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus kept sailing on from one island to another. Each new

island he found would, he hoped, bring him nearer to Cathay and

to the marble temples and golden palaces and splendid cities he

was looking for. But the temples and palaces and cities did not

appear. When the Admiral came to the coast of Cuba he said: This,

I know, is the mainland of Asia. So he sent off Louis, the

interpreter, with a letter to the "great Emperor of Cathay."

Louis was gone several days; but he found no emperor, no palace,

no city, no gold, no jewels, no spices, no Cathay--only frail

houses of bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain, with simple

people who could tell him nothing about Cathay or Cipango or the

Indies.

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing from island

to island, getting a little gold here and there, or some pearls

and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins, feathers and

trinkets.

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the Pinta,

believed he could do better than follow the Admiral's lead. I

know, he said, if I could go off on my own hook I could find

plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could find Cathay. So

one day he sailed away and Columbus did not know what had become

of him.

At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way Captain

Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one day to the island of Hayti. If

Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he felt sure, must be Cipango

(or Japan). So he decided to sail into one of its harbors to

spend Christmas Day. But just before Christmas morning dawned,

the helmsman of the Santa Maria, thinking that everything was

safe, gave the tiller into the hands of a boy--perhaps it was

little Pedro the cabin boy--and went to sleep. The rest of the

crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite big

to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship, was

a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven the

Santa Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And there she was wrecked.

They worked hard to get her off but it was no use. She keeled

over on her side, her seams opened, the water leaked in, the

waves broke over her, the masts fell out and the Santa Maria had

made her last voyage.

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted him, the

Santa Maria was a wreck, the Nina was not nearly large enough to

carry all his men back to Spain. And to Spain he must return at

once. What should he do?

Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this case he

speedily decided what to do. He set his men at work tearing the

wreck of the Santa Maria to pieces. Out of her timbers and

woodwork, helped out with trees from the woods and a few stones

from the shore, he made quite a fort. It had a ditch and a

watch-tower and a drawbridge. It proudly floated the flag of

Spain. It was the first European fort in the new world. On its

ramparts Columbus mounted the cannons he had saved from the wreck

and named the fort La Navidad--that is, Fort Nativity, because it

was made out of the ship that was wrecked on Christmas Day-the

day of Christ's nativity, his birthday.

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until he should

return from Spain. The most of them were quite willing to do this

as they thought the place was a beautiful one and they would be

kept very busy filling the fort with gold. Columbus told them

they must have at least a ton of gold before he came back. He

left them provisions and powder for a year, he told them to be

careful and watchful, to be kind to the Indians and to make the

year such a good one that the king and queen of Spain would be

glad to reward them. And then he said good-by and sailed away for

Spain.

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus turned the

little Nina homeward. He had not sailed very far when what should

he come across but the lost Pinta. Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed

very much ashamed when he saw the Admiral, and tried to explain

his absence. Columbus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had

gone off gold hunting and had not found any gold. But he did not

scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain.

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one. Once it was so

rough that Columbus thought surely the Nina would be wrecked. So

he copied off the story of what he had seen and done, addressed

it to the king and queen of Spain, put it into a barrel and threw

the barrel overboard.

But the Nina was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth of

February Columbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese governor was

so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian really had

returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain and not Portugal

that was to profit by his voyage that he tried to make Columbus a

prisoner. But the Admiral gave this inhospitable welcomer the

slip and was soon off the coast of Portugal.

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portugal --that

same King John who had once acted so meanly toward him. King John

would have done so again had he dared. But things were quite

different now. Columbus was a great man. He had made a successful

voyage, and the king and queen of Spain would have made it go

hard with the king of Portugal if he dared trouble their admiral.

So King John had to give a royal reception to Columbus, and

permit him to send a messenger to the king and queen of Spain

with the news of his return from Cathay.

Then Columbus went on board the Nina again and sailed for Palos.

But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon had again acted badly.

For he had left the Admiral in one of the storms at sea and had

hurried homeward. Then he sailed into one of the northern ports

of Spain, and hoping to get all the credit for his voyage, sent a

messenger post-haste to the king and queen with the word that he

had returned from Cathay and had much to tell them. And then he,

too, sailed for Palos.

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after he had

sailed away to the West, Columbus in the Nina sailed into Palos

Harbor. The people knew the little vessel at once. And then what

a time they made! Columbus has come back, they cried. He has

found Cathay. Hurrah! hurrah! And the bells rang and the cannons

boomed and the streets were full of people. The sailors were

welcomed with shouts of joy, and the big stories they told were

listened to with open mouths and many exclamations of surprise.

So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed him out and

cheered him and he was no longer spoken of as "that crazy Italian

who dragged away the men of Palos to the Jumping-off place."

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail into the

harbor of Palos but the Pinta, just a few hours late! And when

Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of rejoicing, and knew

that his plans to take away from Columbus all the glory of what

had been done had all gone wrong, he did not even go to see his

old friend and ask his pardon. He went away to his own house

without seeing any one. And there he found a stern letter from

the king and queen of Spain scolding him for trying to get the

best of Columbus, and refusing to hear or see him. The way things

had turned out made Captain Alonso Pinzon feel so badly that he

fell sick; and in a few days he died.

But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan Perez, the

friar at Rabida, and told him all his adventures, went on to

Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were waiting

for him. They had already sent him letters telling him how

pleased they were that he had found Cathay, and ordering him to

get ready for a second expedition at once. Columbus gave his

directions for this, and then, in a grand procession that called

everybody to the street or window or housetop, he set off for

Barcelona. He reached the court on a fine April day and was at

once received with much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain.

Columbus told them where he had been and what he had seen; he

showed them the gold and the pearls and the birds and curiosities

he had brought to Spain as specimens, of what was to be found in

Cathay; he showed them the ten painted and "fixed-up" Indians he

had stolen and brought back with him.

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well. They had

him sit beside them while he told his story, and treated this

poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of their great princes

or mighty lords. They told him he could put the royal arms

alongside his own on his shield or crest, and they bade him get

together at once ships and sailors for a second expedition to

Cathay--ships and sailors enough, they said, to get away up to

the great cities of Cathay, where the marble temples and the

golden palaces must be. It was their wish, they said, to gain the

friendship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to trade with him and

get a good share of his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see,

no one as yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They

did not even know that there was such a continent. They thought

he had sailed to Asia and found the rich countries that Marco

Polo had told such big stories about.

Columbus, you may be sure, was "all the rage" now. Wherever he

went the people followed him, cheering and shouting, and begging

him to take them with him on his next voyage to Cathay.

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beautiful

islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work at once, and

on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a fleet of seventeen

ships and a company of fifteen hundred men, Columbus the Admiral

set sail from Cadiz on his second voyage to Cathay and Cipango

and the Indies. And this time he was certain he should find all

these wonderful places, and bring back from the splendid cities

unbounded wealth for the king and queen of Spain.

CHAPTER VIII. TRYING IT AGAIN.

Do you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as he sailed

out of Cadiz Harbor on his second voyage to the West? It was just

about a year before, you know, that his feeble fleet of three

little ships sailed from Palos port. His hundred sailors hated to

go; his friends were few; everybody else said he was crazy; his

success was very doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high

quarter-deck of his big flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a

great man. By appointment of his king and queen he was "Admiral

of the Ocean Seas" and "Viceroy of the Indies." He had servants,

to do as he directed; he had supreme command over the seventeen

ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred men joyfully

crowded his decks, while thousands left at home wished that they

might go with him, too. He had soldiers and sailors, horsemen and

footmen; his ships were filled with all the things necessary for

trading with the Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and

for building the homes of those who wished to live in the lands

beyond the sea.

Everything looked so well and everybody was so full of hope and

expectation that the Admiral felt that now his fondest dreams

were coming to pass and that he was a great man indeed.

This was to be a hunt for gold. And so sure of success was

Columbus that he promised the king and queen of Spain, out of the

money he should make on this voyage, to, himself pay for the

fitting out of a great army of fifty thousand foot soldiers and

four thousand horsemen to drive away the pagan Turks who had

captured and held possession of the city of Jerusalem and the

sepulcher of Christ. For this had been the chief desire, for

years and years, of the Christian people of Europe. To accomplish

it many brave knights and warriors had fought and failed. But now

Columbus was certain he could do it.

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedition of the

Admiral. He sailed first to the Canary Isles, where he took

aboard wood and water and many cattle, sheep and swine. Then, on

the seventeenth of October, he steered straight out into the

broad Atlantic, and on Sunday, the third of November, he saw the

hill-tops of one of the West India Islands that he named

Dominica. You can find it on your map of the West Indies.

For days he sailed on, passing island after island, landing on

some and giving them names. Some of them were inhabited, some of

them were not; some were very large, some were very small. But

none of them helped him in any way to find Cathay, so at last he

steered toward Hayti (or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the

little ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where his forty

comrades had been left.

On the twenty-seventh of November, the fleet of the Admiral cast

anchor off the solitary fort. It was night. No light was to be

seen on the shore; through the darkness nothing could be made out

that looked like the walls of the fort. Columbus fired a cannon;

then he fired another. The echoes were the only answer. They must

be sound sleepers in our fortress there, said the Admiral. At

last, over the water he heard the sound of oars--or was it the

dip of a paddle? A voice called for the Admiral; but it was not a

Spanish voice. The interpreter--who was the only one left of

those ten stolen Indians carried by Columbus to Spain--came to

the Admiral's side; by the light of the ship's lantern they could

make out the figure of an Indian in his canoe. He brought

presents from his chief. But where are my men at the fort? asked

the Admiral. And then the whole sad story was told.

The fort of La Navidad was destroyed; the Spaniards were all

dead; the first attempt of Spain to start a colony in the new

world was a terrible failure. And for it the Spaniards themselves

were to blame.

After Columbus had left them, the forty men in the fort did not

do as he told them or as they had solemnly promised. They were

lazy; they were rough; they treated the Indians badly; they

quarreled among themselves; some of them ran off to live in the

woods. Then sickness came; there were two "sides," each one

jealous of the other; the Indians became enemies. A fiery

war-chief from the hills, whose name was Caonabo, led the Indians

against the white men. The fort and village were surprised,

surrounded and destroyed. And the little band of "conquerors"--as

the Spaniards loved to call themselves--was itself conquered and

killed.

It was a terrible disappointment to Columbus. The men in whom he

had trusted had proved false. The gold he had told them to get

together they had not even found. His plans had all gone wrong.

But Columbus was not the man to stay defeated. His fort was

destroyed, his men were killed, his settlement was a failure. It

can't be helped now, he said. I will try again.

This time he would not only build a fort, he would build a city.

He had men and material enough to do this and to do it well. So

he set to work.

But the place where he had built from the wreck of the unlucky

Santa Maria his unlucky fort of La Navidad did not suit him. It

was low, damp and unhealthy. He must find a better place. After

looking about for some time he finally selected a place on the

northern side of the island. You can find it if you look at the

map of Hayti in the West Indies; it is near to Cape Isabella.

He found here a good harbor for ships, a good place on the rocks

for a fort, and good land for gardens. Here Columbus laid out his

new town, and called it after his friend the queen of Spain, the

city of Isabella.

He marked out a central spot for his park or square; around this

ran a street, and along this street he built large stone

buildings for a storehouse, a church and a house for himself, as

governor of the colony. On the side streets were built the houses

for the people who were to live in the new town, while on a rocky

point with its queer little round tower looking out to sea stood

the stone fort to protect the little city. It was the first

settlement made by white men in all the great new world of

America.

You must know that there are some very wise and very bright

people who do not agree to this. They say that nearly five

hundred years before Columbus landed, a Norwegian prince or

viking, whose name was Leif Ericsson, had built on the banks of

the beautiful Charles River, some twelve miles from Boston, a

city which he called Norumbega.

But this has not really been proved. It is almost all the fancy

of a wise man who has studied it out for himself, and says he

believes there was such a city. But he does not really know it as

we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still say that

Christopher Columbus really discovered America and built the

first fort and the first city on its shores-- although he thought

he was doing all this in Asia, on the shores of China or Japan.

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their new city of

Isabella, he remembered that the main thing he was sent to do was

to get together as much gold as possible. His men were already

grumbling. They had come over the sea, they said, not to dig

cellars and build huts, but to find gold --gold that should make

them rich and great and happy.

So Columbus set to work gold-hunting. At first things seemed to

promise success. The Indians told big stories of gold to be found

in the mountains of Hayti; the men sent to the mountains

discovered signs of gold, and at once Columbus sent home joyful

tidings to the king and queen of Spain.

Then he and his men hunted everywhere for the glittering yellow

metal. They fished for it in the streams; they dug for it in the

earth; they drove the Indians to hunt for it also until the poor

redmen learned to hate the very sound of the word gold, and

believed that this was all the white men lived for, cared for or

worked for; holding up a piece of this hated gold the Indians

would say, one to another: "Behold the Christian's god!" And so

it came about that the poor worried natives, who were not used to

such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all, and told the

Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold might be

found--always away off somewhere else--if only the white men

would go there to look for it.

On the thirteenth of January, 1494, Columbus sent back to Spain

twelve of his seventeen ships. He did not send back in them to

the king, and queen, the gold he had promised. He sent back the

letters that promised gold; he sent back as prisoners for

punishment some of the most discontented and quarrelsome of his

colonists; and, worst of all, he sent to the king and queen a

note asking, them to permit him to send to Spain all the Indians

he could catch, to be sold as slaves. He said that by doing this

they could make "good Christians" of the Indians, while the money

that came from selling the natives would buy cattle for the

colony and leave some money for the royal money-chests.

It is not pleasant to think this of so great a man as Columbus.

But it is true, and he is really the man who, started the

slave-trade in America. Of course things were very different in

his time from what they are to-day, and people did not think so

badly of this horrible business. But some good men did, and spoke

out boldly against it. What they said was not of much use,

however, and slavery was started in the new world. And from that

act of Columbus came much sorrow and trouble for the land he

found. Even the great war between the northern and southern

sections of our own United States, upon one side or the other of

which your fathers, or your grandfathers perhaps, fought with gun

and sword, was brought about by this act of the great Admiral

Columbus hundreds of years before.

So the twelve ships sailed back to Spain, and Columbus, with his

five remaining ships, his soldiers and his colonists, remained in

the new city of Isabella to keep up the hunt for gold or to

become farmers in the new world.

CHAPTER IX. HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.

Both the farmers and the gold hunters had a hard time of it in

the land they had come to so hopefully. The farmers did not like

to farm when they thought they could do so much better at gold

hunting; the gold hunters found that it was the hardest kind of

work to get from the water or pick from the rocks the yellow

metal they were so anxious to obtain.

Columbus himself was not satisfied with the small amount of gold

he got from the streams and mines of Hayti; he was tired of the

wrangling and grumbling of his men. So, one day, he hoisted sail

on his five ships and started away on a hunt for richer gold

mines, or, perhaps, for those wonderful cities of Cathay he was

still determined to find.

He sailed to the south and discovered the island of Jamaica. Then

he coasted along the shores of Cuba. The great island stretched

away so many miles that Columbus was certain it was the mainland

of Asia. There was some excuse for this mistake. The great number

of small islands he had sailed by all seemed to lie just as the

books about Cathay that he had read said they did; the trees and

fruits that he found in these islands seemed to be just the same

that travelers said grew in Cathay.

To be sure the marble temples, the golden-roofed palaces, the

gorgeous cities had not yet appeared; but Columbus was so certain

that he had found Asia that he made all his men sign a paper in

which they declared that the land they had found (which was, as

you know, the island of Cuba) was really and truly the coast of

Asia.

This did not make it so, of course; but it made the people of

Spain, and the king and queen, think it was so. And this was most

important. So, to keep the sailors from going back on their word

and the statement they had signed, Columbus ordered that if any

officer should afterward say he had been mistaken, he should be

fined one hundred dollars; and if any sailor should say so, he

should receive one hundred lashes with a whip and have his tongue

pulled out. That was a curious way to discover Cathay, was it

not?

Then Columbus, fearing another shipwreck or another mutiny,

sailed back again to the city of Isabella. His men were

discontented, his ships were battered and leaky, his hunt for

gold and palaces had again proved a failure. He sailed around

Jamaica; he got as far as the eastern end of Hayti, and then,

just as he was about to run into the harbor of Isabella, all his

strength gave out. The strain and the disappointment were too

much for him; he fell very, very sick, and on the twenty-ninth of

September, 1494, after just about five months of sailing and

wandering and hunting, the Nina ran into Isabella Harbor with

Columbus so sick from fever that he could not raise his hand or

his head to give an order to his men.

For five long months Columbus lay in his stone house on the plaza

or square of Isabella a very sick man. His brother Bartholomew

had come across from Spain with three supply ships, bringing

provisions for the colony. So Bartholomew took charge of affairs

for a while.

And while Columbus lay so sick, some of the leading men in the

colony seized the ships in which Bartholomew Columbus had come to

his brother's aid, and sailing back to Spain they told the king

and queen all sorts of bad stories about Columbus. They were

Spaniards. Columbus was an Italian. They were jealous of him

because he was higher placed and had more to say than they had.

They were angry to think that when he had promised to bring them

to the gorgeous cities and the glittering gold mines of Cathay he

had only landed them on islands which were the homes of naked

savages, and made them work dreadfully hard for what little gold

they could find. He had promised them power; they went home

poorer than when they came away. So they were "mad" at

Columbus--just as boys and girls are sometimes "mad" at one

another; and they told the worst stories they could think of

about him, and called him all sorts of hard names, and said the

king and queen of Spain ought to look out for "their great

Admiral," or he would get the best of them and keep for himself

the most of whatever he could find in the new lands.

At last Columbus began to grow better. And when he knew what his

enemies had done he was very much troubled for fear they should

get the king and queen to refuse him any further aid. So, just as

soon as he was able, on the tenth of March, 1496, he sailed home

to Spain.

How different was this from his splendid setting out from Cadiz

two years before. Then everything looked bright and promising;

now everything seemed dark and disappointing. The second voyage

to the Indies had been a failure.

So, tired of his hard work in trying to keep his dissatisfied men

in order, in trying to check the Indians who were no longer his

friends, in trying to find the gold and pearls that were to be

got at only by hard work, in trying to make out just where he was

and just where Cathay might be, Columbus started for home. Sick,

troubled, disappointed, threatened by enemies in the Indies and

by more bitter enemies at home, sad, sorry and full of fear, but

yet as determined and as brave as ever, on the tenth of March,

1496, he went on board his caravels with two hundred and fifty

homesick and feversick men, and on the eleventh of June his two

vessels sailed into the harbor of Cadiz.

The voyage had been a tedious one. Short of food, storm-tossed

and full of aches and pains the starving company "crawled

ashore," glad to be in their home land once more, and most of

them full of complaints and grumblings at their commander, the

Admiral.

And Columbus felt as downcast as any. He came ashore dressed, not

in the gleaming armor and crimson robes of a conqueror, as on his

first return, but in the garb of what was known as a

penitent--the long, coarse gown, the knotted girdle and peaked

hood of a priest. For, you see, he did not know just what

terrible stories had been told by his enemies; he did not know

how the king and queen would receive him. He had promised them so

much; he had brought them so little. He had sailed away so

hopefully; he had come back humbled and hated. The greatest man

in the world, he had been in 1492; and in 1496 he was

unsuccessful, almost friendless and very unpopular. So you see,

boys and girls, that success is a most uncertain thing, and the

man who is a hero to-day may be a beggar to-morrow.

But, as is often the case, Columbus was too full of fear. He was

not really in such disgrace as he thought he was. Though his

enemies had said all sorts of hard things against him, the

king--and especially the queen--could not forget that he was,

after all, the man who, had found the new land for Spain; they

knew that even though he had not brought home the great riches

that were to have been gathered in the Indies, he had still found

for Spain a land that would surely, in time, give to it riches,

possessions and power.

So they sent knightly messengers to Columbus telling him to come

and see them at once, and greeting him with many pleasant and

friendly words. Columbus was, as you must have seen, quick to

feel glad again the moment things seemed to turn in his favor; so

he laid aside his penitent's gown, and hurried off to court. And

almost the first thing he did was to ask the king and queen to

fit out another fleet for him. Six ships, he said he should want

this time; and with these he was certain he could sail into the

yet undiscovered waters that lay beyond Hayti and upon which he

knew he should find Cathay.

I am afraid the king and queen of Spain were beginning to feel a

little doubtful as to this still undiscovered Cathay. At any

rate, they had other matters to think of and they did not seem so

very anxious to spend more money on ships and sailors. But they

talked very nicely to Columbus; they gave him a new title (this

time it was duke or marquis); they made him a present of a great

tract of land in Hayti, but it was months and months before they

would help him with the ships and money he kept asking for.

At last, however, the queen, Isabella, who had always had more

interest in Columbus and his plans than had the king, her

husband, said a good word for him. The six ships were given him,

men and supplies were put on board and on the twentieth of May,

1498, the Admiral set out on his third voyage to what every one

now called the Indies.

There was not nearly so much excitement among the people about

this voyage. Cathay and its riches had almost become an old

story; at any rate it was a story that was not altogether

believed in. Great crowds did not now follow the Admiral from

place to place begging him to take them with him to the Indies.

The hundreds of sick, disappointed and angry men who had come

home poor when they expected to be rich, and sick when they

expected to be strong, had gone through the land, and folks began

to think that Cathay was after all only a dream, and that the

stories of great gold and of untold riches which they had heard

were but "sailors' yarns" which no one could believe.

So it was hard to get together a crew large enough to man the six

vessels that made up the fleet. At last, however, all was ready,

and with a company of two hundred men, besides his sailors,

Columbus hoisted anchor in the little port of San Lucar just

north of Cadiz, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir river, and

sailed away into the West.

This time he was determined to find the continent of Asia. Even

though, as you remember, he made his men sign a paper saying that

the coast of Cuba was Asia, he really seems to have doubted this

himself. He felt that he had only found islands. If so, he said,

Cathay must be the other side of those islands; and Cathay is

what I must find.

So, with this plan in mind, he sent three of his ships to the

little settlement of Isabella, and with the other three he sailed

more to the southwest. On the first of August the ships came in

sight of the three mountain peaks of the large island he called

Trindad, or Trinity.

Look on your map of South America and you will see that Trinidad

lies almost in the mouth of the Orinoco, a mighty river in the

northern part of South America.

Columbus coasted about this island, and as he did so, looking

across to the west, he saw what he supposed to be still another

island. It was not. It was the coast of South America. For the

first time, but without knowing it, Columbus saw the great

continent he had so long been hunting for, though he had been

seeking it under another name.

So you see, the story of Columbus shows how his life was full of

mistakes. In his first voyage he found an island and thought it

was the mainland of the Eastern Hemisphere; in his third voyage

he discovered the mainland of the New World and thought it only

an island off the coast of the Old World. His life was full of

mistakes, but those mistakes have turned out to be, for us,

glorious successes.

CHAPTER X. FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

If you know a boy or a girl whose mind is set on any one thing,

you will find that they are always talking about that thing. Is

not this so? They have what people call a "hobby" (which is a

kind of a horse, you know), and they are apt, as we say, to "ride

their hobby to death."

If this is true of certain boys and girls, it is even more true

of men and women. They get to be what we call people of one idea,

and whatever they see or whatever they do always turns on that

one idea.

It was so with Columbus. All his life his one idea had been the

finding of Asia--the Indies, or Cathay, as he called it--by

sailing to the west. He did sail to the west. He did find land.

And, because of this, as we have seen, all his voyaging and all

his exploring were done in the firm belief that he was

discovering new parts of the eastern coast of Asia. The idea that

he had found a new world never entered his head.

So, when he looked toward the west, as he sailed around the

island of Trinidad and saw the distant shore, he said it was a

new part of Asia. He was as certain of this as he had before been

certain that Cuba was a part of the Asiatic mainland.

But when he sailed into the mouth of the great Orinoco River he

was puzzled. For the water was no longer salt; it grew fresher

and fresher as he sailed on. And it rushed out so furiously

through the two straits at the northern and southern ends of

Trinidad (which because of the terrible rush of their currents he

called the Lion's Mouth and the Dragon's Mouth) that he was at

first unable to explain it all.

Then he had a curious idea. Columbus was a great reader of the

Bible; some of the Bible scholars of his day said that the Garden

of Eden was in a far Eastern land where a mighty river came down

through it from the hills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the

beautiful land he had reached, and saw the great river sending

down its waters to the sea, he fitted all that he saw to the

Bible stories he knew so well, and felt sure that he had really

discovered the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

He would gladly have sailed across the broad bay and up the great

river to explore this heavenly land; but he was ill with gout, he

was nearly blind from his sore eyes, his ships were shaky and

leaky, and he felt that he ought to hurry away to the city of

Isabella where his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, were in

charge of affairs and were, he knew, anxiously waiting for him to

come back.

So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he thought

must be Paradise and steered toward Hayti. On the nineteenth of

August he arrived off the coast of Hayti. He sent a messenger

with news of his arrival, and soon greeted his brother

Bartholomew, who, when he heard of the Admiral's arrival, sailed

at once to meet him.

Bartholomew Columbus had a sad story to tell his brother

Christopher. Things had been going badly in Hayti, and the poor

Admiral grew sicker and sicker as he listened to what Bartholomew

had to tell.

You have heard it said that there are black sheep in every flock.

There were black sheep in this colony of Columbus. There were

lazy men and discontented men and jealous men, and they made

great trouble, both in the city of Isabella and in the new town

which Bartholomew bad built in another part of the island and

called Santo Domingo.

Such men are sure to make mischief, and these men in Hayti had

made a lot of it. Columbus had staid so long in Spain that these

men began to say that they knew he was certainly in trouble or

disgrace there, that the king and queen were angry with him, and

that his offices of viceroy and admiral were to be taken away

from him. If this were so, they were going to look out for

themselves, they said. They would no longer obey the commands of

the Admiral's brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom he had left

in charge.

So they rose in rebellion, and made things so uncomfortable for

the two brothers that the colony was soon full of strife and

quarreling.

The leader of this revolt was one of the chief men in the colony.

His name was Roldan. When Columbus and Bartholomew sailed into

the harbor of Santo Domingo, on the thirtieth of August, they

found that Roldan and his followers had set up a camp for

themselves in another part of the island, and given out that they

were determined never to have anything more to do with the three

Columbus brothers.

This rebellion weakened the colony dreadfully. Things looked

desperate; so desperate indeed that Columbus, after thinking it

all over, thought that the only way to do was to seem to give in

to Roldan and patch up some sort of an agreement by which they

could all live together in peace. But all the same, he said, I

will complain to the king and have this rebel Roldan punished.

So the Admiral wrote Roldan a letter in which he offered to

forgive and forget all that he had done if he would come back and

help make the colony strong and united again. Roldan agreed to do

this, if he could have the same position he held before, and if

Columbus would see that his followers had all the land they

wanted. Columbus agreed to this and also gave the rebels

permission to use the poor natives as slaves on their lands. So

the trouble seemed to be over for a while, and Columbus sent two

of his ships to Spain with letters to the king and queen. But in

these letters he accused Roldan of rebellion and tried to explain

why it was that things were going so badly in Hayti.

But when these ships arrived in Spain the tidings they brought

and the other letters sent by them only made matters worse.

People in Spain had heard so many queer things from across the

sea that they were beginning to lose faith in Columbus. The men

who had lost health and money in the unlucky second voyage of the

Admiral were now lazy loafers about the docks, or they hung about

the court and told how Columbus had made beggars of them, while

they hooted after and insulted the two sons of Columbus who were

pages in the queen's train. They called the boys the sons of "the

Admiral of Mosquitoland."

Then came the ships with news of Roldan's rebellion, but with

little or no gold. And people said this was a fine viceroy who

couldn't keep order among his own men because, no doubt, he was

too busy hiding away for his own use the gold and pearls they

knew he must have found in the river of Paradise he said he had

discovered.

Then came five shiploads of Indian slaves, sent to Spain by

Columbus, and along with them came the story that Columbus had

forgiven Roldan for his rebellion and given him lands and office

in Hayti.

King Ferdinand had never really liked Columbus and had always

been sorry that he had given him so much power and so large a

share in the profits. The queen, too, began to think that while

Columbus was a good sailor, he was a very poor governor. But when

she heard of the shiploads of slaves he had sent, and found out

that among the poor creatures were the daughters of some of the

chiefs, or caciques, of the Indians, she was very angry, and

asked how "her viceroy" dared to use "her vassals" so without

letting her know about it. "Things were indeed beginning to look

bad for Columbus. The king and queen had promised that only

members of the Admiral's family should be sent to govern the

island; they had promised that no one but himself should have the

right to trade in the new lands. But now they began to go back on

their promises. If Columbus cannot find us gold and spices, they

said, other men can. So they gave permission to other captains to

explore and trade in the western lands. And as the complaints

against the Admiral kept coming they began to talk of sending

over some one else to govern the islands.

More letters came from Columbus asking the king and queen to let

him keep up his slave-trade, and to send out some one to act as a

judge of his quarrel with Roldan. Then the king and queen decided

that something must be done at once. The queen ordered the return

of the slaves Columbus had sent over, and the king told one of

his officers named Bobadilla to go over to Hayti and set things

straight. And he sent a letter by him commanding Columbus to talk

with him, to give up all the forts and arms in the colony and to

obey Bobadilla in all things.

Bobadilla sailed at once. But before he got across the sea

matters, as we know, had been straightened out by the Admiral;

and when Bobadilla reached Hayti he found everything quiet there.

Columbus had made friends with Roldan (or made believe that he

had), and had got things into good running order again.

This was not what Bobadilla had reckoned upon. He had expected to

find things in such a bad way that he would have to take matters

into his own hand at once, and become a greater man than the

Admiral. If everything was all right he would have his journey

for nothing and everybody would laugh at him. So he determined to

go ahead, even though there was no necessity for his taking

charge of affairs. He had been sent to do certain things, and he

did them at once. Without asking Columbus for his advice or his

assistance, he took possession of the forts and told every one

that he was governor now. He said that he had come to set things

straight, and he listened to the complaints of all the black

sheep of the colony--and how they did crowd around him and say

the worst things they could think of against the Admiral they had

once been so anxious to follow.

Bobadilla listened to all their stories. He proceeded to use the

power the king and queen had given him to punish and disgrace

Columbus--which was not what they meant him to do. He moved into

the palace of the Admiral; he ordered the Admiral and his

brothers to come to him, and when they came expecting to talk

things over, Bobadilla ordered that they be seized as prisoners

and traitors, that they be chained hand and foot and put in

prison.

Columbus's saddest day had come. The man who had found a new

world for his king and queen, who had worked so hard in their

service and who had meant to do right, although he had made many

mistakes, was thrust into prison as if he were a thief or a

murderer. The Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the

Indies, the grand man whom all Spain had honored and all the

world had envied, was held as a prisoner in the land he had

found, and all his powers were taken by a stranger. He was sick,

he was disappointed, he was defeated in all his plans. And now he

was in chains. His third voyage had ended the worst of all. He

had sailed away to find Cathay; he had, so he believed, found the

Garden of Eden and the river of Paradise. And here, as an end to

it all, he was arrested by order of the king and queen he had

tried to serve, his power and position were taken from him by an

insolent and unpitying messenger from Spain; he was thrown into

prison and after a few days he was hurried with his brothers on

board a ship and sent to Spain for trial and punishment. How

would it all turn out? Was it not a sad and sorry ending to his

bright dreams of success?

CHAPTER XI. HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

I supposE you think Bobadilla was a very cruel man. He was. But

in his time people were apt to be cruel to one another whenever

they had the power in their own hands. The days in which Columbus

lived were not like these in which we are living. You can never

be too thankful for that, boys and girls. Bobadilla had been told

to go over the water and set the Columbus matters straight. He

had been brought up to believe that to set matters straight you

must be harsh and cruel; and so he did as he was used to seeing

other people in power do. Even Queen Isabella did not hesitate to

do some dreadful things to certain people she did not like when

she got them in her power. Cruelty was common in those days. It

was what we call the "spirit of the age." So you must not blame

Bobadilla too much, although we will all agree that it was very

hard on Columbus.

So Columbus, as I have told you, sailed back to Spain. But when

the officer who had charge of him and whose name was Villijo, had

got out to sea and out of Bobadilla's sight, he wanted to take

the chains off. For he loved Columbus and it made him feel very

sad to see the old Admiral treated like a convict or a murderer.

Let me have these cruel chains struck off, Your Excellency, he

said. No, no, Villijo, Columbus replied. Let these fetters remain

upon me. My king and queen ordered me to submit and Bobadilla has

put me in chains. I will wear these irons until my king and queen

shall order them removed, and I shall keep them always as relics

and memorials of my services.

It always makes us sad to see any one in great trouble. To hear

of a great man who has fallen low or of a rich man who has become

poor, always makes us say: Is not that too bad? Columbus had many

enemies in Spain. The nobles of the court, the men who had lost

money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons

and brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say

anything bad enough about "this upstart Italian," as they called

Columbus.

But to the most of the people Columbus was still the great

Admiral. He was the man who had stuck to his one idea until he

had made a friend of the queen; who had sailed away into the West

and proved the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place to be

only fairy tales after all; who had found Cathay and the Indies

for Spain. He was still a great man to the multitude.

So when on a certain October day, in the year 1500, it was spread

abroad that a ship had just come into the harbor of Cadiz,

bringing home the great Admiral, Christopher Columbus, a prisoner

and in chains, folks began to talk at once. Why, who has done

this? they cried. Is this the way to treat the man who found

Cathay for Spain, the man whom the king and the queen delighted

to honor, the man who made a procession for us with all sorts of

birds and animals and pagan Indians? It cannot be. Why, we all

remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago and was

received like a prince with banners and proclamations and

salutes. And now to bring him home in chains! It is a shame; it

is cruel; it is wicked. And when people began to talk in this

way, the very ones who had said the worst things against him

began to change their tone.

As soon as the ship got into Cadiz, Columbus sent off a letter to

a friend of his at the court in the beautiful city of Granada.

This letter was, of course, shown to the queen. And it told all

about what Columbus had suffered, and was, so full of sorrow and

humbleness and yet of pride in what he had been able to do, even

though he had been disgraced, that Queen Isabella (who was really

a friend to Columbus in spite of her dissatisfaction with the

things he sometimes did) became very angry at the way he had been

treated.

She took the letter to King Ferdinand, and at once both the king

and the queen hastened to send a messenger to Columbus telling

him how angry and sorry they were that Bobadilla should have

dared to treat their good friend the Admiral so. They ordered his

immediate release from imprisonment; they sent him a present of

five thousand dollars and asked him to come to court at once.

On the seventeenth of December, 1500, Columbus came to the court

at Granada in the beautiful palace of the Alhambra. He rode on a

mule. At that time, in Spain, people were not allowed to ride on

mules, because if they did the Spanish horses would not be bought

and sold, as mules were so much cheaper and were easier to ride.

But Columbus was sick and it hurt him to ride horseback, while he

could be fairly comfortable on an easy-going mule. So the king

and queen gave him special permission to come on mule-back.

When Columbus appeared before the queen, looking so sick and

troubled, Isabella was greatly affected. She thought of all he

had done and all he had gone through and all he had suffered, and

as he came to the steps of the throne the queen burst into tears.

That made Columbus cry too, for he thought a great deal of the

queen, and he fell at her feet and told her how much he honored

her, and how much he was ready to do for her, if he could but

have the chance.

Then the king and queen told him how sorry they were that any one

should have so misunderstood their desires and have treated their

brave and loyal Admiral so shamefully. They promised to make

everything all right for him again, and to show him that they

were his good friends now as they always had been since the day

he first sailed away to find the Indies for them and for Spain.

Of course this made Columbus feel much better. He had left Hayti

in fear and trembling. He had come home expecting something

dreadful was going to happen; he would not have been surprised at

a long imprisonment; he would not even have been surprised if he

had been put to death--for the kings and queens and high lords of

his day were very apt to order people put to death if they did

not like what had been done. The harsh way in which Bobadilla had

treated him made him think the king and queen had really ordered

it. Perhaps they had; and perhaps the way in which the people

cried out in indignation when they saw the great Admiral brought

ashore in chains had its influence on Queen Isabella. King

Ferdinand really cared nothing about it. He would gladly have

seen Columbus put in prison for life; but the queen had very much

to say about things in her kingdom, and so King Ferdinand made

believe he was sorry and talked quite as pleasantly to Columbus

as did the queen.

Now Columbus, as you must have found out by this time, was as

quick to feel glad as he was to feel sad. And when he found that

the king and queen were his friends once more, he became full of

hope again and began to say where he would go and what he would

do when he went back again as Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral

of the Ocean Seas. He begged the queen to let him go back again

at once, with ships and sailors and the power to do as he pleased

in the islands he had found and in the lands he hoped to find.

They promised him everything, for promising is easy. But Columbus

had once more to learn the truth of the old Bible warning that he

had called to mind years before on the Bridge of Pinos: Put not

your trust in princes.

The king and queen talked very nicely and promised much, but to

one thing King Ferdinand had made up his mind--Columbus should

never go back again to the Indies as viceroy or governor. And

King Ferdinand was as stubborn as Columbus was persistent.

Not very much gold had yet been brought back from the Indies, but

the king and queen knew from the reports of those who had been

over the seas and kept their eyes open that, in time, a great

deal of gold and treasure would come from there. So they felt

that if they kept their promises to Columbus he would take away

too large a slice of their profits, and if they let him have

everything to say there it would not be possible to let other

people, who were ready to share the profits with them, go off

discovering on their own hook.

So they talked and delayed and sent out other expeditions and

kept Columbus in Spain, unsatisfied. Another governor was sent

over to take the place of Bobadilla, for they soon learned that

that ungentlemanly knight was not even so good or so strict a

governor as Columbus had been.

Almost two years passed in this way and still Columbus staid in

Spain. At last the king and queen said he might go if he would

not go near Hayti and would be sure to find other and better gold

lands.

Columbus did not relish being told where to go and where not to

go like this; but he promised. And on the ninth of May, 1502,

with four small caravels and one hundred and fifty men,

Christopher Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his fourth and last

voyage to the western world.

He was now fifty-six years old. That is not an age at which we

would call any one an old man. But Columbus had grown old long

before his time. Care, excitement, exposure, peril, trouble and

worry had made him white-haired and wrinkled. He was sick, he was

nearly blind, he was weak, he was feeble--but his determination

was just as firm, his hope just as high, his desire just as

strong as ever. He was bound, this time, to find Cathay.

And he had one other wish. He had enemies in Hayti; they had

laughed and hooted at him when he had been dragged off to prison

and sent in chains on board the ship. He did wish to get even

with them. He could not forgive them. He wanted to sail into the

harbor of Isabella and Santo Domingo with his four ships and to

say: See, all of you! Here I am again, as proud and powerful as

ever. The king and queen have sent me over here once more with

ships and sailors at my command. I am still the Admiral of the

Ocean Seas and all you tried to do against me has amounted to

nothing,

This is not the right sort of a spirit to have, either for men or

boys; it is not wise or well to have it gratified. Forgiveness is

better than vengeance; kindliness is better than pride.

At any rate, it was not to be gratified with Columbus. When his

ships arrived off the coast of Hayti, although his orders from

the king and queen were not to stop at the island going over, the

temptation to show himself was too strong. He could not resist

it. So he sent word to the new governor, whose name was Ovando,

that he had arrived with his fleet for the discovery of new lands

in the Indies, and that he wished to come into Santo Domingo

Harbor as one of his ships needed repairs; he would take the

opportunity, he said, of mending his vessel and visiting the

governor at the same time.

Now it so happened that Governor Ovando was just about sending to

Spain a large fleet. And in these ships were to go some of the

men who had treated Columbus so badly. Bobadilla, the

ex-governor, was one of them; so was the rebel Roldan who had

done so much mischief; and there were others among the passengers

and prisoners whom Columbus disliked or who hated Columbus. There

was also to go in the fleet a wonderful cargo of gold--the

largest amount yet sent across to Spain. There were twenty-six

ships in all, in the great gold fleet, and the little city of

Santo Domingo was filled with excitement and confusion.

We cannot altogether make out whether Governor Ovando was a

friend to Columbus or not. At any rate, he felt that it would be

unwise and unsafe for Columbus to come into the harbor or show

himself in the town when so many of his bitter enemies were

there. So he sent back word to Columbus that he was sorry, but

that really he could not let him come in.

How bad that must have made the old Admiral feel! To be refused

admission to the place he had found and built up for Spain! It

was unkind, he said; he must and would go in.

Just then Columbus, who was a skillful sailor and knew all the

signs of the sky, and all about the weather, happened to notice

the singular appearance of the sky, and saw that there was every

sign that a big storm was coming on. So he sent word to Governor

Ovando again, telling him of this, and asking permission to run

into the harbor of Santo Domingo with his ships to escape the

coming storm. But the governor could not see that any storm was

coming on. He said: Oh! that is only another way for the Admiral

to try to get around me and get me to let him in. I can't do it.

So, he sent back word a second time that he really could not, let

Columbus come in. I know you are a very clever sailor, he said,

but, really, I think you must be mistaken about this storm. At

any rate, you will have time to go somewhere else before it comes

on, and I shall be much obliged if you will.

Now, among the twenty-six vessels of the gold fleet was one in

which was stored some of the gold that belonged to Columbus as

his share, according to his arrangement with the king and queen.

If a storm came on, this vessel would be in danger, to say

nothing of all the rest of the fleet. So Columbus sent in to

Governor Ovando a third time. He told him he was certain a great

storm was coming. And he begged the governor, even if he was not

allowed to come up to Santo Domingo, by all means to keep the

fleet in the harbor until the storm was over. If you don't, there

will surely be trouble, he said. And then he sailed with his

ships along shore looking for a safe harbor.

But the people in Santo Domingo put no faith in the Admiral's

"probabilities." There will be no storm, the captains and the

officers said. If there should be our ships are strong enough to

stand it. The Admiral Columbus is getting to be timid as he grows

older. And in spite of the old sailor's warning, the big gold

fleet sailed out of the harbor of Santo Domingo and headed for

Spain.

But almost before they had reached the eastern end of the island

of Hayti, the storm that Columbus had prophesied burst upon them.

It was a terrible tempest. Twenty of the ships went to the

bottom. The great gold fleet was destroyed. The enemies of

Columbus--Bobadilla, Roldan and the rest were drowned. Only a few

of the ships managed to get back into Santo Domingo Harbor,

broken and shattered. And the only ship of all the great fleet

that got safely through the storm and reached Spain all right was

the one that carried on board the gold that belonged to Columbus.

Was not that singular?

Then all the friends of Columbus cried: How wonderful! Truly the

Lord is on the side of the great Admiral!

But his enemies said: This Genoese is a wizard. He was mad

because the governor would not let him come into the harbor, and

he raised this storm in revenge. It is a dangerous thing to

interfere with the Admiral's wishes.

For you see in those days people believed in witches and spells

and all kinds of fairy-book things like those, when. they could

not explain why things happened. And when they could not give a

good reason for some great disaster or for some stroke of bad

luck, they just said: It is witchcraft; and left it so.

CHAPTER XII. HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

While the terrible storm that wrecked the great gold fleet of the

governor was raging so furiously, Columbus with his four ships

was lying as near shore as he dared in a little bay farther down

the coast of Hayti. Here he escaped the full fury of the gale,

but still his ships suffered greatly, and came very near being

shipwrecked. They became separated in the storm, but the caravels

met at last after the storm was over and steered away for the

island of Jamaica.

For several days they sailed about among the West India Islands;

then they took a westerly course, and on the thirtieth of July,

Columbus saw before him the misty outlines of certain high

mountains which he supposed to be somewhere in Asia, but which we

now know were the Coast Range Mountains of Honduras. And

Honduras, you remember, is a part of Central America.

Just turn to the map of Central America in your geography and

find Honduras. The mountains, you see, are marked there; and on

the northern coast, at the head of a fine bay, you will notice

the seaport town of Truxillo. And that is about the spot where,

for the first time, Columbus saw the mainland of North America.

As he sailed toward the coast a great canoe came close to the

ship. It was almost as large as one of his own caravels, for it

was over forty feet long and fully eight feet wide. It was

paddled by twenty-five Indians, while in the middle, under an

awning of palm-thatch sat the chief Indian, or cacique, as he was

called. A curious kind of sail had been rigged to catch the

breeze, and the canoe was loaded with fruits and Indian

merchandise.

This canoe surprised Columbus very much. He had seen nothing just

like it among the other Indians he had visited. The cacique and

his people, too, were dressed in clothes and had sharp swords and

spears. He thought of the great galleys of Venice and Genoa; he

remembered the stories that had come to him of the people of

Cathay; he believed that, at last, he had come to the right

place. The shores ahead of him were, he was sure, the coasts of

the Cathay he was hunting for, and these people in "the galley of

the cacique" were much nearer the kind of people he was expecting

to meet than were the poor naked Indians of Hayti and Cuba.

In a certain way he was right. These people in the big canoe

were, probably, some of the trading Indians of Yucatan, and

beyond them, in what we know to-day as Mexico, was a race of

Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called half-civilized;

for they had cities and temples and stone houses and almost as

much gold and treasure as Columbus hoped to find in his fairyland

of Cathay. But Columbus was not to find Mexico. Another daring

and cruel Spanish captain, named Cortez, discovered the land,

conquered it for Spain, stripped it of its gold and treasure, and

killed or enslaved its brave and intelligent people.

After meeting this canoe, Columbus steered for the distant shore.

He coasted up and down looking for a good harbor, and on the

seventeenth of August, 1502, he landed as has been told you, near

what is now the town of Truxillo, in Honduras. There, setting up

the banner of Castile, he took possession of the country in the

name of the king and queen of Spain.

For the first time in his life Columbus stood on the real soil of

the New World. All the islands he had before discovered and

colonized were but outlying pieces of America. Now he was really

upon the American Continent.

But he did not know it. To him it was but a part of Asia. And as

the main purpose of this fourth voyage was to find a way to sail

straight to India--which he supposed lay somewhere to the

south--he set off on his search. The Indians told him of "a

narrow place" that he could find by sailing farther south, and of

a "great water." beyond it. This "narrow place" was the Isthmus

of Panama, and the "great water" beyond it was, of course, the

Pacific Ocean. But Columbus thought that by a "narrow place" they

meant a strait instead of an isthmus. If he could but find that

strait, he could sail through it into the great Bay of Bengal

which, as you know and as he had heard, washes the eastern shore

of India.

So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua trying to

find the strait he was hunting for. Just look at your map and see

how near he was to the way across to the Pacific that men are now

digging out, and which, as the Nicaragua Canal, will connect the

Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. And think how near he was to

finding that Pacific Ocean over which, if he could but have got

across the Isthmus of Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay

and the Indies he spent his life in trying to find. But if he had

been fortunate enough to get into the waters of the Pacific, I do

not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all. His

little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could never

have sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end might have

proved even more disastrous than did the Atlantic voyages of the

Admiral.

He soon understood that he had found a richer land than the

islands he had thus far discovered. Gold and pearls were much

more plentiful along the Honduras coast than they were in Cuba

and Hayti, and Columbus decided that, after he had found India,

he would come back by this route and collect a cargo of the

glittering treasures.

The land was called by the Indians something that sounded very

much like Veragua. This was the name Columbus gave to it; and it

was this name, Veragua, that was afterward given to the family of

Columbus as its title; so that, to-day, the living descendant of

Christopher Columbus in Spain is called the Duke of Veragua.

But as Columbus sailed south, along what is called "the Mosquito

Coast," the weather grew stormy and the gales were severe. His

ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the food was running low; the

sailors began to grumble and complain and to say that if they

kept on in this way they would surely starve before they could

reach India.

Columbus, too, began to grow uneasy. His youngest son, Ferdinand,

a brave, bright little fellow of thirteen, had come with him on

this voyage, and Columbus really began to be afraid that

something might happen to the boy, especially if the crazy ships

should be wrecked, or if want of food should make them all go

hungry. So at last he decided to give up hunting for the strait

that should lead him into the Bay of Bengal; he felt obliged,

also, to give up his plan of going back to the Honduras coast for

gold and pearls. He turned his ships about and headed for Hayti

where he hoped he could get Governor Ovando to give him better

ships so that he could try it all over again.

Here, you see, was still another disappointing defeat for

Columbus. For after he had been on the American coast for almost

a year; after he had come so near to what he felt to be the

long-looked-for path to the Indies; after most wonderful

adventures on sea and land, he turned his back on it all, without

really having accomplished what he set out to do and, as I have

told you, steered for Hayti.

But it was not at all easy to get to Hayti in those leaky ships

of his. In fact it was not possible to get there with them at

all; for on the twenty-third of June, 1503, when he had reached

the island of Jamaica he felt that his ships would not hold out

any longer. They were full of worm- holes; they were leaking

badly; they were strained and battered from the storms. He

determined, therefore, to find a good harbor somewhere on the

island of Jamaica and go in there for repairs. But he could not

find a good one; his ships grew worse and worse; every day's

delay was dangerous; and for fear the ships would sink and carry

the crews to the bottom of the sea, Columbus decided to run them

ashore anyhow. This he did; and on the twelfth of August, 1503,

he deliberately headed for the shore and ran his ships aground in

a little bay on the island of Jamaica still known as Sir

Christopher's Cove. And there the fleet was wrecked.

The castaways lashed the four wrecks together; they built

deck-houses and protections so as to make themselves as

comfortable as possible, and for a whole year Columbus and his

men lived there at Sir Christopher's Cove on the beautiful island

of Jamaica.

It proved anything but beautiful for them, however. It makes a

good deal of difference, you know, in enjoying things whether you

are well and happy. If you are hungry and can't get anything to

eat, the sky does not look so blue or the trees so green as if

you were sitting beneath them with a jolly picnic party and with

plenty of lunch in the baskets.

It was no picnic for Columbus and his companions. That year on

the island of Jamaica was one of horror, of peril, of sickness,

of starvation. Twice, a brave comrade named Diego Mendez started

in an open boat for Hayti to bring relief. The first time he was

nearly shipwrecked, but the second time he got away all right.

And then for months nothing was heard of him, and it was supposed

that he had been drowned. But the truth was that Governor Ovando,

had an idea that the king and queen of Spain were tired of

Columbus and would not feel very bad if they never saw him again.

He promised to send help, but did not do so for fear he should

get into trouble. And the relief that the poor shipwrecked people

on Jamaica longed for did not come.

Then some of the men who were with Columbus mutinied and ran

away. In fact, more things happened during this remarkable fourth

voyage of Columbus than I can begin to tell you about. The story

is more wonderful than is that of Robinson Crusoe, and when you

are older you must certainly read it all and see just what

marvelous adventures Columbus and his men met with and how

bravely the little Ferdinand Columbus went through them all. For

when Ferdinand grew up he wrote a life of his father, the

Admiral, and told the story of how they all played Robinson

Crusoe at Sir Christopher's Cove.

At last the long-delayed help was sent by Governor Ovando, and

one day the brave Diego Mendez came sailing into Sir

Christopher's Cove. And Columbus forgave the rebels who had run

away; and on the twenty-eighth of June, 1504, they all sailed

away from the place, that, for a year past, had been almost worse

than a prison to them all.

On the fifteenth of August, the rescued crews sailed into the

harbor of Santo Domingo. The governor, Ovando, who had

reluctantly agreed to send for Columbus, was now in a hurry to

get him away. Whether the governor was afraid of him, or ashamed

because of the way he had treated him, or whether he felt that

Columbus was no longer held so high in Spain, and that,

therefore, it was not wise to make much of him, I cannot say. At

any rate he hurried him off to Spain, and on the twelfth of

September, 1504, Columbus turned his back forever on the new

world he had discovered, and with two ships sailed for Spain.

He had not been at sea but a day or two before he found that the

ship in which he and the boy Ferdinand were sailing was not good

for much. A sudden storm carried away its mast and the vessel was

sent back to Santo Domingo. Columbus and Ferdinand, with a few of

the men, went on board the other ship which was commanded by

Bartholomew Columbus, the brother of the Admiral, who had been

with him all through the dreadful expedition. At last they saw

the home shores again, and on the seventh of November, 1504,

Columbus sailed into the harbor of San Lucar, not far from Cadiz.

He had been away from Spain for fully two years and a half. He

had not accomplished a single thing he set out to do. He had met

with disappointment and disaster over and over again, and had

left the four ships that had been given him a total wreck upon

the shores of Jamaica. He came back poor, unsuccessful,

unnoticed, and so ill that he could scarcely get ashore.

And so the fourth voyage of the great Admiral ended. It was his

last. His long sickness had almost made him crazy. He said and

did many odd things, such as make us think, nowadays, that people

have, as we call it, "lost their minds." But he was certain of

one thing--the king and queen of Spain had not kept the promises

they had made him, and he was determined, if he lived, to have

justice done him, and to make them do as they said they would.

They had told him that only himself or one of his family should

be Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the New Lands; they

had sent across the water others, who were not of his family, to

govern what he had been promised for his own. They had told him

that he should have a certain share of the profits that came from

trading and gold hunting in the Indies; they had not kept this

promise either, and he was poor when he was certain he ought to

be rich.

So, when he was on land once more, he tried hard to get to court

and see the king and queen. But he was too sick.

He had got as far as beautiful Seville, the fair Spanish city by

the Guadalquivir, and there he had to give up and go to, bed. And

then came a new disappointment. He was to lose his best friend at

the court. For when he had been scarcely two weeks in Spain,

Queen Isabella died.

She was not what would be considered in these days either a

particularly good woman, or an especially good queen. She did

many cruel things; and while she talked much about doing good,

she was generally looking out for herself most of all. But that

was not so much her fault as the fault of the times in which she

lived. Her life was not a happy one; but she had always felt

kindly toward Columbus, and when he was where he could see her

and talk to her, he had always been able to get her to side with

him and grant his wishes.

Columbus was now a very sick man. He had to keep his bed most of

the time, and this news of the queen's death made him still

worse, for he felt that now no one who had the "say" would speak

a good word for the man who had done so much for Spain, and given

to the king and queen the chance to make their nation great and

rich and powerful.

CHAPTER XIII. THE END OF THE STORY.

Any one who is sick, as some of you may know, is apt to be

anxious and fretful and full of fears as to how he is going to

get along, or who will look out for his family. Very often there

is no need for this feeling; very often it is a part of the

complaint from which the sick person is suffering.

In the case of Columbus, however, there was good cause for this

depressed and anxious feeling. King Ferdinand, after Queen

Isabella's death, did nothing to help Columbus. He would not

agree to give the Admiral what he called his rights, and though

Columbus kept writing letters from his sick room asking for

justice, the king would do nothing for him. And when the king's

smile is turned to a frown, the fashion of the court is to frown,

too.

So Columbus had no friends at the king's court. Diego, his eldest

son, was still one of the royal pages, but he could do nothing.

Without friends, without influence, without opportunity, Columbus

began to feel that he should never get his rights unless he could

see the king himself. And sick though he was he determined to try

it.

It must have been sad enough to see this sick old man drag

himself feebly to the court to ask for justice from the king whom

he had enriched. You would think that when King Ferdinand really

saw Columbus at the foot of the throne, and when he remembered

all that this man had done for him and for Spain, and how brave

and persistent and full of determination to do great things the

Admiral once had been, he would at least have given the old man

what was justly due him.

But he would not. He smiled on the old sailor, and said many

pleasant things and talked as if he were a friend, but he would

not agree to anything Columbus asked him; and the poor Admiral

crawled back to his sick bed again, and gave up the struggle. I

have done all that I can do, he said to the few friends who

remained faithful to him; I must leave it all to God. He has

always helped me when things were at the worst.

And God helped him by taking him away from all the fret, and

worry, and pain, and struggle that made up so much of the

Admiral's troubled life. On the twentieth of May, 1506, the end

came. In the house now known as Number 7 Columbus Avenue, in the

city of Valladolid; in Northern Spain, with a few faithful

friends at his side, he signed his will, lay back in bed and

saying trustfully these words: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit

my spirit! the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the

Indies, the Discoverer of a New World, ended his fight for life.

Christopher Columbus was dead.

He was but sixty years old. With Tennyson, and Whittier, and

Gladstone, and De Lesseps living to be over eighty, and with your

own good grandfather and grandmother, though even older than

Columbus, by no means ready to be called old people, sixty years

seems an early age to be so completely broken and bent and gray

as was he. But trouble, and care, and exposure, and all the

worries and perils of his life of adventure, had, as you must

know, so worn upon Columbus that when he died he seemed to be an

old, old man. He was white-haired, you remember, even before he

discovered America, and each year he seemed to grow older and

grayer and more feeble.

And after he had died in that lonely house in Valladolid, the

world seems for a time to have almost forgotten him. A few

friends followed him to the grave; the king, for whom he had done

so much, did not trouble himself to take any notice of the death

of his Admiral, whom once he had been forced to honor, receive

and reward. The city of Valladolid, in which Columbus died, was

one of those fussy little towns in which everybody knew what was

happening next door, and talked and argued about whatever

happened upon its streets and in its homes; and yet even

Valladolid hardly seemed to know of the presence within its gates

of the sick "Viceroy of the Indies." Not until four weeks after

his death did the Valladolid people seem to realize what had

happened; and then all they did was to write down this brief

record: "The said Admiral is dead."

To-day, the bones of Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket lie in

the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. People have disputed about the

place where the Discoverer of America was born; they are

disputing about the place where he is buried. But as it seems now

certain that he was born in Genoa, so it seems also certain that

his bones are really in the tomb in the old Cathedral at Santo

Domingo, that old Haytian city which he founded, and where he had

so hard a time.

At least a dozen places in the Old World and the New have built

monuments and statues in his honor; in the United States, alone,

over sixty towns and villages bear his name, or the kindred one

of Columbia. The whole world honors him as the Discoverer of

America; and yet the very name that the Western Hemisphere bears

comes not from the man who discovered it, but from his friend and

comrade Americus Vespucius.

Like Columbus, this Americus Vespucius was an Italian; like him,

he was a daring sailor and a fearless adventurer, sailing into

strange seas to see what he could find. He saw more of the

American coast than did Columbus, and not being so full of the

gold-hunting and slave-getting fever as was the Admiral, he

brought back from his four voyages so much information about the

new-found lands across the sea, that scholars, who cared more for

news than gold, became interested in what he reported. And some

of the map-makers in France, when they had to name the new lands

in the West that they drew on their maps--the lands that were not

the Indies, nor China, nor Japan--called them after the man who

had told them so much about them--Americus Vespucius. And so it

is that to-day you live in America and not in Columbia, as so

many people have thought this western world of ours should he

named.

And even the titles, and riches, and honors that the king and

queen of Spain promised to Columbus came very near being lost by

his family, as they had been by himself. It was only by the

hardest work, and by keeping right at it all the time, that the

Admiral's eldest son, Diego Columbus, almost squeezed out of King

Ferdinand of Spain the things that had been promised to his

father.

But Diego was as plucky, and as brave, and as persistent as his

father had been; then, too, he had lived at court so long--he was

one of the queen's pages, you remember that he knew just what to

do and how to act so as to get what he wanted. And at last he got

it.

He was made Viceroy over the Indies; he went across the seas to

Hayti, and in his palace in the city of Santo Domingo he ruled

the lands his father had found, and which for centuries were

known as the Spanish Main; he was called Don Diego; he married a

high-born lady of Spain, the niece of King Ferdinand; he received

the large share of "the riches of the Indies" that his father had

worked for, but never received. And the family of Christopher

Columbus, the Genoese adventurer--under the title of the Dukes of

Veragua--have, ever since Don Diego's day, been of what is called

"the best blood of Spain."

If you have read this story of Christopher Columbus aright, you

must have come to the conclusion that the life of this Italian

sea captain who discovered a new world was not a happy one. From

first to last it was full of disappointment. Only once, in all

his life, did he know what happiness and success meant, and that

was on his return from his first voyage, when he landed amid

cheers of welcome at Palos, and marched into Barcelona in

procession like a conqueror to be received as an equal by his

king and queen.

Except for that little taste of glory, how full of trouble was

his life! He set out to find Cathay and bring back its riches and

its treasures. He did not get within five thousand miles of

Cathay. He returned from his second voyage a penitent, bringing

only tidings of disaster. He returned from his third voyage in

disgrace, a prisoner and in chains, smarting under false charges

of theft, cruelty and treason. He returned from his fourth voyage

sick unto death, unnoticed, unhonored, unwelcomed.

From first to last he was misunderstood. His ideas were made fun

of, his efforts were treated with contempt, and even what he did

was not believed, or was spoken of as of not much account. A

career that began in scorn ended in neglect. He died unregarded,

and for years no one gave him credit for what he had done, nor

honor for what he had brought about.

Such a life would, I am sure, seem to all boys and girls, but a

dreary prospect if they felt it was to be theirs or that of any

one they loved. And yet what man to-day is more highly honored

than Christopher Columbus? People forget all the trials and

hardships and sorrows of his life, and think of him only as one

of the great successes of the world--the man who discovered

America.

And out of his life of disaster and disappointment two things

stand forth that all of us can honor and all of us should wish to

copy. These are his sublime persistence and his unfaltering

faith. Even as a boy, Columbus had an idea of what he wished to

try and what he was bound to do. He kept right at that idea, no

matter what might happen to annoy him or set him back.

It was the faith and the persistence of Columbus that discovered

America and opened the way for the millions who now call it their

home. It is because of these qualities that we honor him to-day;

it is because this faith and persistence ended as they did in the

discovery of a new world, that to-day his fame is immortal.

Other men were as brave, as skillful and as wise as he. Following

in his track they came sailing to the new lands; they explored

its coasts, conquered its red inhabitants, and peopled its shores

with the life that has made America today the home of millions of

white men and millions of free men. But Columbus showed the way.

CHAPTER XIV. HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

Whenever you start to read a story that you hope will be

interesting, you always wonder, do you not, how it is going to

turn out? Your favorite fairy tale or wonder story that began

with "once upon a time," ends, does it not, "so the prince

married the beautiful princess, and they lived happy ever after?"

Now, how does this story that we have been reading together turn

out? You don't think it ended happily, do you? It was, in some

respects, more marvelous than any fairy tale or wonder story;

but, dear me! you say, why couldn't Columbus have lived happily,

after he had gone through so much, and done so much, and

discovered America, and given us who came after him so splendid a

land to live in?

Now, just here comes the real point of the story. Wise men tell

us that millions upon millions of busy little insects die to make

the beautiful coral islands of the Southern seas. Millions and

millions of men and women have lived and labored, died and been

forgotten by the world they helped to make the bright, and

beautiful, and prosperous place to live in that it is to-day.

Columbus was one of these millions; but he was a leader among

them and has not been forgotten. As the world has got farther

away from the time in which he lived, the man Columbus, who did

so much and yet died almost unnoticed, has grown more and more

famous; his name is immortal, and to-day he is the hero

Columbus-- one of the world's greatest men.

We, in America, are fond of celebrating anniversaries. I suppose

the years that you boys and girls have thus far lived have been

the most remarkable in the history of the world for celebrating

anniversaries. For fully twenty years the United States has been

keeping its birthday. The celebration commenced long before you

were born, with the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of

Lexington (in 1875). It has not ended yet. But in 1892, We

celebrated the greatest of all our birthdays--the discovery of

the continent that made it possible for us to be here at all.

Now this has not always been so with us. I suppose that in 1592

and in 1692 no notice whatever was taken of the twelfth day of

October, on which--one hundred and two hundred years

before--Columbus had landed on that flat little "key" known as

Watling's Island down among the West Indies, and had begun a new

chapter in the world's wonderful story. In 1592, there was hardly

anybody here to celebrate the anniversary--in fact, there was

hardly anybody here at all, except a few Spanish settlers in the

West Indies, in Mexico, and in Florida. In 1692, there were a few

scattered settlements of Frenchmen in Canada, of Englishmen in

New England, Dutchmen in New York, Swedes in Delaware, and

Englishmen in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. But none of

these people loved the Spaniards. They hated them, indeed; for

there had been fierce fighting going on for nearly a hundred

years between Spain and England, and you couldn't find an

Englishman, a Dutchman or a Swede who was willing to say a good

word for Spain, or thank God for the man who sailed away in

Spanish ships to discover America two hundred years before.

In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and there

were a few who did remember that, three hundred years before,

Columbus had found the great continent upon which, in that year

1792, a new republic, called the United States of America, had

only just been started after a long and bloody war of rebellion

and revolution.

We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there were

many, if any, public celebrations of the Discovery of America, in

America itself. A certain American clergyman, however, whose name

was the Rev. Elhanan Winchester, celebrated the three hundredth

anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus. And he

celebrated it not in America, but in England, where he was then

living. On the twelfth of October, 1792, Winchester delivered an

address on "Columbus and his Discoveries," before a great

assembly of interested listeners. In that address he said some

very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things about the

America that was to be:

"I see the United States rise in all their ripened glory before

me," he said. "I look through and beyond every yet peopled region

of the New World, and behold period still brightening upon

period. Where one contiguous depth of gloomy wilderness now shuts

out even the beams of day, I see new States and empires, new

seats of wisdom and knowledge, new religious domes spreading

around. In places now untrod by any but savage beasts, or men as

savage as they, I hear the voices of happy labor, and see

beautiful cities rising to view. I behold the whole continent

highly cultivated and fertilized, full of cities, towns and

villages, beautiful and lovely beyond expression. I hear the

praises of my great Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers

now unknown to song. Behold the delightful prospect! See the

silver and gold of America employed in the service of the Lord of

the whole earth! See slavery, with all its train of attendant

evils, forever abolished! See a communication opened through the

whole continent, from North to South and from East to West,

through a most fruitful country. Behold the glory of God

extending, and the gospel spreading through the whole land!"

Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and to say

all this; but it is a little curious, is it not, that he should

have seen things just as they have turned out?

In Mr. Winchester's day, the United States of America had not

quite four millions of inhabitants. In his day Virginia was the

largest State--in the matter of population --Pennsylvania was the

second and New York the third. Philadelphia was the greatest

city, then followed New York, Boston, Baltimore and Charleston.

Chicago was not even thought of.

To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw American

shores, one hundred and sixteen years after the United States

were started in life by the Declaration of American Independence,

these same struggling States of one hundred years ago are joined

together to make the greatest and most prosperous nation in the

world. With a population of more than sixty-two millions of

people; with the thirteen original States grown into forty-four,

with the population of its three largest cities--New York;

Philadelphia and Chicago--more than equal to the population of

the whole country one hundred years ago; with schools and

colleges and happy homes brightening the whole broad land that

now stretches from ocean to ocean, the United States leads all

other countries in the vast continent Columbus discovered. Still

westward, as Columbus led, the nation advances; and, in a great

city that Columbus could never have imagined, and that the

prophet of one hundred years ago scarcely dreamed of, the mighty

Republic in 1892 invited all the rest of the world to join with

it in celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery

of America by Columbus the Admiral. And to do this celebrating

fittingly and grandly, it built up the splendid White City by the

great Fresh Water Sea.

Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions of what was

to be, that people, as we know, tapped their foreheads and called

him "the crazy Genoese." But not even the wildest fancies nor the

most wonderful dreams of Columbus came anywhere near to what he

would really have seen if--he could have visited the Exposition

at Chicago, in the great White City by the lake--a "show city"

specially built for the World's Fair of 1893, given in his honor

and as a monument to his memory.

Why, he would say, the Cathay that I spent my life trying to find

was but a hovel alongside this! What would he have seen? A city

stretching a mile and a half in length, and more than half a mile

in breadth; a space covering over five hundred acres of ground,

and containing seventeen magnificent buildings, into any one of

which could have been put the palaces of all the kings and queens

of Europe known to Columbus's day. And in these buildings he

would have seen gathered together, all the marvelous and all the

useful things, all the beautiful and all the delightful things

that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayed for all

the world to see. He would have stood amazed in that wonderful

city of glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all of

purest white, that had been built some eight miles from the

center of big and busy Chicago, looking out upon the blue waters

of mighty Lake Michigan. It was a city that I wish all the boys

and girls of America--especially all who read this story of the

man in whose honor it was built, might have visited. For as they

saw all its wonderful sights, studied its marvelous exhibits, and

enjoyed its beautiful belongings, they would have been ready to

say how proud, and glad, and happy they were to think that they

were American girls and boys, living in this wonderful nineteenth

century that has been more crowded with marvels, and mysteries,

and triumphs than any one of the Arabian Nights ever contained.

But, whether you saw the Columbian Exhibition or not, you can say

that. And then stop and think what a parrot did. That is one of

the most singular things in all this wonder story you are

reading. Do you not remember how, when Columbus was slowly

feeling his way westward, Captain Alonso Pinzon saw some parrots

flying southward, and believing from this that the land they

sought was off in that direction, he induced Columbus to change

his course from the west to the south? If Columbus had not

changed his course and followed the parrots, the Santa Maria,

with the Pinta and the Nina, would have sailed on until they had

entered the harbor of Savannah or Charleston, or perhaps the

broad waters of Chesapeake Bay. Then the United States of to-day

would have been discovered and settled by Spaniards, and the

whole history of the land would have been quite different from

what it has been. Spanish blood has peopled, but not uplifted,

the countries of South America and the Spanish Main. English

blood, which, following after--because Columbus had first shown

the way--peopled, saved and upbuilt the whole magnificent

northern land that Spain missed and lost. They have found in it

more gold than ever Columbus dreamed of in his never- found

Cathay; they have filled it with a nobler, braver, mightier, and

more numerous people than ever Columbus imagined the whole

mysterious land of the Indies contained; they have made it the

home of freedom, of peace, of education, of intelligence and of

progress, and have protected and bettered it until the whole

world respects it for its strength, honors it for its patriotism,

admires it for its energy, and marvels at it for its prosperity.

And this is what a flying parrot did: It turned the tide of

lawless adventure, of gold-hunting, of slave-driving, and of

selfish strife for gain to the south; it left the north yet

unvisited until it was ready for the strong, and sturdy, and

determined men and women who, hunting for liberty, came across

the seas and founded the colonies that became in time the free

and independent republic of the United States of America.

And thus has the story of Columbus really turned out. Happier

than any fairy tale, more marvelous than any wonder book, the

story of the United States of America is one that begins, "Once

upon a time," and has come to the point where it depends upon the

boys and girls who read it, to say whether or not they shall

"live happily ever after."

The four hundred years of the New World's life closed its chapter

of happiness in the electric lights and brilliant sunshine of the

marvelous White City by Lake Michigan. It is a continued story of

daring, devotion and progress, that the boys and girls of America

should never tire of reading. And this story was made possible

and turned out so well, because of the briefer, but no less

interesting story of the daring, the devotion and the faith of

the determined Genoese sailor of four hundred years ago, whom men

knew as Don Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.

End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The True Story of Christopher Columbus

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